The Sun Over Shadesmar

[Paracosmic_nomenclator]

Spoilers for Elantris, Mistborn: Secret History, and Stormlight Archive ahead.

 

The sun in shadesmar makes me suspicious.

When Kelsier saw a sun in Scadrial's Cognitive Realm, I didn't think much of it. In SA, though, a much greater emphasis is placed on astronomical bodies (Roshar's three moons, other inhabited planets in the Rosharan system, the ten gas giants which represent the orders of the KR). So, the fact that the sun appears so similar in the Cognitive Realms of both Roshar and Scadrial got me thinking, what actually is the sun in the Cognitive Realm.

We know from Mistborn: secret history and WOBs that uninhabited areas are smaller in the CR (Is that an acronym that's used? Whatever, I'm using it). Now I know that the Rosharan system is more active than most, but I'm pretty sure that there's nobody living on it's sun. Also, scadrial has a cognitive sun, too.

Now while it's possible that every planet has its own sun in the CR because everyone has a concept of what the sun is, this seems unlikely to me. Given the relative proximity of planets in the CR, one would expect the cognitive suns of other planets to be visible from their neighbors. However, we never see any mention of stars or moons, even dim ones, in the CR. This means that the cognitive sun (in my opinion) is a single object visible from multiple planets in the CR.

It's possible that this is actually a sun, based on everyone's idea of a sun, and shared across the cosmere. This, however, seems unlikely to me for one simple reason; it doesn't actually bear much resemblance to real suns. If this cognitive sun was truly based off a shared concept of the sun, one would expect it to be of average size, to give off more warmth, and to have a day/night cycle, none of which it does. So if it's not actually a sun, what is it?

Sel.

One of the few similarities between the CR of Roshar and Scadrial is that investiture glows in both. From Arcanum Unbounded, we know that the combined investiture of the Shards Devotion and Dominion is trapped within Sel's cognitive realm. With that much investiture, and the shortened distances of the CR, surely one would be able to see Sel glowing almost anywhere in the CR. So what if we have been seeing Sel in the CR this whole time, and we just haven't known that's what we were looking at.

I really like the idea of Brandon having hid a whole planet in plain sight across multiple books. The biggest problem I have woth this theory is that, as presented thus far, the CR seems to be largely 2-dimensional. Based on the way characters talk about worldhopping, one gets the sense that if you walk in a straight line for long enough, you'll simply end up in another planet's CR. If that were the case, then the Sel's CR would be at the same level as Roshar and Scadrial, not above it as a sun. Then again, Ruin rises into the sky when he's freed from the Well of Ascension, so perhaps elevation in the CR is based on level of investiture, and Sel, full of the investiture of two shards, is thus raised into the sky appreciably.

TL;DR

The sun in shadesmar might be Sel.

[Calderis he/him]

The only reason that I disagree is that the Cognitive Realm functions as a plane. You could walk off the edge of one world and cross to another.

The sun is described as being overhead which would make it unreachable. 

I personally think that the "sun" is the Spiritual Realm, as the Spiritual is location independent and is visible in a static position wherever you are in the Cosmere(speculation). 

When someone dies and is pulled beyond, they stretch towards the sun. I think they're being pulled to the Beyond through the Spiritual Realm, or visibly, the "sun."

Edited July 9, 2017 by Calderis

[Spoolofwhool]

There's a WoB that the Beyond is related to the sun of the Shadesmar and the pull towards it. I'm unable to find it at this moment though.

[+Extesian he/him]

5 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

There's a WoB that the Beyond is related to the sun of the Shadesmar and the pull towards it. I'm unable to find it at this moment though.

This one?

Quote

BLIGHTSONG

Last year I asked you if shadows turn the wrong way in the cognitive realm for a reason, you said to basically think of it like important flavor text. Is this happening because people are being drawn towards the Beyond?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Um, yea that part of it. Definitely.

It's a little inconclusive but that was always the strongest one I could find. 

[Yata he/him]

The two main theories about the Cognitive's Sun are the Beyond and the Spiritual Realm for now.

I think it's the Spiritual Realm for some reasons related mainly to Secret History but we have no actual proofs.

Some of the "clues" for the Sun=Beyond could be really meaningless as we don't know how the Realms' transictions actually work.

[Spoolofwhool]

6 hours ago, Extesian said:

This one?

It's a little inconclusive but that was always the strongest one I could find. 

Yeah, that was it. Can you source it?

[Paracosmic_nomenclator]

It seems unlikely to me that the sun is the spiritual realm. Just as the cognitive realm exists "beneath the surface" of the physical realm, one would expect the spiritual realm to behave similarly with respect to the cognitive realm, rather than having a single discrete location.

Aa for the sun being the Beyond... Yeah, it probably is. I didn't remember that people were pulled toward the sun as they were taken to the Beyond. I seem to remember Lightsong being able to vaguely describe his brief time in the Beyond, and I'd want to go back and check that dialog.

