Miscellaneous Rosharan Cognitive Realm Questions

[+mdross81 he/him]

I've been thinking a lot about two weird Cognitive Realm things with Roshar, both of which touch on what happens when people (or ideas) die on Roshar.

CR Thing One

The first involves this WOB:

Quote

ZuperzubS

In Words of Radiance, when the sailors were being killed, Jasnah/Shallan sees the flames representing the minds of the sailors vanishing in Shadesmar, but the sailors don't appear in the cognitive realm. In contrast, in Secret History, we see that all sapient entities do transition to the Cognitive Realm before going to the Beyond. Is there something strange here? Or am I just overthinking this?

Brandon Sanderson

You're not overthinking it--but it's also not as strange as you might think. The one seeing the spirits on Scadrial was in a different state than Jasnah/Shallan.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 27, 2018)

So I take Brandon to be saying here that Kelsier sees manifestations of people's spirits (some combo of cognitive & spiritual aspects) that actually look like people who then get pulled into the beyond because he's a cognitive shadow himself. And therefore that Shallan sees only the flames going out when the sailors die because she still has a valid physical aspect and is merely looking into Shadesmar. Do others agree with this interpretation?

If that interpretation is correct, it begs the follow up question: what would someone from Roshar in a similar situation as Kelsier (i.e .someone who had died but was highly invested enough to stick around in the CR for a while) see in the CR when people die? Presumably they would see something similar to what Kelsier saw in SH.

This got me to wondering whether there actually are any such entities on Roshar. My first thought was of Kalak, but I think because the Heralds get new bodies when they return to Roshar, he's still technically alive and therefore wouldn't see anything different than what Shallan saw. Perhaps a Knight Radiant who dies would be similar enough? Anyway, curious whether others can think of any other entities like Kelsier that might be kicking around in the CR on Roshar.

An alternative thought experiment, I guess, would be what would someone with Shallan's ability to look into the CR see on Scadrial when people die? Also flames going out? Or would the dying spirits manifest differently on Scadrial?

CR Thing Two

So, the second weird Rosharan CR thing I've been thinking about is the place that the Stormfather imagined that Dalinar sees a couple of times during the visions. Here's a description from TWoK 75:

Quote

He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and found himself in a place of smoke.

He turned about, wary. The sky was dark and he stood on a field of dull, bone-white rock, jagged and rough, extending in all directions. Off into eternity. Amorphous shapes made of curling grey smoke rose from the ground. Like smoke rings, only in other shapes. Here a chair. There a rockbud, with vines extended. Beside him appeared the figure of a man in uniform, silent and vaporous, rising lethargically toward the sky, mouth open. The shapes melted and distorted as they climbed higher, though they seemed to hold their forms longer than they should. It was unnerving, standing on the boundless plain, pure darkness above, smoke figures rising all around.

And here's the Stormfather's explanation of the place from OB 34:

Quote

I imagined it, the Stormfather said more softly, as if he were admitting something embarrassing. All things have a soul. A vase, a wall, a chair. And when a vase is broken, it might die in the Physical Realm, but for a time its soul remembers what it was. So all things die twice. Its final death is when men forget it was a vase, and think only of the pieces. I imagine the vase floating away then, its form dissolving into nothingness.

Dalinar calls this place a place "between his world and the visions." I'm trying to remember, do the visions take place in the Spiritual Realm? Making this place a place in between the spiritual and the physical? It almost seems more to me like a Cognitive Realm within the Cognitive Realm - the place where ideas go to die (I'm getting Inception vibes).

Dalinar notes as he's looking around this place in the OB chapter that he sees "A chair, a vase, rockbuds. Sometimes people." I think the part that's most intriguing to me, given the other issue above, is the fact that Dalinar sees people. Going off of the SF's explanation - are these people who died and now there is no longer anyone alive who remembers them? (kinda like CoCo). Or is there something else at play here? For example, in the excerpt from TWoK 75, Dalinar sees a man in uniform - could it be someone who is still alive, but is no longer seen as a soldier? I'm not really sure what to make of it.

Or, what about unique spren? If sometime way down the road, no one remembered Cucecish - would it pass through this place that the SF has imagined? Weird concepts, I know.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

7 hours ago, mdross81 said:

I'm trying to remember, do the visions take place in the Spiritual Realm?

....sorta. They take place sort of stretched between Realms.

Quote

Argent

How do visions in the cosmere work? And I'm thinking Realmatically.

Brandon Sanderson

So almost always [it's] glimpsing into the Spiritual Realm. But you are often seeing it through the Cognitive, and so like a vision that...

So like the vision that Dalinar sees. What's going on is-- being pulled, and kind of stretched a little bit through the Realms, into the Spiritual Realm.  Where a Cognitive construct is adding a framework to seeds that are set in place.

Argent

So that you can kind of comprehend the Spiritual?

Brandon Sanderson

You can comprehend-- and also there's a little bit of a life to it. Meaning it can respond to you and things like this, to an extent. So imagine, it kind of works like an AI. Imagine there's some-- You've got that power in the Spiritual Realm and you're adding a framework to it, that it is shining through, and that is giving you the vision. Complicated, I know. Spiritual Realm is supposed to be weird, and we aren't supposed to quite comprehend it, but that's why we've got the Cognitive framework there.

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

[Lunu’anaki he/him]

Well, we get our first glimpse of someone moving on in RoW with Eshonai's flashback at the end... I found that to be very similar to Kelsier's experience with dying. I think it would track similarly in other aspects too.