Questions of Ascension

[Bigmikey357]

No theory, just speculation. So, we know that a Shard cannot deny access to a user of its magic system per WOB. Basically as long as the user is following the rules a Shard and/or its Vessel cannot intervene. That got me thinking about Vin's Ascension in HOA.  She took up all the mists and became Preservation for a time. Leras was already dead though so there was no conflict. My question is can a being ascend if the Vessel still lives? The power of a Shard is infinite after all. We know a being can weild 2 Shards (and probably more than that). We know that the power seeks a mind to guide or contain it. Can one Shard have multiple Vessels and what would it look like if so? Is Autonomy/Badvadin doing this? Last, if it is possible for one Shard to have multiple Vessels and those people are in conflict, say one isn't particularly suited for the Shard they hold, then how are conflicts resolved?

[HSuperLee]

So based on what we saw in Secret History I'd say probably not. I get that an argument could be made for Kelsier giving up Preservation, but it seemed to me more like he got kicked out when a vessel with better connection gained enough of the Shard's power to ascend. I would imagine that while a Shard's power can be divided (actually I would argue all magic is a Shard's power being divided among numerous people) whichever person both holds the most power and is the most connected becomes the Shardholder. In a weird situation where 2 people are equally connected and each share half the power, I'd expect neither would ascend until the circumstance inevitably changes.

Edited September 29, 2018 by HSuperLee
Clarifying pronouns

[RShara]

Ascension is just taking up a significant portion of a Shard (Since we don't have a name or quanta of investiture yet, I couldn't say how much it takes). Vin Ascended while Laras was still alive--he died the final death outside of Fadrex city in HoA. TLR Ascended 1000 years before that, and he wasn't the first to take up the power of the Well.

So yes, someone can Ascend and take up a significant portion of the power of a Shard even while the Vessel is alive and holding the Shard. I don't think that person would count as the Vessel, though, unless they held >50% of the power. They'd just be holding a large portion.

[Fanghur Rahl]

14 hours ago, RShara said:

Ascension is just taking up a significant portion of a Shard (Since we don't have a name or quanta of investiture yet, I couldn't say how much it takes). Vin Ascended while Laras was still alive--he died the final death outside of Fadrex city in HoA. TLR Ascended 1000 years before that, and he wasn't the first to take up the power of the Well.

So yes, someone can Ascend and take up a significant portion of the power of a Shard even while the Vessel is alive and holding the Shard. I don't think that person would count as the Vessel, though, unless they held >50% of the power. They'd just be holding a large portion.

Honestly, I think there really should be a different term for those two situations. Becoming a sliver and becoming a full Shard are clearly not nearly synonymous, but for some reason they’re both referred to as ‘Ascension’.

[Ripheus23]

4 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Honestly, I think there really should be a different term for those two situations. Becoming a sliver and becoming a full Shard are clearly not nearly synonymous, but for some reason they’re both referred to as ‘Ascension’.

"Transcension," maybe. (Sounds Cosmerical, like "Catacendre" and "Recreance" (Recreance is IRL too though).)

[Fanghur Rahl]

16 minutes ago, Ripheus23 said:

"Transcension," maybe. (Sounds Cosmerical, like "Catacendre" and "Recreance" (Recreance is IRL too though).)

Totally agree, transcension would be way better a term. More accurate too since the Shards, unlike slivers, in some sense transcend all three realms.

[RShara]

A Sliver is just someone who Ascended (or Transcended) and then gave up or lost the power. So an ex-Vessel could be a Sliver, as can a more minor Ascension such as TLR.

[Calderis]

Ascension is a step towards being a Vessel... But it isn't being the Shards Vessel. 

 

[Fanghur Rahl]

8 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Ascension is a step towards being a Vessel... But it isn't being the Shards Vessel. 

I know, but the point is that Brandon uses that term both for when Vin just commanded the Well’s power briefly AND when she absorbed the full Investiture of Preservation and became a full Shard. And Odium even used the term just for when Dalinar opened Honor’s Perpendicularity, and he was probably at least a dozen orders of magnitude less powerful even than Vin or Rashek while they were connected to the Well, much less the power of a full Shard.

This may just be semantics, but still, there is clearly an important distinction to be made here, and as it currently stands this is not being done in the terminology Brandon is utilizing. 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[HSuperLee]

Maybe a better working definition for Ascension would be: The channeling of a Shard's power.

Of course, then there's the argument all magic is doing that, so we might need to create more specific criteria for how much power needs to be channeled, but that might be best for after Peter creates a definite unite of Investiture. 

We'd just need to find a good term for becoming a Vessel then. Personally, I like transcendence or even just using vessel as a verb. For example, "Rashek acsended using Preservation's power. Vin also ascended with but later vesseled Preservation's power."

[Fanghur Rahl]

I mean, technically I guess you could say that becoming a full Shard and becoming a Sliver are the same process. But only in the same sense that a mega-tsunami and a beach swell are both just ‘waves’. Then again, there’s a reason that we have a specific term for the former...

