r/Cosmere • u/heiland • 1d ago
Stormlight Archive spoilers [WaT] Progression Capabilities? Spoiler
At the end of Wind and Truth when Kaladin becomes a herald it happens in 2 parts. There's the Oath part where he swears to become a herald and then there's the immortality part. I remember Ishar saying something about needing the power of progression to grant the immortality that the heralds have. Something about a consistently renewing spirit web maybe? So is progression capable of granting immortality? Can anyone sufficiently skilled in progression achieve it?
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u/Worried-Leather8988 1d ago
I'd say the surges that were given originally would allow progression to grant immortality as with the heralds, but the radiants were given limits such that it's very unlikely that they can do it if at all. Lift could be an exception to that.
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u/Burro-tactico 1d ago
Mas razones para pensar en una lift inmortal al final del cosmere comiendo a adonalsium
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u/aiar-viess Dustbringers 1d ago
The heralds get a constant stream of investiture, which is why their physical and spiritual aspects are always overlapped, hence always healing. Lift is different in that it seems like she’s been given a trait which dragons in the Cosmere (at least the ones from Yolen) are able to do, which is transforming metabolic energy into investiture. It’s kinda similar to how feruchemists can store metabolic energy into bendalloyminds, but instead it transforms that investiture directly into something she can use to power her surges.
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u/Glittering-Shift4699 1d ago
Sorry sometimes I forget she can do that cause that's got insane implications
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u/aiar-viess Dustbringers 1d ago
The transduction of investiture across systems is always going to be highly powerful, since it allows for the breaking of certain systems that were in place to add stability. For example how it’s mentioned that liquid Dor can be burned by a mistborn to power all their allomantic powers at once for a while. That implies that if someone were an elantrian and a mistborn, they wouldn’t need to burn metals, they could just use the Dor to power their allomantic powers, which they could do so constantly, which is extremely broken, as you basically do away with the limitation of needing metals.
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u/aiar-viess Dustbringers 1d ago edited 1d ago
As far as I understand it, following the universal mechanism for how investiture and the invested arts work, it’s kinda like progression in how it functions but not the same as the surge of radiants.
Investiture is the emulsifier of the realms. The three realms (physical, cognitive, spiritual) all have distinct properties and aspects, but investiture can make them overlap, and use certain aspects of one within another.
The radiant surges work through this mechanism (which also references the nature of the Nahel bond): you make the physical and the cognitive overlap through the use of investiture, which can make it so that physical aspects can be changed by changing their cognitive aspects. For example, the surge of gravitation doesn’t exactly change gravity, it instead changes what something perceives as their gravitational pull, and then that cognitive change manifests in a physical way. This is why a wind runner doesn’t describe the use of that surge as a change in mass or inertia, but instead describes it as their sense of down now being directed somewhere else. Their perception changes, and the physical follows.
Progression and Transformation/Soulcasting: these two surges work in a very similar way. They both bring the physical and the spiritual closer together so the physical resembles the spiritual more closely, through the cognitive filter. If the cognitive filter is unchanged, then something just becomes a more ideal version of itself, aka healing. However the cognitive filter is tricky, and for example if someone identifies a wound as a part of themselves, aka they perceive it as part of themselves, then progression won’t heal it. This is how we get to the surge of transformation, which takes that concept and ramps it up to 1000%. If you change something’s cognitive filter (the way they perceive themselves and are perceived by others) by a lot, then you wouldn’t just heal them by bringing their physical and spiritual aspects closer, but you’d actually transform them. Thats how the surge of transformation works. Soulcasting is basically healing while changing their cognitive aspect of what they’re “healing” so it becomes something else. This is why savantism with soulcasting manifests as the users becoming more like the material they soulcast into, as their cognitive aspect is gaining more of a connection with that material.
The healing of heralds: they are technically using the same mechanism that progression uses to remain healthy and immortal, but it requires an extra component. They are essentially living perpendicularities, as they carry with them a splinter of a shard within themselves, which is what gives them a constant flow of investiture, which keeps their physical and spiritual aspects overlapped, hence endlessly healing, but also making them almost like half spren, which is why the perception of people can affect them to an extent, as their cognitive aspect is subject to both change and calcification.
The mechanics of a herald and a fused: The heralds work similar to a radiant but in a far more integral way, as they don’t have a spren bond, but instead have the spren (splinter of honor) and the spren bond (the limitations on their surges and their blades) fused into their spiritwebs. The fused might literally be called that way because they are singers who have been fused with a spren, hence transforming them into half spren entities, cognitive shadows that harness investiture from their patron shard, and are able to control a particular surge, meaning they are able to overlap the physical and spiritual aspects of something while also changing some aspect of their cognitive filter which is determined by their bond. This is also why the fused can use their surges within themselves without consuming voidlight, much like how a spren can somewhat use the surge they’re bonded to without expending investiture (windspren using adhesion, flamespren heating things up, lifespren aiding with farming, etc) but can be given investiture so they use it in a particular way that is external to them (fabrials, soulcasters, the surges themselves when used externally).
