[All Series Spoilers][Unpublished works] Interlinked theories - Cosmere

RShara · April 24, 2018

Roshar had three full Shards on it for nearly 10,000 years. The way the Shards viewed the cosmere likely influenced how the spren and the people viewed the cosmere. As the people continued to view the cosmere that way, reinforced by worldhoppers stopping by from various directions, the Cognitive Realm as we see it slowly took place.

I view it as a dynamic landscape.

Most of these planets were colonized by the Yolenese. That means they didn't really exist much in the Cognitive Realm until people started living on them. They were quite possibly just a series of small patches of ground in the Cognitive Realm before then, easy to reach. Depending on when each one was settled, who settled it, and how they thought about the cosmere, the Cognitive Realm's geography took place.

Basically, I see it as a natural result of migration patterns and a vague spatial awareness on behalf of the Yolenese or whoever ended up colonizing that planet.

A popular theory that I ascribe to involves Yolen being somewhere in that red blotch of stars on the top right of the chart. It would match with the orientation of the Roshar Shadesmar map if people from Yolen saw the stars in that manner and took that mind-image with them as they migrated around.

Weltall · April 24, 2018

Ixthos, when you're responding to a lot of different points at once, do you think you could quote exactly what you're responding to? I know working with the board software is a bit annoying when it comes to quote tags but it's kind of distracting when there's half a dozen separate things you're responding to and you have to go back to the original post to see all of them and figure out what response goes where. Just a thought to make your responses a bit easier to parse.

Oh, and thank you. Any day that I can discuss Brandon's works is a good day in my book. xD

1 hour ago, Ixthos said:

I think Khriss is making the distinction on origins because it helps explain different behaviours - like a fish and a crab are both sea creatures, but one walks and the other swims, but they both would count as sea food. With spren, what test could you do to determine they are different to a cognitive shadow

There are many many differences between a fish and a crab so I'm not sure that analogy works as well as you're thinking. Yes, both taste good (whatever Brandon may think about seafood, a viewpoint with which I'd passionately disagree xD) but the most immediately obvious physical difference between the two is that one has an intenal skeletal structure and the other an exoskeleton. That's not different behavior, that's radically different biology and they would only be considered subsets of the same category if you go to the broadest possible biological classification (ie, Kingdom Animalia).

Anyhow, the spiritweb of something that began as human and then became a Cognitive Shadow is going to look very different from something that started out as pure Investiture because it started out as human. There's also degrees of difference in how connected they are to the Physical Realm and how they perceive the world. Consider how often Syl or Pattern find something strange about their respective bond partners or the world around them. You could 'test' one pretty easily by talking to it and figure out where it originated. Brandon has some interesting comments on this when discussing how Rithmatist started out as a Cosmere project and the various supernatural entities there were originally going to be from the Spiritual Realm. And how if you were an Arcanist, this is the kind of thing you'd immediately be able to recognize.

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What I mean is that the spikes, by being added in different places, will manifest differently. .

Well, yeah, that's what the bind points are all about. What they're doing is grafting the stolen bit of spiritweb onto the recipient, and there are some places where a given spike will work and others where it won't. For example, either eye and the heart clearly work for A-Steel but there would be other points on the body where they don't work because for whatever reason, the spiritweb from the spike and the spiritweb of the recipient won't integrate properly.

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I think the spikes work in the same manner. After all, four spikes of human strength make a Koloss when placed in the right place, which is more than just a human with five times the strength of an ordinary human - the strength has to have changed somehow when added to them - and one spike with an unknown attribute makes the monsters Bleeder sent.

.What's happening with the koloss and the chimaeras is that the spiritweb has been so distorted from what it's 'supposed' to be that it comes with major changes to the Physical body as well. And in the latter case, something has been spiked into them. The powers that we normally see transfered through hemalurgy don't have the same disruptive effect on the appearance because they aren't changing your spiritweb that much.

