Therory: Where he is and why she can do things

[FeltWillSaveUs]

I have had a therory brewing for a while, and I just finished a reread of oathbringer with a big dose of confirmation bias. So, I want to throw it out to you guys. Maybe see if anyone has seen more connections. Or, maybe this therory has already been worked over?

 

Spoiler

First my evidence:

Lift perches on a window sill during a meeting, and mistborn like to perch. 

Lift has a huge toolkit of thieving tricks. Tailing people, swapping fake gem stones etc.

Lift is working with a crew when you first meet her

Lift exists partially in the cognitive realm, that's why she can touch her spren

Lift makes a comment about small people are good at getting into places they shouldn't be

When you first meet lift she is in the bronze palace, which is the alomantic metal to detect a mistborn

Lift "burns" food for stormlight

At the end of oathbringer, lift appears next to dalinar and asks "what's the plan". Just like when Kel asks preservation the same thing.

Lift asked for the power to stay the same while the world changes around her. Which could be interpreted as the power of preservation and ruin

The stormfather says that "she goes to far" in what the night watcher or cultivation did to lift. (Perhaps joining a soul made of preservation and ruin)

Kelsier needs a physical body to attach too. Perhaps he went to the perpendicularity on Roshar and cut a deal.

So, my therory is that lift and Kelsier are attached by the old magic. Cultivation could do this like splicing a plant together. Kel was looking for a way to be attached to Roshar, and lift and for the power of preservation and ruin. That grants the ability for Kel to influence Lift sometimes and grant her wierd abilities.

 

What do you guys think?

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard!

Kelsier was running around Scadrial's Physical Realm a decade or so after the Catacendre, which is to say close to three centuries before Lift was born. That alone knocks away a major bit of your theory. We also have Word of Brandon that the weirdness around Lift is due to her going to the Old Magic and asking it for something it wasn't sure how to interpret so it gave her something weird in return. Most of the rest is just a coincidence owing to two characters being in similar professions.

[FeltWillSaveUs]

Thanks! It has been a while since I have been active on any forum, feels good to be somewhere haha.

I should have referenced that quote from Sanderson, I think his comments fit well with the therory. Typically, the old magic does something physical, but the request wasn't physical.  So, the wierd request was to not change (preservation), but have the world change around her (ruin).

As for Kel, we know he is still with us. We just don't know exactly what he has been doing for those 300 years.

[Ambitions Avatar]

I think this is interesting @FeltWillSaveUs and the evidence is somewhat compelling. I think that I would need another book with Lift's POV before anything becomes clear though. One thing is for sure that her backstory is mysterious as is her trip to the valley. I do think that since there is so much crossover with Nathis, it seems like there should be at least one significant crossover with Scadrial on the same level.

[RShara]

On 9/12/2018 at 8:38 AM, FeltWillSaveUs said:

I have had a therory brewing for a while, and I just finished a reread of oathbringer with a big dose of confirmation bias. So, I want to throw it out to you guys. Maybe see if anyone has seen more connections. Or, maybe this therory has already been worked over?

 

  Hide contents

First my evidence:

Lift perches on a window sill during a meeting, and mistborn like to perch. 

Lift has a huge toolkit of thieving tricks. Tailing people, swapping fake gem stones etc.

Lift is working with a crew when you first meet her

Lift exists partially in the cognitive realm, that's why she can touch her spren

Lift makes a comment about small people are good at getting into places they shouldn't be

When you first meet lift she is in the bronze palace, which is the alomantic metal to detect a mistborn

Lift "burns" food for stormlight

At the end of oathbringer, lift appears next to dalinar and asks "what's the plan". Just like when Kel asks preservation the same thing.

Lift asked for the power to stay the same while the world changes around her. Which could be interpreted as the power of preservation and ruin

The stormfather says that "she goes to far" in what the night watcher or cultivation did to lift. (Perhaps joining a soul made of preservation and ruin)

Kelsier needs a physical body to attach too. Perhaps he went to the perpendicularity on Roshar and cut a deal.

So, my therory is that lift and Kelsier are attached by the old magic. Cultivation could do this like splicing a plant together. Kel was looking for a way to be attached to Roshar, and lift and for the power of preservation and ruin. That grants the ability for Kel to influence Lift sometimes and grant her wierd abilities.

 

What do you guys think?

Lift is actually changing. She's growing up physically and mentally. So she's not being "preserved" in that sense.

Kelsier is a Cognitive Shadow, so he would have a really hard time leaving Scadrial. Kelsier's also a busybody and a meddler, and can't help but make a big splash. Plus his hatred of nobility, and the strict lighteye/darkeye caste system on Roshar would definitely tick him off. There's no way he would be able to have been on Roshar and not....done things. Visible things.

