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The original purpose of Roshar


Diego98

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I was thinking about Roshar. We know that Adonalsium created Roshar for something. Maybe to storage investiture? Then I remembered a WoB I cant find right now, it would be nice if someone posted it here. Brandon was asked about the voices Dalinar and Szeth hear, the voices of the souls they killed. And Brandon said that there's something special going on with the dead on Roshar.

What if Adonalsium created Roshar to be like a "souls cemetery", where souls that can not move on to the Beyond gathered? Or maybe other different soul thing? 

Its weird cause even Sazed mention that the Beyond is unrreachable, yet still Dalinar and Szeth and maybe others can here voices of people long dead.

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9 minutes ago, Diego98 said:

What if Adonalsium created Roshar to be like a "souls cemetery", where souls that can not move on to the Beyond gathered? Or maybe other different soul thing? 

Any soul can move into the beyond(that we know of).  Only the insane decide not to realy.

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2 minutes ago, Karger said:

Any soul can move into the beyond(that we know of).  Only the insane decide not to realy.

Then why does Dalinar and Szeth can hear voices from people who has passed to the Beyond? Its pretty clear when Dalinar hear Evi at the end of Oathbringer. I mean, maybe on Roshar there are "soul remains"? Cause there is something going on there ...

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1 minute ago, Diego98 said:

Then why does Dalinar and Szeth can hear voices from people who has passed to the Beyond? Its pretty clear when Dalinar hear Evi at the end of Oathbringer. I mean, maybe on Roshar there are "soul remains"? Cause there is something going on there ...

Maybe.  More likely it is them creating artificial souls to haunt them(kind of like lifeless or Shallan's phantoms).

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33 minutes ago, Diego98 said:

Then why does Dalinar and Szeth can hear voices from people who has passed to the Beyond? Its pretty clear when Dalinar hear Evi at the end of Oathbringer. I mean, maybe on Roshar there are "soul remains"? Cause there is something going on there ...

Even after a person goes Beyond, their Spiritweb persists for "a long time."  I think this is the most likely explanation for the Rosharan voices.  

Quote

Argent

Is death in the Cosmere a two-stage process? It seems to me like (under normal circumstances) the body dies first, sending the mind fully in the Cognitive Realm; the soul, presumably, remains in the Spiritual for the entire process. I am a little unclear on what happens after that though - what is it that passes into the Beyond, just the mind? Does the soul / spiritual aspect / Spiritweb just kind of... break down in the Spiritual Realm, turn into free investiture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. It's a two stage process, and most of what you said is correct. The odd thing is, though, that the spiritweb doesn't completely break down (just like your body doesn't immediately break down.) Even after a long time, there's a record of that spirit web in the spiritual realm.

Oversleep

Wait wait wait. If there is a "corpse" of Spiritweb (so to speak) and actual, physical corpse is also there... Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy? Could it be still viable for Hemalurgy if you really know what you're doing and have some useful powers (manipulating Connection comes to mind)?

Could you patch the remnants of the Spiritweb and staple it to the body and end up with some zombie-zombie Lifeless? You'd still need to give it a mind but I figure Awakening is just doing that?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

Stormlight Three Update #6 (Feb. 5, 2017)
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Yeah, but why does it only happens on Roshar? Vin killed a lot of people, yet she does not hear them ... It is confirmed that Rosharan dead are special, but why? Does it have to do with Adonalsium's plan for Roshar?

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27 minutes ago, Diego98 said:

Yeah, but why does it only happens on Roshar? Vin killed a lot of people, yet she does not hear them ... It is confirmed that Rosharan dead are special, but why? Does it have to do with Adonalsium's plan for Roshar?

Wayne also hears voices.

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27 minutes ago, Diego98 said:

When does he hear voices of dead people? And yet, we have that WoB saying that Rosharan dead are special ...

It is not like pulling apart spiritual identities is hard.  Hemolugry can do it.  Which WoB are you refering to BTW.

Edited by Karger
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1 hour ago, Diego98 said:

Yeah, but why does it only happens on Roshar? Vin killed a lot of people, yet she does not hear them

It doesn't, anyone in the Cosmere who goes through a similar experience to Szeth could hear them as well. The reason Szeth hears screams and Vin doesn't could easily have to do with how they feel about the people they killed; Szeth is burdened by a ton of guilt over his actions while Vin generally isn't. Remember her reaction to being asked if she's a good person? I'm not a good person or a bad person. I'm just here to kill things. If you want to speculate on why she's killed lots of people and doesn't hear anything, I suggest that line is a good place to start looking for an explanation.