Anyhow, we already know that it's using allomantic powers heavily that changes you and Inquisitors generally live longer so they can afford to spend a bit of time flaring steel and getting used to seeing that way before being sent out, so I'm not sure that we need to posit some new mechanism by which the same spike could do slightly different things based on bind point when what we have fits very well.

Edited April 24, 2018 by Weltall

+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine · April 25, 2018

1 hour ago, Ixthos said:

@hoiditthroughthegrapevine I agree with the parts corresponding to the planets, but my main point was the space between planets, which can't be a manifold mapped onto another surface as only the planets are sound, while space is empty, so how do you define which areas stitch together in an environment shaped by belief?

That argument has merritt, but the problem persists - if you track the stars in the night sky from earth, which way would you walk to get to Rigel? Which way to get to Canopus or Sirius or Arcturus? The only one which would make sense would be Polaris. What about the Moon? The planets rotate, so unless the stars are due north or south all the time you can't map them to a single direction.

Had to take a break to pick my daughters up from school.

So, at some point a frame of reference for an Invested Planet has to be established, and for this to be functionally useful, it would have to be established irrespective of the current rotational orientation of the Invested planet and most likely relative to Galactic center. A line drawn from the center of the star in the solar system of the Invested Planet to the galactic center would set the baseline relative framework for the Invested Planet in relation to other stars in the galaxy.

So let's look at a galaxy with 4 stars plotted out in orbit around a galactic center. The dimensional view of the galaxy and 4 orbiting stars is shown below.

CR_GalacticOrbits_FigureA.png.64251c94b5455a618263dbf8a1591b5e.png

So if we look at the top view of this same galaxy, we can see the relative x and z positions of each star in relation to a galactic center and relative to Star A, represented by the dashed lines that are the hypotenuses of these two coordinate vectors.

CR_GalacticOrbits_FigureB.png.a017c75e39c0c42a472fd62033147039.png

So lets say that we were to look at this same galaxy, again from a top view, after Star A has rotated 30°, or rather has completed 1/12 of it's total orbit around the galactic center. The other stars depicted in the galaxy are given their relative proportional rotations.

CR_GalacticOrbits_FigureC.png.768196e4475ef4d123b32a4007965ad8.png

As you can see, the relative distance between Star A and the rest of the stars is approximately the same after the stars experience their partial transit around the galactic center. Further, the Sun takes 200 to 300 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy, so even though the Cosmere is in dwarf galaxy, the relative rotational positions of the star systems around galactic center for the purposes of the timeline of the Cosmere can be taken as essentially fixed.

So the answer to the question which way would you walk to Rigel becomes, I would walk to Rigel relative to the position of the center of the Sun in relation to both the galactic center of the milky way and to the center of the star Rigel.

So the thing that is probably tripping you up is the rotation of the planet. So the Cognitive Realm is a projection of a 3 Dimensional surface onto a 2 dimensional topology. Here is how I picture the topological projection of the 3-dimensional surface of Roshar to the essentially 2 dimensional reality of Shademar being accomplished.

Roshar_Unwrapped.jpg.50675ff04a818b8ef14e65e26c15b7f5.jpg

To achieve this the planet of roshar was divided up into octants, and then unwrapped like a soccer ball cut up. You can see that the 4 corners where the Expanses are on the Shadesmar map roughly correlate to regions that are all water and would therefore be shrunken in dimension in the cognitive realm. These areas of diminshed cognitive presence would most likely become attenuated towards another cognitive density. Here is a view of the Star A's cognitive realm, flattened and attenuated towards the other stars in figures A through C:

CR_GalacticOrbits_FigureD.png.4cfb1c837aea134743bd39f9b4d21211.png

I see this as a plausible explanation, but there is another possible explanation which might be even simpler. Namely that the rotation of the planet doesn't affect the Cognitive Realm at all, only relative positions of different planets in relation to the Galactic center determine position and orientation in the Cognitive Realm.