The greater cosmere is still supposed to be mostly in the background for Stormlight. Having a character from another series influencing a (eventually) major character would really mess that up. You'd end up needing to read Mistborn all the way through Secret History to know who this entity is, which is something Brandon does not want to happen yet.

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, RShara said:

You'd end up needing to read Mistborn all the way through Secret History to know who this entity is, which is something Brandon does not want to happen yet.

This. 

And before you say that he's already done this with Warbreaker, that's because the characters present from that book, at least with Vasher and Nightblood, originated in his writing SA, and he wrote Warbreaker as a prequel exploring their backstory. It's an exception to the rule, and per Brandon 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

How connected is Stormlight to the Warbreaker books?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Pretty connected. Yeah, a lot of them...so, when I wrote Warbreaker, I actually had already written the first book Way of Kings, in Stormlight, and I was writing Warbreaker as kind of a prequel to it, but then they came out in reverse order. But they are very...they are the most connected of the Cosmere books right now.

source

 

Edited September 13, 2018 by Calderis

[RShara]

And also those characters are not main characters by any means.

[FeltWillSaveUs]

On 9/13/2018 at 11:22 AM, RShara said:

Lift is actually changing. She's growing up physically and mentally. So she's not being "preserved" in that sense.

Kelsier is a Cognitive Shadow, so he would have a really hard time leaving Scadrial. Kelsier's also a busybody and a meddler, and can't help but make a big splash. Plus his hatred of nobility, and the strict lighteye/darkeye caste system on Roshar would definitely tick him off. There's no way he would be able to have been on Roshar and not....done things. Visible things.

The greater cosmere is still supposed to be mostly in the background for Stormlight. Having a character from another series influencing a (eventually) major character would really mess that up. You'd end up needing to read Mistborn all the way through Secret History to know who this entity is, which is something Brandon does not want to happen yet.

Thanks for hearing me out! You make some good points. 

Lift is changing because she didn't get the boon she wanted. She asked to stay the same, but instead got a little piece of preservation. 

I imagine Kel came through shardsmar with demoux. I mean demoux has to have a few spikes to be living still. Kel would have had to stay at the perpendicularity though. Then, when lift came along he got a chance to move around Roshar.

I get the light eyes point,but I think he is more concerned about secrets now. And think of all the different ways that cognitive shadows can get into neq bodies or get their old bodies back on Roshar. That would be the most interesting thing to Kel right now.

I am not a writer, so I can't comment on the last point. I think that can be handled other ways.

[Calderis]

The Sovereign appeared in southern Scadrial within a decade of the Catacendre. He's had a body for a couple hundred years more than Lift has been alive. 

[FeltWillSaveUs]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

The Sovereign appeared in southern Scadrial within a decade of the Catacendre. He's had a body for a couple hundred years more than Lift has been alive. 

True true, that is a hard one to get around. But that was likely someone or something that was spiked right? Not nessessary a body for Kel. He could be looking for other secrets still.

[Calderis]

16 minutes ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

True true, that is a hard one to get around. But that was likely someone or something that was spiked right? Not nessessary a body for Kel. He could be looking for other secrets still.

The Sovereign is Kelsier. That is him in a body, and the person who made the memory that Wax taps at the end of BoM. 

Quote

Questioner

In Bands of Mourning, we learned that the Sovereign, who they confused as being the Lord Ruler, came after the Catacendre. [He] was their god, was their king and god. And then Kelsier looking for a string. Is the spike somehow connecting Kelsier's soul to Spook's body.

Brandon Sanderson

No, good question. It is connecting his soul with his body, his current body, but it is not Spook's body. That's a great theory.

source

The spike in his eye connects the soul to his current body. 

[RShara]

4 hours ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

Thanks for hearing me out! You make some good points. 

Lift is changing because she didn't get the boon she wanted. She asked to stay the same, but instead got a little piece of preservation. 

I imagine Kel came through shardsmar with demoux. I mean demoux has to have a few spikes to be living still. Kel would have had to stay at the perpendicularity though. Then, when lift came along he got a chance to move around Roshar.

I get the light eyes point,but I think he is more concerned about secrets now. And think of all the different ways that cognitive shadows can get into neq bodies or get their old bodies back on Roshar. That would be the most interesting thing to Kel right now.

I am not a writer, so I can't comment on the last point. I think that can be handled other ways.

I don't see how the bolded statement fits together. If she's not staying the same, then where does Preservation factor in? And how would Cultivation give her a piece of Preservation?

There are a number of ways Demoux can still be around without spikes. Time dialation, medallions, unkeyed metalminds, Breath, etc.

Kelsier already has a body. I'm not sure what your point is here.