The other important distinction is that Slivers (at least that we’ve seen so far) never cease to be physical beings, whereas a Shard is a post-physical being that transcends all three realms. So they’re categorically different things.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[Calderis]

40 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

The other important distinction is that Slivers (at least that we’ve seen so far) never cease to be physical beings, whereas a Shard is a post-physical being that transcends all three realms. So they’re categorically different things.

First, you aren't a Sliver until the power leaves you. 

Second, Rashek had to have been "post-physical" he reached out to every living Feruchemist and changed them to mistwraiths, he moved the planet, altered microfauna, etc, etc... 

I don't think there is as big a difference between all o these situations as you're thinking. My first thought on reading the words "Dalinar was not supposed to Ascend" wasn't "how was that ascension?" it was "the word doesn't mean what I thought it did."

Edited September 30, 2018 by Calderis

[Fanghur Rahl]

38 minutes ago, Calderis said:

First, you aren't a Sliver until the power leaves you. 

Second, Rashek had to have been "post-physical" he reached out to every living Feruchemist and changed them to mistwraiths, he moved the planet, altered microfauna, etc, etc...

Fair enough. By ‘sliver’ I simply meant a person who accesses a significant fraction of a Shard’s Investiture. If that’s not what a sliver is, then at least that’s what I was referring to.

Also, that simply does not follow. Doctor Manhattan and the ‘Sleeping God’ from the Night’s Dawn trilogy are purely (or at least mostly) physical beings (if you consider a naked singularity to be physical anyway) and yet they could do those things without breaking a sweat too. The way I always saw it was that Rashek and Vin simply ‘connected’ to the portion of Preservation’s Investiture and effectively willed it to do what they wanted, but they never had the Investiture literally replace their physical body to effectively become their body. Now sure accessing that power certainly changed them and temporarily expanded their minds, but they ultimately still retained their physical forms.

That’s what I see the major difference between true Shards and whatever the appropriate term for the kind of thing Vin and Rashek briefly became as being: the latter merely command the Investiture, while the former effectively become the Investiture. That’s what I mean by ‘post-physical’ in this context; I don’t know any better term for a person transcending physical existence to become a metaphysical being than that.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[Bigmikey357]

I agree that the terms really need expansion to include specific instances. The problem is that we're not at the point in the Cosmere cycle that will show exactly what the hell is going on yet. We likely won't get that except via WOB at this point. It seems to me though that we are getting close and that Badvadin holds the key to ultimately understanding the modes of Ascension due to her creation of Avatars.

[Fanghur Rahl]

6 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

I agree that the terms really need expansion to include specific instances. The problem is that we're not at the point in the Cosmere cycle that will show exactly what the hell is going on yet. We likely won't get that except via WOB at this point. It seems to me though that we are getting close and that Badvadin holds the key to ultimately understanding the modes of Ascension due to her creation of Avatars.

Honestly, I think that really depends on whether the Avatars started out as ordinary humans or whether they’re a kind of Spren-like being, presumably a few levels above the Stormfather and Nightwatcher. At this point we really have no idea.

[Ashertliden]

Can we assume that all the "avatars" share the same ideals? Their intent is "Autonomy" after all. I wouldn't be surprised if some avatars worked in direct contrast to one another.

[Fanghur Rahl]

16 minutes ago, Kal-Eldin said:

Can we assume that all the "avatars" share the same ideals? Their intent is "Autonomy" after all. I wouldn't be surprised if some avatars worked in direct contrast to one another.

Probably in a similar sense to how each incarnation of the Doctor is a unique individual whilst all still being the Doctor. 

[Calderis]

@Fanghur Rahl I think Doctor Manhattan is actually a perfect example. He still had a physical body sure... And it was meaningless. He could be giant, he could have multiple... His "body" was by no means a limitation, and at that point... 

Edited September 30, 2018 by Calderis

[Yata]

Doctor Manhattan's body is just something a bit more than a puppet. Something that could be annihilate and remakes at will without any issue...

Returning to the actual point.

I don't see the need of multiple terms, Ascension seems to be referred to a specific scenario with requirements. And this doesn't matter in how hard those requirements, imagine if the requirement is "going supersonic", it will not matter if you go a bit faster than Mack 1, at Mack 3 or lightspeed. You regardless are ok with the requirement.

 

Similarly the Ascension requires only to have access to a X amount of Investiture. That investiture associated to the status you reach will have Y effects and will result to the Z consequences for the guy.

This regardless if the Investiture you accessed was enough only to performe Y for seconds/minutes (TLR) or forever (Shards).

Of course, we could talk endless of the Ascension at this point. We know nothing about... I have my own model like probably everyone has his own.