Ixthos · April 26, 2018

On 4/25/2018 at 0:01 AM, RShara said:

Roshar had three full Shards on it for nearly 10,000 years. The way the Shards viewed the cosmere likely influenced how the spren and the people viewed the cosmere. As the people continued to view the cosmere that way, reinforced by worldhoppers stopping by from various directions, the Cognitive Realm as we see it slowly took place.

I view it as a dynamic landscape.

Most of these planets were colonized by the Yolenese. That means they didn't really exist much in the Cognitive Realm until people started living on them. They were quite possibly just a series of small patches of ground in the Cognitive Realm before then, easy to reach. Depending on when each one was settled, who settled it, and how they thought about the cosmere, the Cognitive Realm's geography took place.

Basically, I see it as a natural result of migration patterns and a vague spatial awareness on behalf of the Yolenese or whoever ended up colonizing that planet.

A popular theory that I ascribe to involves Yolen being somewhere in that red blotch of stars on the top right of the chart. It would match with the orientation of the Roshar Shadesmar map if people from Yolen saw the stars in that manner and took that mind-image with them as they migrated around.

Just to clear up a point, has it been confirmed that most of the worlds are human, and that maybe there isn't another species present which is more numerous, either from within the cluster or from outside it? I know it is mostly irrelevant to the current discussion, but your observation about most planets with life being colonised by humans from Yolen interested me.

To be clear, your take is that Roshar is the closest system to the four others and not just appearing to be close, and so the mapping is that of any worlds close together physically, whether the star is visible or not to their neighbours, will result in the two being close in the Cognitive realm? I do see the logic of this argument, especially if the Cosmere is very small, but I don't think it fully explains the relationships, including the reason for the orientation of the paths relative to the geography of Roshar. Either way, I do like your idea. Could you clear up what you mean with the orientation of the maps with the Red rip? My own theory is that the Red rip is either the origins of Fain life, or something that fain life is fleeing from, so it would make sense for Yolen to be there. I still think my theory on the reasons for the paths is correct, with the vantage being from Yolen, but I wouldn't be surprised if you are right :-)

On 4/25/2018 at 0:24 AM, Weltall said:

Ixthos, when you're responding to a lot of different points at once, do you think you could quote exactly what you're responding to? I know working with the board software is a bit annoying when it comes to quote tags but it's kind of distracting when there's half a dozen separate things you're responding to and you have to go back to the original post to see all of them and figure out what response goes where. Just a thought to make your responses a bit easier to parse.

Oh, and thank you. Any day that I can discuss Brandon's works is a good day in my book. xD

@Weltall Sorry about that - I'll try to remember to use the quote function more frequently, as I hope this post shows. And you are welcome :-)

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There are many many differences between a fish and a crab so I'm not sure that analogy works as well as you're thinking. Yes, both taste good (whatever Brandon may think about seafood, a viewpoint with which I'd passionately disagree xD) but the most immediately obvious physical difference between the two is that one has an intenal skeletal structure and the other an exoskeleton. That's not different behavior, that's radically different biology and they would only be considered subsets of the same category if you go to the broadest possible biological classification (ie, Kingdom Animalia).

Anyhow, the spiritweb of something that began as human and then became a Cognitive Shadow is going to look very different from something that started out as pure Investiture because it started out as human. There's also degrees of difference in how connected they are to the Physical Realm and how they perceive the world. Consider how often Syl or Pattern find something strange about their respective bond partners or the world around them. You could 'test' one pretty easily by talking to it and figure out where it originated. Brandon has some interesting comments on this when discussing how Rithmatist started out as a Cosmere project and the various supernatural entities there were originally going to be from the Spiritual Realm. And how if you were an Arcanist, this is the kind of thing you'd immediately be able to recognize.