And yeah, you're skipping over Kelsier's need to meddle, the caste situation on Roshar, and Brandon saying he doesn't want the greater Cosmere to be a factor for Stormlight Archive.

[FeltWillSaveUs]

I appreciate all the words of Sanderson, because I really only read the books. I haven't read all of the Sanderson quotes. They give me more to think about.

In regards to the theory, Lift isn't being preserved at all, as we can tell because she is growing. Rather she was joined to an entity that is made from preservation and ruin. So, she wasn't granted what she asked for, but given the raw powers she described to the night watcher/cultivation. 

"I want to stay the same" =preservation

"I want to see the world change around me"= ruin 

How can the night watcher or cultivation grant such a request? Cultivation is about growth, it is outside of the shards ability to keep things the same. Unless there happens to be a cognitive shadow that is made up of those powers. Perhaps one that is looking to be tied to roshar for a while to learn secrets and get into trouble. And lift is getting into plenty of trouble!

 

 

Edited September 17, 2018 by FeltWillSaveUs
Added "same"

[RShara]

1 hour ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

How can the night watcher or cultivation grant such a request? Cultivation is about growth, it is outside of the shards ability to keep things the same. Unless there happens to be a cognitive shadow that is made up of those powers. Perhaps one that is looking to be tied to roshar for a while to learn secrets and get into trouble. And lift is getting into plenty of trouble!

The point being, she didn't give any of that to Lift.

[FeltWillSaveUs]

2 hours ago, RShara said:

The point being, she didn't give any of that to Lift.

Haha ok, I can see that you aren't convinced.

 

4 hours ago, RShara said:

And yeah, you're skipping over Kelsier's need to meddle, the caste situation on Roshar, and Brandon saying he doesn't want the greater Cosmere to be a factor for Stormlight Archive.

I think Kel would still be bothered a little bit by the caste system on Roshar, but he would have grown in 300 years. Not to mention he was the God of the southern scadrians. So, he got a taste of being on top, he might not be so consumed by that any more. We had elements of him getting over that prejudice already.

I think Kelsier is meddling! Just by being involved with Lift and teaching her things she shouldn't know. Like how she pops into dalinar's visions.  

There are lots of world hoppers on Roshar, plenty of them are making a big splash. That is a very broad comment that is difficult too argue what it does or doesn't mean.

[Scion of the Mists]

14 hours ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

I think Kelsier is meddling! Just by being involved with Lift and teaching her things she shouldn't know.

If Kelsier and Lift were bonded, don't you think she would have mentioned him during Edgedancer?  

[RShara]

4 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

If Kelsier and Lift were bonded, don't you think she would have mentioned him during Edgedancer?  

Good point. We get an entire novella from Lift's PoV and no mention of anything like that.

[+Child of Hodor]

5 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

If Kelsier and Lift were bonded, don't you think she would have mentioned him during Edgedancer?  

I can see where someone would make a connection to Kelsier or Vin. Lift has some mannerisms that remind me of Vin, how she sits on the back of a couch in OB with her feet on a cushion. She's also short and scrawny due to malnourishment like Vin. I think that is because they are both orphaned street urchin thieves, not because they are literally sharing the same soul/body.

This theory is wild! Me walking into this thread: 

[Yata]

Yeah for Lift to be bonded with Kel doesn't make sense to start with.

But if we want to push for evidence aganist.

Nobody between Lift herself, Wyndle (someone junctioned to her soul), the Stormfather (who realized in a moment the ties she has with the Old magic), Rock (able to see always cognitive entities) seems to notice this foreign ghost attached to her.

Notice also that Kelsier is a sociopath murder while Lift is a pacifist who isn't even able to gave an edge to her blade.

Last, Kelsier as CS is something composed at 100% of Preservation. No Ruin investiture in him... It's not really relevant but just to clarify

Edited September 21, 2018 by Yata

[Scion of the Mists]

We also have a hot off the press WoB report from @RShara that Kelsier has not yet figured out a way to leave Scadrial.  

[RShara]

Yep, here it is:

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Has Kelsier done any worldhopping?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Kelsier is bound to Scadrial the same way that a spren is bound to Roshar, because of the level of Investiture and the type and the way it happened. It is possible to get offworld but he does not know what it is.

source

 

Edited September 21, 2018 by RShara

[FeltWillSaveUs]

Everyone makes some good points! I'm just happy to have a place where I can talk about the cosmere!

On 9/18/2018 at 11:25 AM, RShara said:

Good point. We get an entire novella from Lift's PoV and no mention of anything like that.

You right there is nothing overt, but I think there are some clues.

Lift tells a story early on about when she saved a guy from prison. He gave her a hankerchief and let her stay in his den for 5 days. Who gives hankerchiefs out as gifts? Men from the final emipre. 

