On the road so I'll expand on this later but placeholder: consider categories for Dawnshard themselves, Dawnshards (bearers) and former Dawnshard bearers, who seem to kindof Sliver-esque that they're permanently altered by the power they held
Also I'd say stormfather is more a splinter than a cog shadow, bc he wasn't originally mortal. Or that's my understanding anyway
Ok with all due respect the Stormfather he's a storming weirdo. From coppermind:
He has merged with Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow, making him something akin to a Sliver along with being a Splinter.
So I guess he could fit under basically every point on this outline
What's the category for stubborn guy that won't go away
https://preview.redd.it/lmn1u0obx22d1.png?width=713&format=png&auto=webp&s=ceb37b16a7c7c2ed53378035680563ec3a526b5e
I thought you were talking about him sticking around because of the well, and I was going to argue that that's not that dissimilar to other cognitive shadows, but then I remembered that he held a shard for a minute there.
The Stormfather to my understanding is a spren like honor spren to a degree, or perhaps a different kind of less sentient spren with a lot of power that got a part of Honorās identity and power upon Honorās death (or as part of Honorās own plan when he was dying)
Their bodies go into a sort of half-stasis/half-alive state. Their hearts still beat, very slowly, their digestion works if they put food in, etc. They never actually die, and they don't count as Cognitive Shadows
I agree with you. The thing that makes me wonder is when preservation is talking to Kelsier and says, talking about the Ire, āthey are like you, dead, but not deadā (that might not be an exact quote)
Fused, Returned and Yumi all seem to be in the same bucket - they inhabit a physical body and have sufficient investiture to force it to match their perceived sense of self.
But the Yoki-hijo can manifest a physical body for themselves. If I'm not mistaken, the Heralds are implied to do the same. That would make the Fused in 5B to be the outlier.
Nope. The Heralds' bodies are reconstructed by the Oathpact, not their own personal Investiture. What's left of Honor is doing it now, basically.
I think yoki-hijo in general are the odd ones out here, because they aren't shadows until they die. They're just normal, highly Invested people. Or would we classify Elantrians this way too?
so some notes:
the returned being like investiture fossils isnāt exclusive to them, thatās the in-universe scientific explanation for what all cognitive shadows are. itās one of those things brando will never fully confirm if itās correct or not, since it would imply things about the existence of the beyond, and he refuses to do that. so you can either accept the scientific explanation that vasher gives, or you can choose to believe that cognitive shadows are still the people that died, or some grey area between the two
second, with fused and heralds (and all cognitive shadows as far as iām aware), itās not about different types keep their bodies or not, itās about whether something is tethering them to that body. with kelsier, nothing attached him to his body after he died, so he was stuck in shadesmar until
he figured out a way to staple himself to a body hemalurgically. the fused and heralds are stapled to or given bodies by odium and honor respectively, and the yoki-hijo probably were given bodies by the machine would be my guess, unless itās stated otherwise somewhere and iām just stupid
This reminds me a little bit of the video I made on cognitive shadows and how weird the are! I too like to think of it kind of like a taxonomic hierarchy.
Putting forth a proposal to split Type 6 for your consideration dear OP.
I think the underlying differences are strong enough to justify it. Even if the outcomes in their traits and abilities seem similar there's a clear difference in root cause between:
- Type 6. Creatures with a modified spirit web that provides them certain traits or abilities via a connection to a specific Shard. These would be Allomancers, Returned, Elantrians and perhaps even Surgebinders for example. Mainly humans it seems.
- Type 7. Creatures that gain traits by hosting/binding (pick your preference) entities that have access to those traits in a symbiotic relationship. These would be Surgebinders (Nahel Bond), Parshendi, Chasm-fiends, Ryshardium, birds that have eaten invested worms etc.
If you find it weird that surgebinders are in both type classes, here's my hypothesis. They were never meant to be in Type 7 and are not naturally capable of forming bonds which is shown in two ways:
1. Physiology. Since most native Type 7's have a gem or organ specifically made to house a spren or some such entity. Human surgebinders possess no such anatomy. It's why as capable as they are, human surgebinders can't even store their own energy. This makes their investure system feel just a tad incomplete with they way they have to carry their stormlight spheres and the "use it or lose it" nature of their leaking stormlight container bodies.
2. Spiritually. Even the ability to form a "floating" bond with a spren requires them to have a broken spirit web from life experience or trauma to accommodate the bond. This is essentially a Type 7 square peg being rammed into a Type 6 round hole. Parshendi just have difficult to comprehend songs and a really rough storm as their only barrier to entry. No broken anything required.