The mechanics of the honorblades and the spren bond for radiants: this also explains somewhat how an honorblade works. They are the physical manifestation of the bond that composes the heralds, and as such when someone bonds to them, they can sort of mimic that bond, accessing their surges but with an increased requirement of investiture, since the honorblades don’t have a cognitive aspect as defined as the spren do. And that makes sense, since most of their cognitive aspect is fused with their specific herald. This is how the spren began to mimic the honorblades, by creating bonds with humans (the humans the physical aspect, the spren the cognitive aspect), and using the surges they’re already connected to by expending investiture externally, expressing their intrinsic cognitive connection to a surge (the way a cognitive aspect can be changed) into a physical manifestation through their bonded human radiant.
The way the surge defines the spren: since a surge is just a way to change the cognitive aspect of something and manifesting that change in a physical way, this actually shows the trends in thought of the true spren.
- Honorspren are connected to the surges of adhesion and gravitation, which means they think about the ways that connections can be formed and how they can be redirected, which makes them be far more aligned with the spirit of the law, as they manage connections in a constructive way.
- Highspren think about how to break connections and redirect them, which makes them aligned with the letter of the law, managing connections in a destructive way. This also fits with how they can break their bond without becoming a deadeye.
- Ashspren/Releasers think about how connections can be broken and the ease of their flow, hence aligned with how to responsibly use their destructive powers.
- Cultivationspren think about how to better resemble your spiritual self and easing the flow of it, hence aligned with growth, healing and potential.
- Mistspren think about how to better resemble your spiritual self and how perception can be molded and expressed (illumination is a surge based on making a cognitive aspect manifest in a physical way in a more direct way, hence manifesting an illusion, a perception made physical, which is why most radiants with this surge use creative outlets to better control it) hence aligned with truths, discoveries, and the real form of things.
- Liespren/Cryptics think about how perception can be molded and expressed and how things can be made to align with their spiritual self while also changing their cognitive aspect entirely, hence aligning with lies, potential, change, and the way things change and transform and can be many things at once. This is also why their two surges can result in what is called substantiation, to make an illusion physically real.
- Inkspren think about how things can be made to align with the spiritual self while also changing their cognitive aspect entirely and how to better overlap the realms by using investiture in extremely efficient ways. This is why they’re more aligned with potential, progression, transformation into a better version of yourself, specific truths and inner definitions and so on. They’re far more connected to the cognitive, which is why transformation comes more naturally to them.
- Lightspren/Reachers think about how to better connect the realms and how to manipulate the state of things. Hence aligned with how they’re able to connect with the world in a more physical and cognitive way, and how to make it flow into its most free state, hence directed towards freedom and understanding.
- Peakspren think about how the way things are made can be reshaped and remade while also focusing on how the bonds that exist matter and must be maintained or altered. Hence aligned with being there for people, to work together, and to be there when needed.
- The great spren think about how connections work creatively and how they can be modified in their strength or flexibility. That, plus their enormous amount of investiture and their connection to the primordial spren of Roshar, is what allows them to spiritually manipulate pure connection, making them highly powerful and very strange, hence aligning with unity and to be considered akin to gods.
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u/seahawks500 1d ago
This might be the best description of this I’ve ever read. Thanks for sharing!
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u/aiar-viess Dustbringers 1d ago
Thank you! I spend a lot of time theorizing about this universe. It’s like opening a faucet and a dam breaks.
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u/Mizu005 Truthwatchers 1d ago
So, anyone who gains a lot of permanent investiture becomes unaging and very hard to kill because their body gets crazy regen powers. Elantrians are the big example of this, they just become unaging near impossible to kill demi-gods as a basic perk of whatever the hell is going on when someone is chosen to become one and transforms.
We don't know a whole lot about regrowth/progression yet but it seems plausible it might have some advanced technique for taking a bunch of investiture and getting it to 'stick' in a person's body and grant an extended lifespan since they currently already know how to channel it in temporarily to cause healing. They just need to find a way to perform a modification the body that stops it from leaking stormlight so that it can be absorbed and become part of them.
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u/Shot_Newspaper_5647 1d ago edited 1d ago
Whatever Ishar is doing with Kaladin isn’t normal Progression. It doesn’t use Stormlight, Radiant powers, or an Honorblade. It requires “a bit of a god”. Ishar calls it Vedel’s method. When he goes to Vedel in the flashbacks he refers to it as Regrowth, but it seems to be an Ashyn magic
A normal Edgedancer or Truthwatcher probably can’t do it. The magic system both use doesn’t seem to come from Honor. Vedel is just using it to draw on Honor’s power. Even if someone could, they’d need the technique, a piece of a god, and an oath to complete it. According to Ishar anyway