When lift is talking to the assassin, she agrees that it is better to be a killer of Kings than of nobodies.

Also we have the story from arclo. He talks about this interesting philosophy, but his point at the end is: How do you know that you are the same you as yesterday? You would never know if a different soul came to enhabit your body. 

Lastly, she knows so much about thieving the entire book. The tailing, planning, scheming, she seems too good at it. It seems like she was trained somehow in her travels the past few years.

On 9/20/2018 at 1:13 AM, Yata said:

Yeah for Lift to be bonded with Kel doesn't make sense to start with.

But if we want to push for evidence aganist.

Nobody between Lift herself, Wyndle (someone junctioned to her soul), the Stormfather (who realized in a moment the ties she has with the Old magi), Rock (able to see always cognitive entities) seems no notice this foreign ghost attached to her.

Notice also that Kelsier is a sociopath murder while Lift is a pacifist who isn't even able to gave an edge to her blade.

Last, Kelsier as CS is something composed at 100% of Preservation. No Ruin investiture in him... It's not really relevant but just to clarify

I thought kel's issue with taking up preservation's shard was that he was too much of ruin. He wasn't able to fully wield the power. So, how is he 100% preservation?

The stormfather mentions that the old magic "went to far" but what did he mean by that? 

I don't remember when she meets rock, where is that?

 

[Yata]

11 minutes ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

I thought kel's issue with taking up preservation's shard was that he was too much of ruin. He wasn't able to fully wield the power. So, how is he 100% preservation?

It is a bit weird to explain but one thing is the Investiture that compose someone and one thing is the connection to some Shard.

Kel when he was alive he had a strong Connection to Preservation (after all he is a Mistborn) but still this Connection to Preservation was relative small compared to his connection to Ruin (that come of nothing more than his mindset). When Kelsier died....mostly nothing changed, until he was struck at the Well. He expends one year (or maybe two, I can't remember) into the Well assorbing Preservation's Investiture.

From Brandon a Cognitive Shadow (Kel in our case) happens when someone is so Invested that the Investiture replace his actual Soul (that is still made of Investiture but... some loosely connected one, Honestly I can't define what is different from the average Soul's investiture and the CS's one) and the Investiture now part of the SHadow is tied to the Realms and allows to this new being to survive and resist the Beyond.
Returning to Kelsier, whatever he was composed before (51% Preservation, 49% Ruin for example) is now no more, as his own being is simply the result of the Preservation's Investiture obtained at the Well that replace his old self.

21 minutes ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

I don't remember when she meets rock, where is that?

Lift met multiple times the Bridge 4. I don't think there is an explic mention of the two of them meeting. But Rock was truly curious about Radiants' spren and Lift is also a radiant knowed to sneak around always searching food..... Rock can't resist her.

 

 

[FeltWillSaveUs]

1 hour ago, Yata said:

It is a bit weird to explain but one thing is the Investiture that compose someone and one thing is the connection to some Shard.

Kel when he was alive he had a strong Connection to Preservation (after all he is a Mistborn) but still this Connection to Preservation was relative small compared to his connection to Ruin (that come of nothing more than his mindset). When Kelsier died....mostly nothing changed, until he was struck at the Well. He expends one year (or maybe two, I can't remember) into the Well assorbing Preservation's Investiture.

From Brandon a Cognitive Shadow (Kel in our case) happens when someone is so Invested that the Investiture replace his actual Soul (that is still made of Investiture but... some loosely connected one, Honestly I can't define what is different from the average Soul's investiture and the CS's one) and the Investiture now part of the SHadow is tied to the Realms and allows to this new being to survive and resist the Beyond.
Returning to Kelsier, whatever he was composed before (51% Preservation, 49% Ruin for example) is now no more, as his own being is simply the result of the Preservation's Investiture obtained at the Well that replace his old self.

 

 

We know Kel is messing around the hemalergy, which is of ruin. So, I still think we can't say he is 100% preservation. Can't that also Pierce and change a spirit web?

7 hours ago, RShara said:

Yep, here it is:

 

If I read the quote from Brandon, I think the implication is that Kel will find a way off world at some point. So, then the timeline context is important for the quote. Had he not figured it out that last time we saw him? I could read that quote as saying "he hasn't figured it out on screen yet" 

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, FeltWillSaveUs said:

If I read the quote from Brandon, I think the implication is that Kel will find a way off world at some point. So, then the timeline context is important for the quote. Had he not figured it out that last time we saw him? I could read that quote as saying "he hasn't figured it out on screen yet" 

Considering we've seen hints of him in Era 2, (which starts at minimum in the gap between Stormlight 5 and 6) and he's supposed to be a big player in the events of Era 3, I think this is flat out "as far as you guys have seen" WoB