Kurkistan

PSA time: Please, everyone, provide links for all quotes. Not doing so is not only somewhat rude, but also exceptionally counterproductive. For instance: As we see from NewbSombrero above (he did that while I was typing my post), the answer to Meg's question was literally two lines down from the quote that provoked it. There are two possible circumstances here: 1) Meg got her abridged quote second-hand from someone who didn't provide a link. If the link had been provided, she could have investigated and seen that there was no contradiction. 2) Meg got the quote directly from the Q&A, but did not realize the import of the last two lines. So it was left to the rest of us to figure it out with no clues. If someone who either hadn't read the original question or didn't have a good memory had seen that quote without any context, they would not have known of how accessible the answer was. As it was, I had to go through half-a-dozen steps to get to the appropriate thread and pull in the link (before I realized Sombrero had already done it). That should not have been necessary. --- And, as as general rule, it's just a lot better to have as much cross-linking as possible. A good wiki is a dense wiki, and a good theory-based forum is one where every relevant fact or thread is directly attributed and linked to. It's okay if you don't know the exact thread, or simply lack the time, but, as a rule, you should link whenever you can. </PSA> P.S. As a fun fact, you can link to individual questions in the WoT Database by adding "#<number>" to the end of the url, where <number> is the number of the question when you look at the interview it originally came from. So if you do a keyword search and find something interesting, then click on the link to the interview it came from, find the interesting passage again, and see what number it is. P.P.S. Also, this isn't aimed at Meg at all. Sorry if I come across as a bit harsh. I've just been noticing a disturbing tendency away from direct attribution, and it's hard enough to become Cosmere-conversant as it is. EDIT: Oops, Meg did have a link. As kindly pointed out by Meg here, it's a proper quote, so there is an "arrow", which I failed to notice for some reason. Although I still think the general point stands, I ought not to have used Meg's post as an example. Sorry about that.

^Nepene already did that, so you would be both plagiaristic and unoriginal.

^Yeah, I saw that too. Let loose a chuckle or two.

^Each Order gets two surges to play with, so you just have a Transformation + <Light Manipulation> combo. "Radiance," perhaps? Although that word might be a bit overused by now.

Were they? Are you sure about that? They could theoretically have been noble worldhoppers who tried to help Honor out. Brandon has mentioned lightweaving is shared between two worlds and showed up in WoK; it was almost certainly Hoid doing it. EDIT: Also, new acronym! Now we have WoK and WoR.

Yes, yes we do.

^Yes, but Brandon expects that to change. EDIT: I doubt that "lightweaving" is a surge, no more than "windrunning" is a surge in and of itself. Recall that surges are fundamental forces. If it is Shallan, the second surge may well have to do with light, though.

Oh, factoid! "Moshe suggested Lightweaver as a title. It was thematically important (as a hint, one of the orders of the Knights Radiant was the Lightweavers) and hence appropriate." EDIT: Brought in full context of factoid.

We're not even sure that you can even "store" Breaths in metal, actually. All we've seen it done with is textiles and people, so far. Organics. You probably can put Breath in metal, given that sufficiently large amounts of Breaths can be used to Awaken metal, but I wouldn't be flabbergasted if normal levels of Breath don't "stick" to metal. On top of that, there is the question of whether storing Breath in an inanimate object actually counts as it being "Invested": was Vivienne's shawl really holding Breaths directly, with its Aspects interacting with the Breaths in any meaningful way? Note that "my Breath become yours"-style Breath transfer doesn't drain color, so we know there is some difference between that and normal Awakening--although the lack of color-draining might not actually be evidence on its own, since I think color-drain is related to fueling the transfer of the Command, though that's neither here nor there. EDIT: Or Breaths are only actually incorporated into the aspects of an Awakened object when the Command is successful, which is why Tonk Fah's cloak didn't act special or anything, yet still held recoverable Breath. So unsuccessful Command == direct Breath transfer, essentially.