I know that, and I did think it was a weak comparison, but my main point was they are different things which live in the same environment and which while clearly different still are seafood, and could both go with the same side dish or sauce like tartar sauce, with tartar source being a shard :-P Perhaps another creature would have been a better comparison, but you also make my point that Cognitive shadows have more in common with spren then crabs do with fish. Either way, you agree that a Cognitive shadow has more in common with a spren than a Greatshell, for example. A True spren is very different from a lesser spren, a Threnody shade is more like a lesser spren than a Cognitive shadow like Kelsier or the Fused, and even among True spren, an Inkspren and a Honourspren are very different, just like an Honourspren and a Cryptic. Yet can we agree a True spren and Kelsier would be virtually identical if you could only talk to them and not see them, and True spren have more capability to choose than a lesser spren (with Silences Grandmother being an exception if you agree a lesser spren and a Threnody shade are similar) while an animal and a person would have the same relationship. Basically, as far as the mind goes, a True spren and a Cognitive shadow and a human or Kandra or any other intelligent species are virtually identical, with at least one of these groups able to become a member of another. If a spren were somehow to take control of a human body with no mind, live in that body as though it were its own, would you agree it would be basically identical, possibly able to take up a shard then? Kelsier needed connection to do it, and Ruin noted his lack of a body weakened his hold, but other than a mind, other than being able to choose, and being connected to a shard, does anything else matter? Syl and Pattern see the world differently, true, but so do people from different walks of life. If - in theory - a dragon and a Sho Del could take up a shard, and their minds are likely different to humans, why not a spren? If a spren lived a lifetime in a body, eventually saw the physical world as normal and real, would that make a difference to how they see the world? Kelsier as a splinter was able to take up a shard, becoming a sliver true, but as a spinter he could take up a shard. Is the only thing that mattered was his perception of the physical world as more real than the cognitive, when a shard exists even less in one realm than a non-shard?

In short, what do you think something or someone needs to be able to take up a shard?

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Well, yeah, that's what the bind points are all about. What they're doing is grafting the stolen bit of spiritweb onto the recipient, and there are some places where a given spike will work and others where it won't. For example, either eye and the heart clearly work for A-Steel but there would be other points on the body where they don't work because for whatever reason, the spiritweb from the spike and the spiritweb of the recipient won't integrate properly.

.What's happening with the koloss and the chimaeras is that the spiritweb has been so distorted from what it's 'supposed' to be that it comes with major changes to the Physical body as well. And in the latter case, something has been spiked into them. The powers that we normally see transfered through hemalurgy don't have the same disruptive effect on the appearance because they aren't changing your spiritweb that much.

Anyhow, we already know that it's using allomantic powers heavily that changes you and Inquisitors generally live longer so they can afford to spend a bit of time flaring steel and getting used to seeing that way before being sent out, so I'm not sure that we need to posit some new mechanism by which the same spike could do slightly different things based on bind point when what we have fits very well.

Agreed, but I am extending the argument further, that due to perception or fact the parts of the spirit web that correspond to the eye are in that area, and that binding allomantic steel to that area makes the spirit web use allomantic steel not just for pushing, but for seeing - the web thus re purposes the power to do more than it originally had - after all, an allomancer can't see the lines behind them, unless I am mistaken, and neither can an inquisitor. Were there any scenes where Vin or Kelsier or Wax close their eyes and could still see the lines? I can't remember, but if so, then an inquisitor would be blind unless the spike specifically took over sight.

With Koloss and Chimaeras though we can agree that something being added caused a massive change probably outside of the normal nature of those properties. A Koloss might be bigger and taller, which could be argued to be a function of being made stronger, or the property of strength is also linked to increased mass, but their skin also turns blue. With the Chimaeras we don't know what was added, true, and it might be the spike somehow adds several things, or something was also spikes out of them as well, but unless it was the full traits of some creature they are heavily warped. My main points though are on inquisitors gaining sight with less power than Elend had, and Koloss skin colour.