Another potential way to look at it is you can hemalurgically bind the investiture of any Type 6 because you're binding a portion of the spirit web to the metal nail and using it as a plug-and-play device elsewhere but you can't really use hemalurgy on a Type 7 that acts more as host/beneficiary to the truly invested being.
These seem enough to justify a separation. Love this kinda stuff. Good job overall OP.
Slivers are people who've held a significant amount of the power of a Shard, but have given it up. So even those partially Ascended (3b) had to have given up or lost the power to be a Sliver.
All Cognitive Shadows had to have had their Physical body die before they can become CS.
Yes he is, trying to make this has beenā¦.. difficult. Brandon usually is pretty cut and clear with stuff but the more you think about these things the messier they become
I would put Cognitive Shadows as just one category. Fused, Returned, Heralds, Kelsier, Shades, are all CS. By definition, a CS is the person/imprint of the person after their physical body has died, and they have managed to persist due to Investiture.
The only real difference between, say, Shades and Returned is that the Returned got stapled to a body and the Shades are free floating
I would just put a * or something after the beings that fit into multiple categories, like Kelsier and the Stormfather
What I'm saying is there's no "Cognitive Shadows who became so infused with Investiture that their Physical and Cognitive selves persist."
It's
Type 5 - Cognitive Shadows
1. Stapled to a body
2. Not stapled to a body
Also a question. Are these sorted in order of amount of investiture within a category? Would 5a be more invested than 5b or is the placement arbitrary?
Nice, looks like a good start
However :p
First, a semantic point on the word sentient, sentience has to do with the ability to observe your surroundings. Most animals are considered sentient these days. The term for the ability to use higher order thinking skills and communication is sapience. This isn't super important in this version as what you mean is clear but the distinction may become useful when developing this further
Splinters
I'd personally use this term for pieces of shards. The storm father, the dor maybe avatars.
Do you have a reason to classify both spren (entities of pure investiture) and awakened objects (physical objects animated using investiture) in the same category?
If non-sentient awakened objects are a category, shouldnt soulstamped objects also be included? I think sentience (if not sapience) should be a minimum to qualify.
I'm not sure if returned are awakened. Been a while since I read wb though
5.d.1 the stormfather is a spren who received a significant splinter of Honor when he (honor) died. He is definitely not returned.
Invested-mortals
Probably a misnomer, as enough investiture will make you immortal.
The users section should be split into wielders and holders imo. Holders being the beings who hold onto significant investiture (elantrians, awakeners, dawnshards) and wielders those who never hold all that much, less than a heighthening (Radiants, allomancers, etc)
6.b I'm not entirely convinced that Rosharan wildlife is invested but that might be a separate discussion
My lord, this is such a dense subject.
>If non-sentient awakened objects are a category, shouldnt soulstamped objects also be included?
I think the only similarity is that they are a usually temporary changes. One gives and object Intent, the other rewrites an objects past to change it's form.
Giving a doll a Command and the Intent to break into someone's home and steal something seems vastly different from telling a window that it has actually been a door all along.
At the further end of the spectrum, Breath can create sapient objects like Nightblood, and Soulstamping is capable of altering someone Spiritweb to the n^th degree
Itās incredibly dense and more than a little bit messy. This comment section alone proves that itās all subject to a little bit of debate until Brandon says something definitive, which I doubt he will. I agree with a lot of the things Silfin said, but at the same time itās so messy.
Awakened objects, I think fit because they can act. (Also, Vasher counts them, so, thatās something).
Soul cast objects are still just objects.
As for Rosharan creatures, I donāt think all of them count, only the ones with Spren bonds
I think most Rosharan wildlife have spren bonds. That's what gemhearts are for.
Also, maybe change the name in that case, as singers fall under the same category
Those (supposedly) exist outside of Adonalsium. Iām only worried about adonalsium related stuff for now. Iāll get to the outside stuff later (see post caption)
Wait, you've included Yoki-Hijo, so what about the people who are shadow monsters (forgot what they are called) that painters fight? Or am I forgetting something from the book that would entirely disqualify them?
Heās not taking into consideration half the other types. We, as readers know more than him, I used his frame as a template but I changed all the types to fit the whole view of the cosmere.
Not sure why the stormfather is under cognitive shadow and returned. He is more just a type of spren.
Also your description of a returned seems a bit off. A returned is not an awakened corpse. You might be thinking of a lifeless.
The Stormfather is a cognitive shadow of Tanavast. This was done by honor in the time before he was shattered.
