Ripheus23
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Everything posted by Ripheus23
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In other threads it has been debated what the actual notion of a spren is, beyond the "self-aware Investiture" or what, that seems too indiscriminate. Like, how is Nightblood a "robot" spren, why would Rosharans classify Adonalsium as a spren, etc.? Now first off, Sylphrena's little-pieces-of-Honor description reminds me of the notion of tropes in philosophy (not literature). "Flakes of Forms" you might say. Now between particulars and Forms are concepts. So let's say there's a "unit of existence" in each Realm, so objects = Physical, tropes/concepts = Cognitive, & universals (Forms/Spiritwebs) = Spiritual. I think there's a WoB positing that the Spiritual Realm is a domain of Platonic-like entities. So, let's say that sentient physical beings have an innate correspondence between all three Realms. Entities that exist only as spren and Spiritwebs need to be tied, bonded, to individual physical objects, to act in the Physical Realm, even to appear (though this binding is more atmospheric). A Cognitive Shadow is not a spren originally, then, and would not be said to be a spren except "technically," in that a CS is an entity that originally corresponded to a Physical unit but now only corresponds to a spren and a Spiritweb and which is the author of its self-concept. A "robot" spren is a physical object that does what spren do, i.e. expresses a concept (Nightblood expresses the concept "Destroy evil"). Spren are self-aware Investiture in the sense that their having a Spiritweb makes the concepts into mindful beings, and this is mediated by the general power of Investiture. (Objects with only a physical and mental, but not spiritual, essence, have probably shown up as such in the Cosmere but I won't guess where at the moment.) Anyway, then, there used to be (and for some there still is) an idea that God doesn't "have" properties, but is its properties. What do we call a concept that is an individual object? What do we call an entity that doesn't have a Spiritweb but is its own Spiritweb? This would have been Adonalsium. It had the full complement of relations (to each Realm) but the only positive value was relative to its Spiritweb. You might say, it was the "spren" of the Spiritual Realm per se. Or you'd say it was the Spiritweb of the entire Realm. The Shattering, then, would have required the Spiritual Realm itself to be Shattered, maybe?
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I suspect the landscape might have caused the Chasm of its own accord, but not necessarily in order to weaken the Elantrians. Might've more been like birth-pangs/shifting-in-your-sleep?
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A WoB to fuel the fire: Also, can't find it but there's a WoB where Sanderson talks about worrying that he's maybe not insulating Roshar enough, narrative-wise.
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They both shape-shift. That's the only evidence I have.
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Here's another one: The one where Sanderson rules out time travel to the past is from 2015, this one's from 2016, so maybe he's changed his mind in the meantime(!).
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Well Tien would've been another one, and whichever of Kaladin's parents could be traced back likewise (maybe both could ). And maybe there would've been others, too, but they might all be dead (for whatever reason). Contrived,* true, but fantasy worlds often have a deficit when it comes to representing the true demographic scales (for example, Roshar has more countries than any other fantasy world I am aware of, but it still has way less than the real world). *Much as Talenel holding out against torture for 4500 years is perhaps contrived?
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Most of the worlds we've been shown don't know a lot about other worlds, so the broader Cosmere would not know about Vax. Now whether it can be more easily known to the in-between/more-developed worlds, is a different matter. Notice I said "can be" instead of "is." The point is that Vax is not as relatively mysterious to people in the Cosmere as it is to us. EDIT: So not only is the contrast between Sel and Vax, but between {Sel} and {Taldain and Vax}. This makes me think the Initiation process on Vax is substantially comparable to that on Taldain. Unfortunately, I read the WS graphic novels in a blur so I don't recall if they described the Initiation process.
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[Resident introduction scene.]
[Library scene.]
… The Amphitheater rises around a dark-marked tree, a cedar with a black square painted in the center. Simon thinks of it like a dead television screen with no possible remote except his own—or another parkgoer’s—mind. He kneels there, praying and remembering: to his mysterious God, and the man Dean who he feels would have loved to see this park.
Awhile later Simon makes his way to the Hall of Cedars, a stretch of trees with no lesser foliage closing the gaps between the great sentinels. When he makes his way half-way to the overturned crown of roots at the heart of a small glade, he stops in dread.
There’s a deer standing before him, not running. One horn broke off of late, and the other grows like the horn of unicorn. So, a unicorn anyway, technically. Its eyes take in Simon warily, but not fearfully.
“Only one who believes in unicorns/Is only one ever killed by one,” Simon mumbles, imagining an Internet meme with his face, stupidly grinning, for the background.
The deer reflects upon the man, though Simon has no idea why or to what effect. He sits in the glade and the creature continues to walk around him from a distance.
He wonders whether Dean would have killed the animal for some reason; Simon never figured out if Dean goes hunting from time to time. The thought makes him as sick as daydream nightmares in which Mr. Utah ravishes some unguessable girl. “I just want to find a guy to talk to,” Dean had said years ago, before he disappeared. “You know, I think the Law of Attraction is the reason we met.”
Evidently not.
Wind haunts the cedars’ sky.
Simon tries to read a book.
The wind pushes the pages back and forth.
Hello, Simon.
He leaps up. “What the hell?” he says.
Though I am indeed Hell itself, I have much to say to you ere your torment begins.
Slamming the book closed, Simon looks in as many directions as he can. The deer, far away, looks back. “Don’t… don’t leave…?” Simon whispers to it. If it counts as a unicorn, maybe it can protect him?
It will be killed when I wish it to. You cannot protect it. You can protect nothing, Simon.
He fiddles in a pocket, gripping his little bottle of antipsychotic medication.