Marsh didn't have enough time to become a Savant, though - Spook took a long time, but Marsh could see in short order, and seemed to use it naturally. I'm not saying that a spike for steel would let you posh an object sideways if placed in the right spot (though I think an alloy being burnt might), or that a spike for emotional allomancy would let you hear thoughts, but I am suggesting that the power could be modified slightly not in the spike itself, but in how it is used.

On 4/25/2018 at 2:25 AM, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

Had to take a break to pick my daughters up from school.

So, at some point a frame of reference for an Invested Planet has to be established, and for this to be functionally useful, it would have to be established irrespective of the current rotational orientation of the Invested planet and most likely relative to Galactic center. A line drawn from the center of the star in the solar system of the Invested Planet to the galactic center would set the baseline relative framework for the Invested Planet in relation to other stars in the galaxy.

So let's look at a galaxy with 4 stars plotted out in orbit around a galactic center. The dimensional view of the galaxy and 4 orbiting stars is shown below.

So if we look at the top view of this same galaxy, we can see the relative x and z positions of each star in relation to a galactic center and relative to Star A, represented by the dashed lines that are the hypotenuses of these two coordinate vectors.

So lets say that we were to look at this same galaxy, again from a top view, after Star A has rotated 30°, or rather has completed 1/12 of it's total orbit around the galactic center. The other stars depicted in the galaxy are given their relative proportional rotations.

As you can see, the relative distance between Star A and the rest of the stars is approximately the same after the stars experience their partial transit around the galactic center. Further, the Sun takes 200 to 300 million years to orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy, so even though the Cosmere is in dwarf galaxy, the relative rotational positions of the star systems around galactic center for the purposes of the timeline of the Cosmere can be taken as essentially fixed.

So the answer to the question which way would you walk to Rigel becomes, I would walk to Rigel relative to the position of the center of the Sun in relation to both the galactic center of the milky way and to the center of the star Rigel.

So the thing that is probably tripping you up is the rotation of the planet. So the Cognitive Realm is a projection of a 3 Dimensional surface onto a 2 dimensional topology. Here is how I picture the topological projection of the 3-dimensional surface of Roshar to the essentially 2 dimensional reality of Shademar being accomplished.

To achieve this the planet of roshar was divided up into octants, and then unwrapped like a soccer ball cut up. You can see that the 4 corners where the Expanses are on the Shadesmar map roughly correlate to regions that are all water and would therefore be shrunken in dimension in the cognitive realm. These areas of diminshed cognitive presence would most likely become attenuated towards another cognitive density. Here is a view of the Star A's cognitive realm, flattened and attenuated towards the other stars in figures A through C:

I see this as a plausible explanation, but there is another possible explanation which might be even simpler. Namely that the rotation of the planet doesn't affect the Cognitive Realm at all, only relative positions of different planets in relation to the Galactic center determine position and orientation in the Cognitive Realm.

First off, I like your diagrams, and they are similar to an idea for a form of travel in some stories I am writing. I think diagrams are always helpful for explaining, so thank you for the effort you put in, and the thought!

My main disagreement, though, is that while I would agree you could use the direction the sun or star has to its neighbours, the planets move around the sun, and the sun itself doesn't have an expanse associated with the other stars, or at least we haven't been shown one. Rigel moves in a circle around the earth from our perspective, so while in the scale of human civilisation it remains fixed relative to the sun, relative to us it moves in a circle, and so we would first have to move to the sun before moving towards it.

I think your last diagram is very accurate and describes Shadesmar well. I just disagree with the argument that the expanses can then be maps to it based on the orientation of the stars to the Rosharan sun. Let us take Taldain for example. Like the Rigel example, at different times during the night it would appear to be at different sides, rising in the east like the sun and setting in the west. Later in the year you might even see it earlier in the night than you did at first, and eventually you wouldn't see it at all, because as Roshar orbits its own sun it would only be seen above the planet during the day, when it would be overshadowed by the light of their sun.

