Where do Listeners transform? What plane?

[Ashaman_Wade]

I was thinking about Kaladin not being able to heal himself with investiture because of the way he views himself. 

Then Azure/Zahel using Investiture to change their appearance at will. 

Then the listeners ability to bond a spren and transform their body and even their mind. 

I guess my question is - where and how do Listeners/Singers transform compared to what is established in the cosmere?

[Quantus]

The forms come from what amounts to a gross alteration of their Spiritweb, that then manifests with physical changes to their body. Nearest equivalent I can think of off-hand are the Koloss, with the spren in their Gemheart providing the additional Investiture similar to the Hemalurgic Spikes. 

[+hwiles]

On 11/19/2018 at 11:38 AM, Quantus said:

The forms come from what amounts to a gross alteration of their Spiritweb, that then manifests with physical changes to their body. Nearest equivalent I can think of off-hand are the Koloss, with the spren in their Gemheart providing the additional Investiture similar to the Hemalurgic Spikes. 

I'm inclined to agree with this, and the analogy to hemalurgy seems apt.

Expanding on the specific process flow as I understand it: The spren exists mostly in the Cognitive Realm, the listener pulls it more into the Physical Realm by bonding it to their gem heart, and the bond they establish with each other in those two realms tweaks the listener's spirit web (aka how the listener manifests in the Spiritual Realm) which then prompts a bulk change to how the listener manifests in the Physical Realm.

[Weltall]

3 hours ago, Ashaman_Wade said:

From the conversation with syl, when she said that there were some spren with 4 genders, the parsh/listener/singers ability to bond and morph predated Honor and Cultivation. That's not the only evidence, there was A WoB too.. but I cant find it.

There's a couple WoBs that all support it.

Spren bonds are essential to making the science of Roshar work and predate the Shattering:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

It is a natural part of their atmosphere. Part of this-- There's two answers to this. One answer is: It was created that way, because Roshar creation predates the Shattering of Adonalsium and a lot of things were set up that way. The scientific side is, in building the creatures that I was building on Roshar I needed a high oxygen environment, just to make the logistics work and even then I had to like-- It's high oxygen, low gravity, right? It's like 0.7 something Earth gravity. And even then I still had to add magic to get big beasties that I wanted to. Like the greatshells just can not exist. Square cube law. Even after I tweaked atmosphere and the gravity, the math didn't work, but fortunately I had the whole spren thing going on. These are both things I was trying do in order to create megafauna. I’m sorry, is that, did that make sense?

source  

The singers were created to be a vital part of the Rosharan ecosystem:

Quote

CarolaDavar's brother

[My cousin] thinks the Parshendi were made by someone so that spren could have a physical form. And he would like some critique on that.

Brandon Sanderson

Parshmen were created to be an essential part of the Rosharan ecosystem.

source

Spren bonds with singers, greatshells etc. are part of the natural cycle on Roshar:

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Brandon Sanderson

Those spren that they are bonding with are generally what we call non-sapient spren, and so, no, and also the spren are barely aware that they-- they're bonded--- those spren, the non-voidspren, right? Like when they're bonding, generally what's happening is how... It's a symbiotic relationship, right? And the spren that gets bonded to them, it's just kind of like, "Oh, this is my life now! This is just normal. This is what's happened." The same thing happens with spren involved in greatshells and things like this. This is a natural part of the natural cycle for those spren. source

The singers predate the Shattering:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Humans and parshmen don't have a common ancestor. And as a side note, both of these strains of humanoids predate the ascension of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium.

<snip>

Humans (other than those on Yolen) existed pre-Shattering, as did parshmen.

source

 

[RShara]

I would say it's mostly a Physical change, with some Cognitive effects. The person is still who they are and can control themselves (like the one of the Five that is in mateform), but because of the physical shift (and different hormones/neurotransmitters) the personality changes as well.

[Weltall]

Yeah, you have a spren bond that alters the spiritweb (Spiritual) which then filters down to the obvious Physical changes with some Cognitive changes along the way. Some Forms clearly have more significant changes than others, like Envoyform which can communicate in any language; That's got to involve a bigger Spiritual component due to manipulating Connection. Similarly there's probably a bigger Spiritual change in Nightform since the Song of Secrets implies that this form had some form of prescience which we know is a Spiritual thing.

[+robardin]

So next question: what Shard is powering the transformation? If hemalurgy is Ruining things with a net negative outcome of power, is what the listeners do something originally of Cultivation?

Did they have spren-bonding before she and Honor and then Odium arrived?

[Ashaman_Wade]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

So next question: what Shard is powering the transformation? If hemalurgy is Ruining things with a net negative outcome of power, is what the listeners do something originally of Cultivation?

Did they have spren-bonding before she and Honor and then Odium arrived?

From the conversation with syl, when she said that there were some spren with 4 genders, the parsh/listener/singers ability to bond and morph predated Honor and Cultivation. That's not the only evidence, there was A WoB too.. but I cant find it. 

It would have been Adonalsium at that point though, preshattering. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by Ashaman_Wade
Adonalsium.

[Quantus]

6 hours ago, robardin said:

So next question: what Shard is powering the transformation? If hemalurgy is Ruining things with a net negative outcome of power, is what the listeners do something originally of Cultivation?

Did they have spren-bonding before she and Honor and then Odium arrived?

The Parsh and the Spren are both are part of the Highstorm Investiture ecosystem of Roshar, which as others have said predates the Shattering (in some form).  In that sense the Investiture isnt coming directly from a Shard (in the way that Allomancy or even Breaths do) but rather it's coming from the ambient flow if Investiture that is constantly cycling on Roshar.  In that sense the Investiture is either non-specific in the same way that every Human has an amount of innate "spark of Life" investiture, or else you could argue that the Investiture involved is some mixture of the three Shards currently Invested in Roshar.

 

Put another way I dont really think the Forms would innately come from a specific shard any more than individual Gemhearts do.  The only exception (I think) is that there generally seems to be a lot less integration with Odium's Jonny-Come-Lately Investiture, which is why they provide wholly different Rhythms and whatnot.

[Ripheus23]

Scientists currently debate if this happens in a Minshendi or a deSinger space. *pulls several tongues out of several cheeks*

[Feruchemist]

13 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

Scientists currently debate if this happens in a Minshendi or a deSinger space. *pulls several tongues out of several cheeks*

Ha, that funny thing was rather humorous.