We apparently got a clue in WoK as to why Sel's region of Shadesmar is dangerous. It could be simple rouge beings or it could be that Splintered Shards in particular are dangerous. Here are some of my thoughts on this: So I guess that Splinters of either Dominion or Devotion (probably Dominion) are chilling about in the Cognitive Realm near Sel trying to eat people. That's good to know. Actually, forgive me if this has already been said and/or is off-topic, but it occurs to me that the "clue" we get in WoK (something grabbing Shallan's leg in Shadesmar) might be that Honor's Splintering also made Shadesmar dangerous on Roshar, so raw Spiritual power being flung around might be dangerous regardless of what Shard it originally belonged to. Although I should have said "raw Shardic power", not "Spiritual".

Thanks for the link. I have to say though, hilarity aside, I liked the old title better.

Good on you, Nepene. While we have a bit of a history of disagreeing on the interpretation of quotes, you've always been very good at finding and remembering them. Feel free to drop me a line if you ever want help hunting down something that you can't re-find. Also, it wouldn't hurt if you would throw in the links for all of these quotes, so that people can read the whole interview and/or cite them directly in the future.

I'd buy that. Good eye.

Oh yes, definitely. I acquiring powers seems to be very world-specific.

Does that mean you give up on your version of the "Archetypes" theory? Yes, as I tried to point out in the beginning. And it's technically a mashup of Platonic Forms and "everything has a soul", not just the Allegory of the Cave, which was an illustration of Plato's Theory of Fomrs, not its entirety.

^Shadesmar's "landscape" could be shaped by Shards, I suppose. We know that Sel's region is particularly dangerous because of the Splinterings, so less catastrophic Shardic events could also have an impact. Actually, forgive me if this has already been said and/or is off-topic, but it occurs to me that the "clue" we get in WoK (something grabbing Shallan's leg in Shadesmar) might be that Honor's Splintering also made Shadesmar dangerous on Roshar, so raw Spiritual power being flung around might be dangerous regardless of what Shard it originally belonged to. I would also guess that WoK's abilities are actually fairly free of Roshar, to contradict you completely. Stormlight looks like pure Spiritual energy, so far as we can tell, and I can't see why Kaladin wouldn't be able to draw upon already-infused spheres if we were to teleport him to Scadrial. You can probably also work in a hack to get raw power from some source other than Stormlight, if you try hard enough.

^The origin of your "shadow" terminology is actually rather fatally against you, since there exist beings which exist primarily in the Physical and are only shadowed in the Cognitive. So "the physical plane" is most certainly not "a shadow of the idealized forms in the cognitive/spiritual".

^That strikes me as a somewhat contrived way to define "removed", but if that's how you read it, then okay. As for everything else, I think that you are profoundly wrong, as I have said several times by now. But now is the time for you to start your new thread, if you want to continue this line of discussion. I don't feel like burning an entire page of a thread about Realmatics on a side issue for a second time.

A- That is metaphorical. There is no serious evidence to support this theory. Please either correct me in some grave misinterpretation of what you meant or start your own thread in the TES section so as not to clog this thread up. To be clear, I am currently reading you as saying that Forging works by altering the soul of any given soulstamp through carving and then transferring that soul out of the soulstamp and into stamped objects. B- I am still waiting on what you meant by "The red smoke of a soul resisting a forging tastes as sweet as the black smoke of nightblood removing a breath". Although you can just throw that into your new thread as well, I suppose. Be sure to drop a link.

^So you think that the souls of soulstamps are modified and then passed on to stamped objects? If so, that seems patently wrong. EDIT: (reply to your edit): "Tastes as sweet"?

Is this another "sentience" problem of different meanings? I took you as saying that Forging would be capable of removing person A's original ("real") soul and placing it in person B. "Forging will probably involve transferring a soul into a body, or removing a soul from a body." When you say "transferred", what do you mean? Do you mean that a soul goes from A to B, or that a soul is created out of scratch and then "transferred" into B? And, once again, I took "removed" to mean that you actually remove someone's original soul (and then possibly put it in someone else), and that was how I spoke of it. And that does not happen in TES.

If you're taking requests, I think some easy way to access our notifications would be nice. Also, posts list peoples' profile pictures, rather than their avatars, at the moment.