Maybe I am right and maybe wrong but I can't say Brandon are using the wrong terminology if he didn't even explained the meaning behind yet

[Bigmikey357]

I'm not necessarily saying that Brandon has the terminology wrong. I'm just saying that for clarity's sake that there must be a distinction between what Rashek does (using the full power of the Shard for a short time), what Vin does (becoming the Vessel for Preservation) and what Dalinar does (taking a significant amount of the power but not the full power and simply holding it). Note that Vin would have been the Vessel in truth but she sacrificed herself to kill Ati. Note also that while what Rashek and Dalinar did was similar Rashek had much more power at his disposal. Dalinar took up the power of a Shard with no physical Vessel but did not become Honor's Vessel, did not take up the vacancy. All three of these instances (and we might as well throw in Kelsier and Sazed), all of them are described with the same word despite all the circumstances being different. It makes it confusing as to what the term really means. 

[Yata]

2 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

I'm not necessarily saying that Brandon has the terminology wrong. I'm just saying that for clarity's sake that there must be a distinction between what Rashek does (using the full power of the Shard for a short time), what Vin does (becoming the Vessel for Preservation) and what Dalinar does (taking a significant amount of the power but not the full power and simply holding it). Note that Vin would have been the Vessel in truth but she sacrificed herself to kill Ati. Note also that while what Rashek and Dalinar did was similar Rashek had much more power at his disposal. Dalinar took up the power of a Shard with no physical Vessel but did not become Honor's Vessel, did not take up the vacancy. All three of these instances (and we might as well throw in Kelsier and Sazed), all of them are described with the same word despite all the circumstances being different. It makes it confusing as to what the term really means. 

Actually there isn't a truly difference in what TLR and Vin did. Simply Rashek had access to a drop in the ocean of the Shard's power that once expended (or leaked away) it returned to the system.

Dalinar's case is weird and I agree but mostly we don't what he did. As far as we know it could be a scaled down version of what rashek did. A "moment of deity" he used to performe the Realm bending thing.

As I said for how I see the Ascension, all the instances proposed made sense in the broader phenomen, but surelly others could think otherwise.

By the way, I have to check again Odium's words but it's possible that Dalinar didn't actually Ascended but that Odium witnessing the stuff Dalinar performed, could have deducted that Dalinar is capable of Ascending.

[Fanghur Rahl]

6 hours ago, Calderis said:

@Fanghur Rahl I think Doctor Manhattan is actually a perfect example. He still had a physical body sure... And it was meaningless. He could be giant, he could have multiple... His "body" was by no means a limitation, and at that point... 

A fair point. I suppose in his backstory he did get vaporized when he first ‘ascended’. Bad example on my part. But my basic point is still valid. There are plenty of examples of physical beings with nigh-omnipotent abilities in fiction. Honestly, I think the much better analogy to what I actually think regarding this is when in the final book of the original (and in my opinion the only canonical) Sword of Truth series Richard connects to the Power of Orden. That’s basically what I see as having happened to Vin and Rashek; they were effectively omnipotent while commanding the power, but they still retained their physical self throughout it; after all, if I recall correctly Elend was literally watching Vin the whole time she was in the Well.

Whereas when one becomes a full Vessel, the original body might still exist in some extremely nebulous and quasi-platonic sense, but the Shardic Investiture for all intents and purposes replaces (or at the very least eclipses to the nth degree) the flesh as the Vessel’s ‘body’. I agree that there technically doesn’t necessarily need to be a separate term for these two processes, but ideally I think there should, if only purely for the sake of clarity. And ‘Transcension’ does seem to fit the latter process.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Fanghur Rahl

[goody153]

Uhm ascending with the vessel still literally around happened for Rashek and Vin(the first time) so it can certainly happen without problems and the vessel seems to be still in charge so long as he/she is fine with it I assume.

Btw both Rashek and Vin were considered slivers just by using well of ascension which by definition means they became a vessel albeit limited time/power 

[Scion of the Mists]

On 9/29/2018 at 8:24 PM, Fanghur Rahl said:

Fair enough. By ‘sliver’ I simply meant a person who accesses a significant fraction of a Shard’s Investiture. If that’s not what a sliver is, then at least that’s what I was referring to.

 

16 minutes ago, goody153 said:

Btw both Rashek and Vin were considered slivers just by using well of ascension which by definition means they became a vessel albeit limited time/power 

 

A Sliver is someone who held all or a large chunk of a Shard's power, and then released it.  The temporary aspect is important, as it differentiates someone who is currently in control of a Shard from a normal person who's been permanently change as a result of harnessing the power.  The power would leave some residual effects, including the ability to sense Investiture.  

[Fanghur Rahl]

42 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

A Sliver is someone who held all or a large chunk of a Shard's power, and then released it.  The temporary aspect is important, as it differentiates someone who is currently in control of a Shard from a normal person who's been permanently change as a result of harnessing the power.  The power would leave some residual effects, including the ability to sense Investiture.  

So what do we call someone who is currently accessing a large amount of a Shard’s power then? Neither Rashek nor Vin became a full Shard in the Well, they just commanded its power, which while significant was still only a fraction of Preservation’s full power.