RShara · April 26, 2018

16 minutes ago, Ixthos said:

Just to clear up a point, has it been confirmed that most of the worlds are human, and that maybe there isn't another species present which is more numerous, either from within the cluster or from outside it? I know it is mostly irrelevant to the current discussion, but your observation about most planets with life being colonised by humans from Yolen interested me.

To be clear, your take is that Roshar is the closest system to the four others and not just appearing to be close, and so the mapping is that of any worlds close together physically, whether the star is visible or not to their neighbours, will result in the two being close in the Cognitive realm? I do see the logic of this argument, especially if the Cosmere is very small, but I don't think it fully explains the relationships, including the reason for the orientation of the paths relative to the geography of Roshar. Either way, I do like your idea. Could you clear up what you mean with the orientation of the maps with the Red rip? My own theory is that the Red rip is either the origins of Fain life, or something that fain life is fleeing from, so it would make sense for Yolen to be there. I still think my theory on the reasons for the paths is correct, with the vantage being from Yolen, but I wouldn't be surprised if you are right :-)

I think I said "people" rather than "humans," actually People referring to any sapient beings, human, humanoid, or something completely different. We know there were at least 3 forms of sapient life on Yolen (humans, dragons, sho del), so any of them would count as people.

So if you're standing on a planet in the red rift, looking over the rest of the cosmere. You'll see Roshar's star in the sky. You would see the other stars in the appropriate proximity to Roshar, with Taldain to the right and top, etc etc. And that influenced how the Cognitive Realm shaped up. This is just flat out guessing and making several assumptions, though, so *shrug* I'm not married to it lol.

Ixthos · April 26, 2018

@RShara Fair enough on people :-) Your argument makes sense, though I will agree to disagree ;-)

RShara · April 26, 2018

Okay lol

+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine · April 27, 2018

11 hours ago, Ixthos said:

My main disagreement, though, is that while I would agree you could use the direction the sun or star has to its neighbours, the planets move around the sun, and the sun itself doesn't have an expanse associated with the other stars, or at least we haven't been shown one. Rigel moves in a circle around the earth from our perspective, so while in the scale of human civilisation it remains fixed relative to the sun, relative to us it moves in a circle, and so we would first have to move to the sun before moving towards it.

I think your last diagram is very accurate and describes Shadesmar well. I just disagree with the argument that the expanses can then be maps to it based on the orientation of the stars to the Rosharan sun. Let us take Taldain for example. Like the Rigel example, at different times during the night it would appear to be at different sides, rising in the east like the sun and setting in the west. Later in the year you might even see it earlier in the night than you did at first, and eventually you wouldn't see it at all, because as Roshar orbits its own sun it would only be seen above the planet during the day, when it would be overshadowed by the light of their sun.

So I understand your problem with this, but this comes down to frames of reference and the nature of the Cognitive Realm. So, as a thought experiment, picture yourself standing on a merry-go-round that is revolving at a set rate with cardinal directions demarcated on the disc of the merry go round. Now imagine that the merry-go-round you are revolving on is itself on another larger merry-go-round, also revolving about its center and also demarcated with it's own cardinal directions. And further, picture that this larger merry-go-round is itself on another larger merry-go-round which likewise has cardinal directions demarcated on it's surface. You would end up with something like this, you would be standing on A, which would be on B, which would in turn be on C:

SpinningReferenceFrames.gif.f9b5d25293eb1aab8f19a955cdc92fa2.gif

Now say you are traveling NE on your merry-go-round. This would be relative to your current positional framework, namely the cardinal directions on the surface of disc A. Now when you get to the edge of your merry-go-round, you leave the relative positional framework of A and are now subject to the relative positional framework of B merry-go-round. So, you continue to travel NE, but this time the NE you are traveling corresponds to the NE of framework B. Eventually you will reach the edge of merry-go-round B and will enter the relative positional framework of C. If you continue traveling NE, your NE direction will be within the Positional framework of merry-go-round C.