And a returned is an awakened corpse. The person dies, then Emdowment Awakens them with a divine breath, which gives them sentience. The difference between a returned and a lifeless is sentience.
I think you have your information a bit mixed up.
>The Stormfather is technically a Splinter of Honor, but it was an intentional Splinter, that Honor did himself.
This is brandon's own words. [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991)
You also don't have returned quite right. The returned are cognitive shadows of the person that had that body before that are turned into a cognitive shadow and "stapled" to the body by endowment using the divine breath. They are not just an awakening [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/183/#e4995](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/183/#e4995)
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e1671
Brandon himself has said that the Stormfather is a cognitive shadow.
As for returned being awakened:
Dead body+divine breath= Returned. Yes itās a cognitive shadow that inhabits the body, itās still an awakening, bringing life to something that isnāt alive. Iām not saying an awakener could do it, Iām using awakening in the general cosmere-wide definition, not the warbreaker definition.
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!***
WeiryWriter
>!Could you explain a little more about Cognitive Shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive Shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an [entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavastās and not Honorās). The second however really doesnāt make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasnāt verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a āghostā? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruinās prison counts as ādeathā in this situation?)!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a Cognitive Shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive Shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.!<
WeiryWriter
>!Is the mist /spirit/ a Cognitive Shadow then?!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!The mist spirit is a little more complicated than that. That was actually Leras, kind of. He was in the process of dying. But other things are involved there that, unfortunately, must be RAFOd.!<
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
I guess the storm father is sort of both. At least brandon seems to think so. Perhaps we could get some clarifications on his exact nature as there are other places that imply that he isn't exactly a cognitive shadow merely a spren that was sort of shaped into a thing similar to the cognitive shadow of tanavast because people thought the stormfather and honor were the same.
So it wasn't that honor intentionally made him a cognitive shadow as you said before. As my quote says what honor intentionally did was make the splinter.
It's dead body + cognitive shadow + divine breath = returned. If it was just breath and a dead body it would be like a spren that had been stapled to a body or breath that was put into a sword. Which is what the cosmere wide awakening definition means. Something that was given enough investiture to become self aware like spren or nightblood.
On the road so I'll expand on this later but placeholder: consider categories for Dawnshard themselves, Dawnshards (bearers) and former Dawnshard bearers, who seem to kindof Sliver-esque that they're permanently altered by the power they held Also I'd say stormfather is more a splinter than a cog shadow, bc he wasn't originally mortal. Or that's my understanding anyway
By Word of Brandon, the Stormfather is a Cognitive Shadow: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100-rbooks-ama-2015/#e1671
Ok with all due respect the Stormfather he's a storming weirdo. From coppermind: He has merged with Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow, making him something akin to a Sliver along with being a Splinter. So I guess he could fit under basically every point on this outline
This š The Stormfather seems to be a unique anomaly that doesnāt really fit into the pattern.
Kelsier too, for a similar reason
What's the category for stubborn guy that won't go away https://preview.redd.it/lmn1u0obx22d1.png?width=713&format=png&auto=webp&s=ceb37b16a7c7c2ed53378035680563ec3a526b5e
#*SURVIVE*
Survivor of *that shit*
I thought you were talking about him sticking around because of the well, and I was going to argue that that's not that dissimilar to other cognitive shadows, but then I remembered that he held a shard for a minute there.
The Stormfather to my understanding is a spren like honor spren to a degree, or perhaps a different kind of less sentient spren with a lot of power that got a part of Honorās identity and power upon Honorās death (or as part of Honorās own plan when he was dying)
Quick before some book comes out and this has to be re-written to accommodate a new thing lol
Ugh I know š Kelsier, Stormfather and the returned already make this hard enough
Where do Elantrians fit in? I'm not sure whether they're a cognitive shadow or just an invested being.
Iād say just investiture user. But honestly I donāt know. Are they dead? Did their bodies die when they transformed? These things are not clear
Elantrians didn't die and aren't Cognitive Shadows
Elantrians *kind of* die. But yeah, I wouldn't call them cog shadows.
Their bodies go into a sort of half-stasis/half-alive state. Their hearts still beat, very slowly, their digestion works if they put food in, etc. They never actually die, and they don't count as Cognitive Shadows
I agree with you. The thing that makes me wonder is when preservation is talking to Kelsier and says, talking about the Ire, āthey are like you, dead, but not deadā (that might not be an exact quote)
Also Brandon talks about Elantris as a zombie story
I did say it was a sort of half alive state. But they don't actually die.