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1 hour ago, Karger said:

It is not like pulling apart spiritual identities is hard.  Hemolugry can do it.  Which WoB are you refering to BTW.

I couldn't find it. Brandon was asked about the voices and death rattles, and he said that there's something special going on with Rosharan dead. Its an old WoB. Now Im thinking that he meant Moelach.

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The way I took that WOB, and the specific way he qualified it, is simply that some Mental disorders, such as PTSD, are going to have Realmic components and/or symptoms in the cosmere, not because of any particular System of Investiture or "magic", but simply because of the way the three Realms interact.  

 

As far as a potential Original Purpose of Roshar, lets look at what we know of pre-Shattering Roshar:

  • At one point it had no large landmass, then Adonalsium "grew" the Continent using a "seed" of Fractal math.  
  • Pre-shattering Roshar had Singers
  • Pre-shattering Roshar had the Highstorm
  • Pre-shattering Roshar had spren
  • Pre-shattering Roshar had Stormlight-in-Gems
  • Pre-shattering Roshar "there was a lot of natural evolution on Roshar, resulting in a lot of what we have there."  [WOB]

 

We also know that the abundance of Spren on Roshar act as a sort of realmic pressure relief, allowing the Investiture to flow more freely between realms than in places like Sel.  Given that, if I had to guess What he was doing, Id say he was trying to build precisely that (a Realmic Pressure Relief).  If I had to guess Why he was doing that though, Id make non-committal sounds and say "Maybe he was living there and it was helpful?  Or maybe he was trying to fix the same problem that the Shatterers were trying to fix by Killing Him? Or maybe he was causing said problem via a spren-driven planetary machine (ie  Roshar) and they killed him for it?  

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3 minutes ago, Quantus said:
  • At one point it had no large landmass, then Adonalsium "grew" the Continent using a "seed" of Fractal math.  

Thats why all life on Roshar looks like acuatic. All fauna are related to some submarine animal: eels, crabs ... And the flora too, with coral-like plants. So it makes me wonder; were there vines on Roshar before Cultivation? 

Is the original purpose for which it was created still working? Or it was modified by the shards? 

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Roshar was created by Adonalsium as the Cosmere's ultimate supercomputer, to determine the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The Answer of course is already known: Sixteen.

4 hours ago, Diego98 said:

Is the original purpose for which it was created still working? Or it was modified by the shards? 

Assuming that Adonalsium had a purpose beyond 'Hey, I had a really cool idea for a world, let's see if I can make it work!' then the Shards definitely don't know what it was. Frost chides Hoid for meddling in things he doesn't understand in the WoR epigraphs and by extension the Shards as well, likening them all to infants stumbling around in a workshop. Frost assumes that Adonalsium had some sort of grand design in mind but even he doesn't know what it might have been. Whether that's true and if so whether his grand design is still operating or whether the changes the Shards have wrought on the Rosharan system and the Cosmere in general have upset the plan is more than we'll be able to say until Dragonsteel comes out.

Related to this, It's very strongly implied that Adonalsium had exceptional future-sight (whether this included seeing beyond the Shattering being a RAFO) but the WoB is obscured by background noise so we aren't sure exactly what form the question took.

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7 hours ago, Karger said:

Wayne also hears voices.

Spoiler

I think Harmony was trying to talk to him that one time, but since he bashed his head against a wall until the voice went away I don't think Sazed tried it again :lol:

I think the reason why Dalinar and Szeth hear voices but Vin doesn’t has to do with the amount of investiture they have access to. Szeth exposed himself to prolonged use of a very inefficient Honorblade that channelled dangerous amounts of Stormlight and Dalinar was literally standing inside a perpendicularity when he heard Evis voice. I think both of them were closer and perhaps more Connected to the spiritual corpses too. And we suspect that the borders between Realms are thinner on Roshar because of the highstorms, so that may have been a factor as well. 

I think Roshar’s purpose was to experiment with life. A big sandbox for Adonalsium to play around in. Yolen stuff spoilers:

Spoiler

I’ve always thought that the Fainlife on Yolen was Adonalsium’s second attempt at creating life. And then he let them compete. 

Maybe Roshar, the singers and the Aimians were attempt 1.5 or he wanted to see how humans could be modified to be better adapted. From all the varieties of humans on Roshar we know that singers, humans and siah were all capable of producing fertile hybrid children. 

There is still the question of why the afterlife is weird on Roshar, but I think the answer is just that it’s more likely to become a cognitive shadow because of the sheer amount of available investiture in the system.

Edited by Ciridae
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