As for the whole, "The Cognitive Realm is a plane" thing, though it seems to be true, I can't really understand how it would work. As any map projection will show you, you can't press the surface of a globe flat without massively distorting at least some parts of it. Further a map has edges which are ultimately arbitrary; there will always be people how traverse the space that forms the edges of a given map. So how does that play into the cognitive realm?

But I digress.

The final question I have is why can't we see Sel in the Cognitive Realm. When Ruin was over Scadrial, his was visible from pretty much anywhere in the planet's Cognitive Realm, and presumably from the Cognitive Realms of neighboring planets, too. With that in mind, how could the combined investiture of two shards, concentrated fully in the Cognitive Realm, not stand out like a beacon from pretty much anywhere in the Cosmere? If I remember correctly, Elantris is set earliest in the Cosmere's timeline. Did Raoden somehow find a way to move the Dor into the spiritual realm in order to make the cognitive realm accessible? I don't know, but I think questions like this are ones worth considering.

[Jonathon]

2 hours ago, Paracosmic_nomenclator said:

The final question I have is why can't we see Sel in the Cognitive Realm. When Ruin was over Scadrial, his was visible from pretty much anywhere in the planet's Cognitive Realm, and presumably from the Cognitive Realms of neighboring planets, too. With that in mind, how could the combined investiture of two shards, concentrated fully in the Cognitive Realm, not stand out like a beacon from pretty much anywhere in the Cosmere? If I remember correctly, Elantris is set earliest in the Cosmere's timeline. Did Raoden somehow find a way to move the Dor into the spiritual realm in order to make the cognitive realm accessible? I don't know, but I think questions like this are ones worth considering.

I'm not entirely sure why we can't see Sel in the CR, but I don't think we have enough evidence to figure out why not. I don't believe that Raoden found a way to move the shards out of the CR because according to Kriss at the time that AU was written the CR of Sel was still dangerous to travel through and that takes place after the Elantris books. I actually made the same mistake on another thread  

[The One Who Connects he/him]

4 hours ago, Paracosmic_nomenclator said:

As for the whole, "The Cognitive Realm is a plane" thing, though it seems to be true, I can't really understand how it would work. As any map projection will show you, you can't press the surface of a globe flat without massively distorting at least some parts of it. Further a map has edges which are ultimately arbitrary; there will always be people how traverse the space that forms the edges of a given map. So how does that play into the cognitive realm?

As was explained to me before, if you are using the CR to traverse the planet you are on, the CR is essentially a globe(minus most of the uninhabited areas)
If you are attempting to cross over to another world, then edges "appear,"(because of cognitive perception) allowing you to go into the interplanetary section of the CR.

Have a read. Enjoy the madness and confusion this topic induces.

[+Extesian he/him]

7 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Yeah, that was it. Can you source it?

I've gotten lazy with sourcing, my bad

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1158

 

[Lightspine]

Additional hint that the Sun is related to the Beyond:
(Massive Oathbringer released chapter spoiler)

Spoiler

Kaza the soulcaster feels a pull toward the Shadesmar sun as she starts slipping towards death.

Also, there has been a great amount of discussion on this topic already: (there is also a link in the post i just linked to that has even earlier discussion of the Sun, although the Great Beyond was not mentioned in that one)

I don't think we know enough yet to tell if the Sun is the Beyond, or simply the Spiritual Realm which is closer to the Beyond, so the pulling effect would still be from the Beyond.

[Ari he/him]

13 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

As was explained to me before, if you are using the CR to traverse the planet you are on, the CR is essentially a globe(minus most of the uninhabited areas)
If you are attempting to cross over to another world, then edges "appear,"(because of cognitive perception) allowing you to go into the interplanetary section of the CR.

Have a read. Enjoy the madness and confusion this topic induces.

The cognitive realm is never a globe. It is some sort of mapping of a three-dimensional sphere onto a surface in a three-dimensional plane. (that is, essentially, something like a very large blanket- it still has height/depth, but it has a "top" and a "bottom" that seem to be uniform, the bottom being loosely mapped to things in the Physical realm, and, if those of us who believe the sun in the Cognitive Realm is the Spiritual Realm, the top of the cognitive may have some interaction with it somehow)

Remember, Brandon has given a WoB that something interesting would happen to a Spren (being native to the Cognitive realm that is two-dimensionally mapped to the Physical) that tried to circumnavigate the world. At some point, it would encounter the "edge" of Shadesmar, (that is, Cognitive Roshar as opposed to the entire CR) and might have difficulty moving any farther in that loop around spherical physical space. (he doesn't actually say the Spren would be stuck, he phrases it as a question, so maybe they teleport from one side of the plane in the CR to the other, who knows)

[Pagerunner he/him]

Relevant quote from Secret History, as Kelsier sought out the Ire:

Quote

He'd hoped to have the sun back once Ruin vanished from the sky, but after walking far enough out, he seemed to leave his world behind - and the sun with it. The sky here was nothing but empty blackness.

He's going towards Sel, so the sun he left behind can't be Sel. It looks like each subastral does have their own 'sun,' whatever that means.

[Brightlord M. Alhstrom he/him]

1 minute ago, Pagerunner said:

Relevant quote from Secret History, as Kelsier sought out the Ire:

He's going towards Sel, so the sun he left behind can't be Sel. It looks like each subastral does have their own 'sun,' whatever that means.