In this analogy, merry-go-round A is a 2-dimensional projected surface of the Cognitive Realm of Roshar, merry-go-round B is the 2-dimensional projection of the Rosharan Solar System, and merry-go-round C is the 2 dimensional projection of the whole cosmere.

Here is an animation of how this switching between frames of reference would be working (spoilered so that it's not too distracting):

Spoiler

Shadesmar_RelativeReferenceFrames_Animated.gif.2e7602bf5a7953872aab88701bab3a58.gif

While on merry-go-round A, you travel NE across it's surface. Merry-go-round A continues to spin, and by the time you exit merry-go-round A you are apparently heading due W in regards to merry-go-round B, but what really happens is that the new larger positional framework of merry-go-round B becomes the new positional framework, and you head NE relative to the cardinal coordinates of merry-go-round B. The same thing happens when you reach the limits of merry-go-round B, Merry-go-round C's relative positional framework would be your current relative framework.

Another point to consider about the cognitive realm is that in areas that lack cognitive activity the realm itself shrinks along both the N/S and E/W dimensions, effectively turning areas of transit in the vacuum of space into straight line journeys. This is what I meant before by saying that the space gets attenuated. The X and Y dimensions both shrink, effectively making a cone that at it's most extreme attenuation would become a singular line. This is most likely why you can only travel to 4 sub-astrals from Shadesmar, because the more proximate subastrals would have to be passed through before reaching more distant sub-astrals.

Edited April 27, 2018 by hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Ixthos · April 29, 2018

@hoiditthroughthegrapevine I like this analogy! As you were explaining it I was thinking about how the quadrant you end up in on the larger reference frame would be determined by when you got off of your initial one, but you answered that during. This helps explain it rather well. Ta :-)

I think it might be a little more complex than you are proposing, though I also agree with the nature of the attenuation, as I think the material and particles which are not directly observed or not distinct enough from one another exist as a single whole representing the vastness of the space away from other life, as everything reflects on the Cognitive and Spiritual realms - each atom has a shared identity with its neighbours as part of the unvisited areas, and only becomes distinct once thought of as distinct. With the paths, those areas might be travelled through in the Cognitive might be seen as more distinct in the Cognitive realm as well, so it would be interesting to see how a system which lies directly between two star systems that are inhabited but is itself not - would the traffic of those in the Cognitive realm mean it might begin to be noticed, or would it remain like those areas which no-one sees or knows about, and no-one travels near?

I think the added complexity would be in that the frames of reference are not all in the same plane, so it might well be that for a few you would exit one and enter its parent at a higher or lower elevation like the rings of a gyroscope which have been pushed into different planes. I also wonder about where the barrier is - if you had some friends with you and you exit from one frame of reference into another while they remained behind, and then wait at the boarder, would your friends seem to be moving away over time, or would they remain fixed, even though the reference frame they are in is moving relative to yours? Or would it be a more gradual change from one area to another, so that the further you walk the more in the other reference frame you would be? From what we have seen, when the Cognitive realm interacts with the physical it is far more distinct - unless something is in both realms like Leras's knife, it seems that something either is in one realm or the other, or you are in one area or another - speed bubbles being an example, being either completely in or completely out - though the mists seems exempt, as do windspren, though again it could well be they are exactly half way between, or more one side than another.

[Edit: fixed a sentence]

Edited April 29, 2018 by Ixthos
Fixed a sentence

+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine · April 30, 2018

On 4/29/2018 at 9:44 AM, Ixthos said:

would the traffic of those in the Cognitive realm mean it might begin to be noticed, or would it remain like those areas which no-one sees or knows about, and no-one travels near?

