Fanghur Rahl

At the very least Renarin doesn’t.

Does Szeth count?

I suspect that he’s referring to her making multiple avatars; I don’t think avatars are a type of splinter though. We don’t really know what they are.

Actually, technically speaking autism is an illness or at least a disorder (to be clear, I’m not in any way using these terms in a pejorative sense), at least insofar as what we mean by those terms medically. It is a deviation from the ‘norm’ resulting from various physiological and neurological factors. But I don’t think Stormlight could heal it, because it would effectively be an essential aspect of how you see yourself, so it wouldn’t ‘register’ as such to the Stormlight. Whether that would still be the case if the autism was the result of some kind of brain injury that occurred later in life or something of that nature is a different story; in that case, I suspect that it probably would be healed

As I understand it, all Rashek did was connect his mind to the power and effectively tell it what to do, but the power never actually became part of his being. The closest direct comparison to what I’m thinking of is the Returned, since as I understand it at least, Endowment literally modifies their souls or spirit webs or what-have-you such that the piece of her power becomes a permanent aspect of the person, regardless of whether or how they choose to use it. The difference is that the Returned are still fully physical human beings for all practical purposes, and not that much more powerful all things considered than any other person. So the basic precedent for what I’m talking about is already canonical, I’m just wondering whether Endowment or some other Shard could amp it up several orders of magnitude and effectively make mini-Shards out of them, complete with Ascending to post-physical status like the full Shard. As far as I know, a Shard can’t use up all their power and go back to being an ordinary human like Rashek did.

Great, thanks.

Plus, like I said, in Rashek’s case the ‘Ascension’ was only temporary, not permanent like in the case of a Shard or the kind of ‘Shangel’ I’m thinking of.

What can I say? I’m hyper-analytical. lol.

I wasn’t the one who posted spoilers, but setting that aside, how exactly do I do the ‘hide text’ thing? I’ve been trying to figure it out but I haven’t been able to, not on my phone at least.

Mistborn Era 1 spoilers:

Like I said before, Rashek would not be an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about because the Well didn’t permanently change him, at least not in the sense that he would have been if he’d taken a full Shard. Rashek just used part of Preservation’s power and then went back to being basically a normal human. He didn’t permanently become post-physical like the Shards do. As for the avatars of Autonomy, they might qualify; we don’t have enough information yet. But I’m under the impression that her avatars don’t start out as human and then Ascend, rather they’re formed whole cloth from raw Investiture of Autonomy. Arguably they would qualify in status as being roughly equivalent to what I’m talking about, but I’m more interested in whether a Shard could do it to an ordinary flesh and blood human being.

Fair enough, I guess I’ll have to defer to Brandon on that, although I’m still not entirely sure that it’s an internally coherent model of a possible reality.

Nah, Matt Smith or David Tennant.

Blasphemy! We all know that Time Lords change faces over time!

Mistborn Era 1 spoilers:

Because I was under the impression (falsely it would seem based on that WOB) that the Cognitive and Physical realms are in at least some sense completely reducible that what’s happening in the Spiritual Realm rather than being their own independent aspects of reality that were ‘created’ by the Spiritual, that’s where the disconnect is, since that clearly isn’t what you meant. So I was just confused because it sounded like you pretty much agreed with me. Though like I said, that WOB would seem to suggest that you’re right and I’m wrong.

Agreed. I personally think that the very notion of ‘outside space and time’ isn’t even coherent. Regardless, I was just spitballing. I just really like Hamilton’s idea because of how original it is.

Agreed. The Emperor’s Soul could make an awesome movie.

Personally, my favourite theory (or model if you prefer) is that it’s something vaguely akin to what happens when people die in Peter F. Hamilton’s ‘Night’s Dawn’ trilogy. Basically, everyone has a soul that survives physical death, and it’s basically some kind of mind-imprinted quantum energy as opposed to mind-imprinted Investiture, and once a person dies their soul enters what it coincidentally also referred to as ‘the Beyond’. If they aren’t able to accept their death, they basically stay trapped there, able to get glimpses of the world they left behind (kind of like Kelsier in the Well), but if the person is able to come to grips with and accept their death, their soul moves to the end point of the universe, called the Omega Point, where all souls merge together and effectively become the God (or at least architect) of whatever the next universe is. Almost certainly not what Brandon has in mind, but hey, who knows?

Either that or the Beyond is just the end of the universe.

I'm not entirely sure that that's a coherent view. I'm not sure though because I suspect you and I may be using the same terms to mean very different things. What exactly do you mean when you agree that Physical and Cognitive appear to emerge from Spiritual? Because I'm using the term 'emergent' in the sense used by philosophers and scientists. Namely, a behaviour of a complex system interacting in a certain way that is not possessed by any individual members of the system; for example, the brain gives rise to the mind, but the individual cells that make up the brain are not themselves conscious. That is to say, my understanding is that whatever occurs in the Spiritual Realm ultimately 'gives rise' to the phenomenon of Cognition, which in turn gives rise to Physicality (or at least the appearance of physicality to whatever sentient beings exist in the system), or maybe Spiritual gives rise to Physical which in turn gives rise to Cognitive. That's why I said the other day that I may be entirely misunderstanding the structure that Brandon is trying to convey here, but it's confusing because he doesn't rigorously describe it and sometimes describes differently on different occasions it in seemingly mutually exclusive ways.

Well even you agreed that it at least appears that the Physical and Cognitive Realms appears to be in some sense emergent from the Spiritual Realm, or did I misunderstand what you said? Because in this context, ‘not fundamental’ is just another term for ‘emergent’.

The only problem with that is what I said earlier, namely that it ultimately leads to a kind of chicken/egg paradox. If the Physical Realm is ultimately the result of the Cognitive Realm, and what happens in the Physical Realm affects the Cognitive Realm, then which is really the more fundamental of the two?

Forests of Hell would be one hell of a creepy movie. lol.

The Returned aren’t actually Splinters themselves though are they? Aren’t they people who Endowment gave one of her Splinters?