I don't think he is going towards Sel. Sel's CR is extremely dangerous, and I'm fairly sure that the IRE's fortress includes pipes to bring the Dor to the fortress, which wouldn't make sense if the fortress was at Sel's CR. However, I agree that Sel isn't the Sun in Secret History, and as for each sub-astral having it's own sun, I'm not sure. It might just mean that places between planets wouldn't see the sun, but once you get back onto a planet, you could see the Sun again. At the same time, that is quite unlikely.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

12 minutes ago, Lord Maelstrom said:

I don't think he is going towards Sel. Sel's CR is extremely dangerous, and I'm fairly sure that the IRE's fortress includes pipes to bring the Dor to the fortress, which wouldn't make sense if the fortress was at Sel's CR. However, I agree that Sel isn't the Sun in Secret History, and as for each sub-astral having it's own sun, I'm not sure. It might just mean that places between planets wouldn't see the sun, but once you get back onto a planet, you could see the Sun again. At the same time, that is quite unlikely.

Well, he isn't going directly towards Sel, but he is going in the direction of Sel, since the Ire's base is linked back to Sel anyway. 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

11 hours ago, Ari said:

Remember, Brandon has given a WoB that something interesting would happen to a Spren (being native to the Cognitive realm that is two-dimensionally mapped to the Physical) that tried to circumnavigate the world.

I've actually never seen this one. You've got me curious about it now.

Yes, it isn't actually a globe, but from the perspective of a person who doesn't understand these advanced shapes and things, it may as well be. You should check out page 2 of the thread I linked, as I get corrected on what "toroidal" actually means.

[+Extesian he/him]

2 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

I've actually never seen this one. You've got me curious about it now.

Yes, it isn't actually a globe, but from the perspective of a person who doesn't understand these advanced shapes and things, it may as well be. You should check out page 2 of the thread I linked, as I get corrected on what "toroidal" actually means.

Here you go

Quote

QUESTION

So you’ve said, moving a spren off world from Roshar is difficult. What about physically, say the Ones Above visit them, and they fly away?

BRANDON SANDERSON

So one of the things you’ll have to be asking questions and theorizing on is what happens if you try to carry a spren around the planet. What happens to their Cognitive sense, right? So you’re on Roshar, right? So on the Physical Realm what would happen--because on Shadesmar, you have a flattened version. So there are questions for you to be theorizing implicit in that. And one of them is, what happens, you cross a threshold circling the globe, your spren, what happens to them? Right? This relates to the question you’re asking.

QUESTION

Wait wait, you have a three dimensional plain coexisting with a two dimensional plain?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Well, two dimensional is the wrong term, but basically

Source

 

[Ari he/him]

9 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Relevant quote from Secret History, as Kelsier sought out the Ire:

He's going towards Sel, so the sun he left behind can't be Sel. It looks like each subastral does have their own 'sun,' whatever that means.

My personal theory is that the "sun" is the cognitive/spiritual equivalent of perpendicularity, (which I assume is a physical/cognitive annex of some sort) that is, it represents the local Shards' power radiating down into the Cognitive Realm, so the "sky" is where the Spiritual Realm's locationless transcendance interacts with the location-based-but-weirdly-compressed Cognitive Realm, with "stars" being locations where Investiture can actually breach between the two in large quantities.

5 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

I've actually never seen this one. You've got me curious about it now.

Yes, it isn't actually a globe, but from the perspective of a person who doesn't understand these advanced shapes and things, it may as well be. You should check out page 2 of the thread I linked, as I get corrected on what "toroidal" actually means.

Yeah, Civ talks about Toroidal maps because it's mapping a two-dimensional rectangle onto a three-dimensional space, and the result therefore is like a toroid, (ie. a doughnut) not a globe, which is why there are so many open questions for us cosmere fans about the fact that spherical planets are essentially mapped into a two-dimensional holographic space on the "ground" in the Cognitive. (we don't know for sure it's rectangular, but that's one option. It could also be a collection of triangles, or of ovoid shapes, and it's possible even that this changes depending on how people map their spherical worlds on paper on each Cosmere planet- so for instance, a seafaring civilisation might have a similar system to earth, where they use a local variant of the Mercator projection, so the areas of their landmasses nearer the poles look much bigger than they actually are, while a spacefaring civilisation might use some sort of tesselation so that satellite images look "the right shape" to them)

That's also ignoring the implications of the fact that the terrain is reversed- ie. bodies of water turn into mountain ranges, and densely populated areas turn into seas of the local representation of cognitive concepts. (in Shadesmar, that's spheres. On Scadrial, it was mist)

In terms of analogies for the cognitive realm, probably the best is imagining it as a giant swimming pool. It has depth, but it is also absolutely "flat" in a fundamental sense of the water only going so high before it stops being a pool, either because you reach the bottom or the top, no matter whether its shape is actually rectangular or not. Think of the top of the swimming pool as the interaction with our realm- it forms a reverse image of the shape of the Physical Realm because the two "flow" around each other.