You're not gonna find the full landscape of the moon until people start visiting it. And it's gonna grow on Shadesmar.

source

On 4/29/2018 at 9:44 AM, Ixthos said:

I also wonder about where the barrier is - if you had some friends with you and you exit from one frame of reference into another while they remained behind, and then wait at the boarder, would your friends seem to be moving away over time, or would they remain fixed, even though the reference frame they are in is moving relative to yours? Or would it be a more gradual change from one area to another, so that the further you walk the more in the other reference frame you would be?

The analogy above about the nested rotational frames of reference was just one possible way that a direction in the CR could correspond to a larger reference frame (i.e. you travel NE in shadesmar and when you reach the boundary of Roshar's CR you will begin transiting through the expanse of the Broken Sky).

While this might be the mechanism that accomplishes this, I think it's far more likely that the relative positions of points of travel to neighboring sub-astrals is simply set at the point in Roshar's daily rotation when center point of the unfolded topology of the surface of the planet would be pointing directly at the Galactic center point. This is a simpler explanation and also the primary evidence of Kelsier's journey through the outer boundaries of the Scadrian sub-astral make no mention of the sea of glass and the foliage growing on it shifting or rotating in any way. Also obsidian, and glass like seems like a material that is not meant for motion, but is rather meant to be static and fixed in position (which is one of the nice inversions for turning fluid seas and bodies of water into stationary bodies).

One other thing to think about which is pretty interesting I think, is what Shadesmar might look like from a great vertical distance. We know that Kaladin and the Fused can use their surges of Gravitation to fly in the Rosharan CR, what if they lashed themselves up and continued up for a couple of miles? Would they see that this CR topology has a definitive 3 dimensional surface shape (i.e. is the CR really a shaped like a torus? Or like Arthur Dent's coffee cup?) There are quite a few different ways that you can construct a continuous topology, but if the speculation is true that when a traveler through Shadesmar reaches the edge of the Shadesmar map that corresponds to one of the expanses, but doesn't intend to travel to another sub-astral, they would simply circumnavigate the Rosharan sub-astral, then maybe trying to figure out the specific shape and configuration for the Cognitive Realm is not even possible, because it's an abstraction where the Intent of the traveler matters as much as the perceived topography.

Edited April 30, 2018 by hoiditthroughthegrapevine

Ixthos · May 1, 2018

@hoiditthroughthegrapevine I agree at least multi-cellular life would make sense, though at another point, in that quote Brandon said that an area which had been scoured of all life, including bacteria, would start to fade, so it might be that life itself is the determining factor, and that intelligent life has a larger impact but a simple bacterium is enough life to sustain an area, if not put it on the map - what becomes more interesting is how bacteria will manifest in the realm when people learn about them - will only bacteria which people know are present or have actively observed show up, or is knowing they are present enough to make an effect?

I originally thought that the reason the planets become so crystal and stone like as Kelsier travelled was because he was approaching Sel, as Sel seems to have an association with stone, just as the planets by Scadrial had mist - but him still being in Scadrial makes that less likely, though he might have been in Scadrial's subastral but on the line to Sel.

I agree it would be cool to see the cognitive realm from a higher elevation - it seems so strange that everything in the physical world, no matter if it is on land or the sea, is mapped to the surface. I personally think that the Cognitive realm has a non-euclidean geometry that is warped by perception and belief so that some areas are hyperbolic while others are spherical, and others flat, though all areas seem flat locally, which might actually go towards supporting your merry-go-round approach, with the areas where they touch the area around the star being smaller than the area of the planet. I personally think that eventually ships will use the Cognitive realm to travel, and so Windrunners and Skybreakers and Fused exploring the upper areas of Shadesmar had better make sure they don't get hit by low flying space ships ;-) I actually am interested to see how this goes - maybe we will see them exploring the edges like you suggest. That would be cool!

Just to let those who are interested know, I will later on next week be going through the first post and updating it piecemeal, and adding new topics with links to it outlining further thoughts on the theories and observations, and explaining the theories better. I hope everyone is well and takes care!

[All Series Spoilers][Unpublished works] Interlinked theories - Cosmere

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