In the beginning, there was a Machine…
Simon runs from the Hall, the deer running too, both away from each other and the words of darkness.
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First joke: when Brandon is talking to himself and faces a mystery, he mumbles, "WAFO," which means, "Write and find out." Second joke: Fogborn: The Final Empire is about people known as Fogborn, who absorb a fog that creeps across their world. Along the way, they deal with fogwraiths and Foggings. This joke came to an end when the parallel universe in which it existed was destroyed by the Shard of Ruin, who was known there as the Shard of Dismantling.
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Will transfinite numbers ever play a major role in the Cosmere?
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Only ones I've found so far.
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Like, he saw his own self in the future, and extrapolated backwards what led to him being that form in the future? I could see that
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Hmm... It seems there's a difference between Realmatic and Cosmere awareness (difference between metaphysics and astrophysics). The WoB only has Khriss being the most Cosmere-aware. Khriss knows more about what forms Investiture has taken across the Cosmere, granted. But we don't know how many types of Investiture she can use, and I daresay if Hoid can use more, he'd have much more Realmatic knowledge as such (in terms of internal-empirical evidence, for instance). Anyway, "a very Cosmere-aware audience in Silverlight" is vague. Silverlight is said to be a full-fledged city, explicitly not a town. I tried finding statistics on the University of Paris from long ago, and BYU nowadays, as far as coming up with a plausible range for an estimated student body + faculty at a Silverlight university (the WoBs indicate more than one university, to note), no luck but as I said, I'm not saying Vax is well-known tout court but it's still not the Cosmere equivalent of some hyper-obscure geographical mystery IRL (like, once upon a time, whether Troy existed and if so, where). The Ars Arcanum essays have the feel of undergrad intro materials more than all-out dissertations. EDIT: I don't like eating Top Ramen dry
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Hoid did *not* alloy his lerasium with another god metal
Ripheus23 replied to PallonianFire's topic in Cosmere Discussion
I'm caught in a time loop. -
*puts tongue back in cheek* When he named a character "Obliteration"
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I think the Ire created the black spheres while on Vax, searching for a way to become avatars of Autonomy, and that they know what the Evil is and can explain how Adonalsium was Shattered. *pulls tongue out of cheek*
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Kaladin is the only living of the latest-born descendants of the first Windrunner, maybe. (Or some other analogy to Syl's being the Ancient Daughter or what.)
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Ooooh, I just ate a third noodle. So, when Vax is brought up in-world, it seems as if the characters act as if they're referring to a well-known subject. That's definitely true of Khriss' reference, and though Ati wasn't of sound mind or what when he referred to Vax, it's not like he thought he was referring to something supermysterious. So, ironically (paradoxically), Vax is not a mystery in the Cosmere, at least not to Cosmere-aware folks. Now, if this is so, Vax must be something that can be known about in-between the less-developed/more-isolated Shardworlds. If magic systems can be specifically grounded(!) in the relationship between planets and Shards, let's suppose the general rule is that magic systems are grounded in the relationship between large celestial objects and Shards. In the Wikipedia article on the heat death of the universe, in the "Controversies" section, it is said: ... which might connect up with Adonalsium's law of thermodynamics, to boot. Anyway, what if Vax is a star? Then the magic system at the very least would have something to do with being able to sustain organic life on a star (or maybe... a black hole... or some other peculiar gravitationally-formed object*...) *For an example in the literature: ever heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg?
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Is it because sulfur's atomic number is 16 or something? Re: the OP... So first off, at least according to Wikipedia, there are already 4 LoTs: So it could be that Sanderson is just sneaking in the zeroth law and relating it to the energy-matter-Investiture triad (as three systems in abstract equilibrium, anyway). This would have to do with Adonalsium just by virtue of Adonalsium having to do with Investiture, however. I can't think of another guess yet
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Though to be sure, the method of initiation is different in every case, it seems. I think my instinct is that Khriss contrasted Vax with [Sel? I don't remember] so the retro-psychological question would be, "What is it about [Selish] magic that prompted Khriss to bring up Vax specifically instead of just speaking generally?" So the inference would sort of be to something like, "There's something about [Sel] that brings Vax to mind [a Cosmere scholar's mind]," which is at least Noodle Number 2.
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Hoid did *not* alloy his lerasium with another god metal
Ripheus23 replied to PallonianFire's topic in Cosmere Discussion
Everyone knows that Hoid alloyed the lerasium with a black sphere while on Vax, investigating the Secret Project on behalf of Bavadin. Sheesh! -
Then all the Shards could be equated to Might as it requires strength to destroy, create, fulfill ambition, cultivate, hate, honor, etc.?
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At the library, I found a copy of the updated/10th Anniversary/w/e Elantris. In it, I found out that there's a process on Vax that is similar to the whole "you have to be broken" thing, about becoming an Investiture-wielder, or whatever. Not a lot to go on, granted, but let's pull a whole bag of Top Ramen out of this one noodle, eh?
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I know the "official"/canon OB answer, but there was another thread where a poster expressed discontent with the, "Oh it's because the humans were the original invaders," reason for the Recreance. So I was just wondering if indeed there was an even deeper motive in this case...
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I was thinking of a Shard of Might not for the sake of opposition to Weakness per se but because being almighty is another, much more common description of God. I'm going to suggest that, aside from "Autonomy," Dominion is the Shard with the most easily misunderstood name. We usually think "Dominion" and "Domination" together, but Sanderson was going more with "Dominion"-"Domain," as in nationality, hence the nationalization of Selish magic. I think.