emperors soul The Emperor's new soul

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 19/01/2020 at 7:39 AM, Karger said:

The language they use in the book seems to make it clear(at least to me).  "You will replace his soul with..."

It makes clear what they think. Their understanding is not necessarily entirely correct.

[Karger he/him]

6 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

It makes clear what they think. Their understanding is not necessarily entirely correct.

Shai also claims that it "will not really be him" and as the expert in this matter I am inclined to believe her.

[Quantus he/him]

3 hours ago, Karger said:

Shai also claims that it "will not really be him" and as the expert in this matter I am inclined to believe her.

That would be getting pretty deep into philosophy territory "What Is The Self" is one of the big ones.  There is, for example, a strong argument that Star Trek teleporters are an exercise in mass murder, because what pops out the other side "isnt really you". 

I personally think that we can be certain with a fair degree of Confidence that she is not creating a new Spiritweb whole.  That simply would represent and thus require more Investiture than Forgery is credited for using (WOB has it at the low end of the spectrum).  So at the very least she is using the target's original as the Raw materials.  The question of whether her design can be called a true Original or a  Repair with Tweak is more the Philosophic question Brandon said he wasnt going to answer, but I dont see it as all that important, myself.   For me, the pertinent thing in the Original Vs Fake question is the fact that the Soul will resist the Stamp for a long time, but eventually will stop.  This sounds to me like the Spiritweb starts out straining against the changes (like Age in Feruchemy) but eventually get's used to the new Self though mechanisms similar to Savantism.  That answers the question for me, because the reapplication of the stamp is either needed fundamentally (like a Spike in Hemalurgy) and no amount of Time should lessen that, or there is still enough of the Original still in there to be straining against the imposed Changes.  

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

(WOB has it at the low end of the spectrum).

Which one?

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

So at the very least she is using the target's original as the Raw materials

She has his body but she is rewriting his memories based on his diary and papers.  She also says that she cannot get every experience and conversation he had.  Star Trek transporters copy more or less exactly this does not.

[Quantus he/him]

13 hours ago, Karger said:

Which one?

The last sentence of this really long one where he's comparing relative levels of Investiture:  

 

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

A soulstamped piece of metal is going to be on the lower, easier side. Not a lot of Investiture going on in a soulstamp.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/217/#e7299 

 

 

13 hours ago, Karger said:

She has his body but she is rewriting his memories based on his diary and papers.  She also says that she cannot get every experience and conversation he had.  Star Trek transporters copy more or less exactly this does not.

That's not the side of things I was looking at, though it's another fair consideration.  My point was more on the Investiture/energy Conservation side, saying that she had not /created/ a new Soulweb from whole cloth (which would take significantly more Investiture than Forgery alone usually uses), she took something existing and reconfigured it.  By comparison there is a strong philosophic argument to be made that Nightblood's creation represents a truly original Spritiweb's creations, since they took raw Investiture and Created a sentient Physical Realm entity.   

The Star Trek mention was just in reference to the fact that Star Trek Transporters have managed to duplicate a single person into two fully-functioning and independent people, with equally provable possession of their own Souls.  It has become a go-to example in philosophic circles when questioning what the Self is by exploring what processes would Destroy it vs preserve it; from a physical perspective the "original" is being destroyed entirely and a completely new one is being rebuilt on the other side.  Memories by contrast tend to fall short as the Seat of the Self because we dont like the idea that people with amnesia, brain trauma, or things like Alzheimer's are somehow no longer the same People we remember.  

[Honorless he/him]

Okay, so my current interpretation is that Shai did create a facsimile of Ashravan's soul and then stuck it to his damaged Spiritweb/remnants of the Spiritweb dissolving back into the Spiritual. This new soul was superimposed over the old one, repairing frayed Connections between the Physical, Cognitive & Spiritual and tricking his Identity into accepting it, creating a patchwork quilt of a soul for Ashravan.

Edited February 27, 2020 by Dreamer

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

Fantastic thread @Dreamer! I just reread TES this month!

Thx to @Pathfinder for posting the (long but great!) WoB above. IMO the very end of the quote seems most relevant here:

Brandon Sanderson:
"Now, at least in her perspective, what she did was create a fake soul and put it in him. What I haven’t answered is did she just take the soul that was lingering on the body and fill in the gaps? Or did she legitimately craft a new soul? That I’ll leave to the cosmere philosophers to talk about."

To me, it sounds like Shai doesn't really know what she did, so her description of it isn't necessarily accurate - she's like an unreliable narrator, unintentionally, just because she's judging based only on the outcome, not the "how" of what happened.

And many times in the book Shai says that what she's doing "has never been done before," so as far as we know there are no in-world precedents for us (or her) to go by.

In light of those points, what @PrinceGenocide posted above sounds plausible to me: that Shai made a path that allowed Ashraven's soul to (sort of) find its way back to his mind & body, reuniting him in the 3 Realms.

As far as why Hoid set Shai up - I'm sure he intended for her to heal the emperor, and I also think he wanted that Moon Sceptre. Late in the book, Shai muses about how her people used to worship images they'd carved from stones that fell from the sky - were those meteors (?) somehow related to the Splintering of Dominion & Devotion, and have some kind of weird Investiture? (IDK if that's ever been posted before - pls excuse me if it has been debunked, etc.)

So glad TES is fresh in my mind!

[Karger he/him]

6 hours ago, Lump-wing said:

To me, it sounds like Shai doesn't really know what she did, so her description of it isn't necessarily accurate - she's like an unreliable narrator, unintentionally, just because she's judging based only on the outcome, not the "how" of what happened.

Shai explination for the how of what happened is based on her experiences and understanding and it seems to hold up depending on who you ask.

[Eternal Khol he/him]

6 hours ago, Karger said:

Shai explination for the how of what happened is based on her experiences and understanding and it seems to hold up depending on who you ask.

I'd say she was pretty spot on. She didn't know a lot but at least knew/believes in the 3 realms