You're more than a bit off on the meanings here, Nepene. Here is the full line of conversation, in case you forgot. You were talking about taking a full, living human soul from one person and sticking it into another, claiming that such a process could show whether or not your theory of Breath having "emotional memory" held true. I said that that soul would be artificially created. I was right. Forging doesn't pull out peoples real souls, just puts in artificial ones which can then be removed. And, coincidentally, their emotions seem to work just fine. I don't recall us agreeing on either emotional fortitude or physical strength, although I agree we had a bit of useful discussion on the human-form behavior of Awakened objects. EDIT: First of all, I tweaked my response to Nepene a bit to be a bit more thought out and detailed, since I was rushed when I first wrote it. Sorry about that. Second: I read "along the right lines" a bit pessimistically, to be honest. Kind of like "sure, Columbus, you can definitely get to China by sailing West. Good luck with that." Okay, maybe not that bad. But still. I was definitely wrong on the specifics of how the Spiritual Realm's "ruleset" worked, since it appears to be through manifold individual connections rather than simple laws. I also had a laughably unclear division between the Cognitive and Spiritual, which TES has hopefully cleared up a bit. I am pleased that my supposition that objects in the Cosmere are treated as aggregates turned out to be true, although I didn't guess at the Cognitive Realms as being what defined when a group of objects were to be treated as a whole Also, it's important to recall that Brandon said that in reference to an exceptionally condensed summary of the theory, so could drastically disagree on many of its details.

I can see that being completely intentional on TLR's part: "Hey guys, I kind of rule the world now. Also, coincidentally, I've decided to standardize the alphabet a bit. Hey, don't those strikes look just a bit like spikes!? They are somewhat similar--no doubt also coincidentally--to the spikes driven through the eyes of my unstoppable minions! Whadya' know!"

@Sombrero I am still awaiting your follow-up. I think Forging works primarily on Spiritual aspects (Spiritual Identity, precisely), but some Cognitive-shenanigans is possible, since we see memory being messed with directly. Personally, I think the memory bit is more of a "justification" for changing Identity (in order to get past the "plausibility check") more so than the real goal of the Forgeries we've seen, so it is probably secondary, in that regard, and thus not the primary cause for changes in identity which accompany changes in memory (see: Gaotona's personality immediately being affected by Shai's "brother died" stamp, without any need for Gaotona to access or process the memory beforehand). Yes, this kind of theorizing is inordinately fun, I'll admit. That's why I spend far too much time doing it. @Senor Fresh The initial post covers most of it. If you care to read on (though I wouldn't blame you if you didn't: there is a lot of it) I've acquired a bit of subtlety since then, TES has thrown things in a new (though I don't think contradictory) light, and my Awakening section also served to clarify some of my meanings, but the meat is in the OP. There is the quagmire of my war with Nepene--which provides an exhaustive account of my theory of Awakening, but little else of value (totally not biased here)--then some thought-provoking discussion with Odium's Shard after that. The initial theory had a lot of thought because I had far too much free time on my hands. Better to get something on paper so people can discuss it than slowly mull over it for months and then mega-avalanche everyone. (*cough cough*) Sazed needn't be wrong, merely incomplete. We have several tripartite definitions of the Realms, each of which describes a slightly different aspect of them. Here are the three I can think of off the top of my head: (53, TES ePub) (the one you are referencing, obviously) (A tweet answering a question about genetics, I believe).Two of them reference the soul, one defining it further as an the essence of an object. That same one, from the most knowledgeable Realmaticist (totally just made that name up) we've yet heard from, also included connections. In fact, I hereby retroactively pat myself on the back for the "connections" bit. That's the kind of thing I talked about to justify gravity being called a "spiritual gravitational bond" in the WoK Ars Arcanum. I think I was a bit off in the OP, though, in that the "ruleset" of the Spiritual Realm may be better described as a set of identical "connections" so far as natural laws are concerned. Although, perhaps the ruleset is a high-order directive, but practially implemented using individual connections. So Sazed wasn't "wrong"; and the fact that we know gravitational bonds, as well as all other kinds of identity and connections, are based in the Spiritual argues strongly against putting all the complexity into the Cognitive and leaving the Spiritual as a simple well of power. This is all good analysis, just sadly addressing a state of affairs which is not the case in the Cosmere as we know it. If you came over to the dark light side, you could do much evil good with your powers! *cackle cackle* I have some thoughts on Forging hidden over here somewhere, I think. I hope I wasn't too harsh. EDIT: Wow, lots of typos. I apologize.