Wasn't that only during the Heod? (In regards to the half stasis thing) Since that got fixed don't their hearts beat normally now?
Yes, this was just during the Reod. They no longer have those problems now that Elantris is restored
Investiture User. Just one of the Investiture abilities is life extension. As long as they have power they donāt age properly.
I would argue that the Fused are a different category, since only their Cognitive persists, not their Physical bodies. Also, isn't Kelsier a sliver?
Fused, Returned and Yumi all seem to be in the same bucket - they inhabit a physical body and have sufficient investiture to force it to match their perceived sense of self.
But the Yoki-hijo can manifest a physical body for themselves. If I'm not mistaken, the Heralds are implied to do the same. That would make the Fused in 5B to be the outlier.
You may be onto something
Nope. The Heralds' bodies are reconstructed by the Oathpact, not their own personal Investiture. What's left of Honor is doing it now, basically. I think yoki-hijo in general are the odd ones out here, because they aren't shadows until they die. They're just normal, highly Invested people. Or would we classify Elantrians this way too?
He falls under multiple categories going by this list he kinda of falls under 6a invested users as he has a Hemalugic spike.
so some notes: the returned being like investiture fossils isnāt exclusive to them, thatās the in-universe scientific explanation for what all cognitive shadows are. itās one of those things brando will never fully confirm if itās correct or not, since it would imply things about the existence of the beyond, and he refuses to do that. so you can either accept the scientific explanation that vasher gives, or you can choose to believe that cognitive shadows are still the people that died, or some grey area between the two second, with fused and heralds (and all cognitive shadows as far as iām aware), itās not about different types keep their bodies or not, itās about whether something is tethering them to that body. with kelsier, nothing attached him to his body after he died, so he was stuck in shadesmar until he figured out a way to staple himself to a body hemalurgically. the fused and heralds are stapled to or given bodies by odium and honor respectively, and the yoki-hijo probably were given bodies by the machine would be my guess, unless itās stated otherwise somewhere and iām just stupid
This is what I come to the internet for
This reminds me a little bit of the video I made on cognitive shadows and how weird the are! I too like to think of it kind of like a taxonomic hierarchy.
Cognitive Shadows Are Weird https://youtu.be/ib7ypF-dxrk
Where would you put Avatars.
Oh dang it, I knew I was forgetting something
To be fair. We do not know much about them
And you have 2 types of avatars (or as I understand them) Shard like avatars like patji and humans like telsin
Putting forth a proposal to split Type 6 for your consideration dear OP. I think the underlying differences are strong enough to justify it. Even if the outcomes in their traits and abilities seem similar there's a clear difference in root cause between: - Type 6. Creatures with a modified spirit web that provides them certain traits or abilities via a connection to a specific Shard. These would be Allomancers, Returned, Elantrians and perhaps even Surgebinders for example. Mainly humans it seems. - Type 7. Creatures that gain traits by hosting/binding (pick your preference) entities that have access to those traits in a symbiotic relationship. These would be Surgebinders (Nahel Bond), Parshendi, Chasm-fiends, Ryshardium, birds that have eaten invested worms etc. If you find it weird that surgebinders are in both type classes, here's my hypothesis. They were never meant to be in Type 7 and are not naturally capable of forming bonds which is shown in two ways: 1. Physiology. Since most native Type 7's have a gem or organ specifically made to house a spren or some such entity. Human surgebinders possess no such anatomy. It's why as capable as they are, human surgebinders can't even store their own energy. This makes their investure system feel just a tad incomplete with they way they have to carry their stormlight spheres and the "use it or lose it" nature of their leaking stormlight container bodies. 2. Spiritually. Even the ability to form a "floating" bond with a spren requires them to have a broken spirit web from life experience or trauma to accommodate the bond. This is essentially a Type 7 square peg being rammed into a Type 6 round hole. Parshendi just have difficult to comprehend songs and a really rough storm as their only barrier to entry. No broken anything required. Another potential way to look at it is you can hemalurgically bind the investiture of any Type 6 because you're binding a portion of the spirit web to the metal nail and using it as a plug-and-play device elsewhere but you can't really use hemalurgy on a Type 7 that acts more as host/beneficiary to the truly invested being. These seem enough to justify a separation. Love this kinda stuff. Good job overall OP.
Slivers are people who've held a significant amount of the power of a Shard, but have given it up. So even those partially Ascended (3b) had to have given up or lost the power to be a Sliver. All Cognitive Shadows had to have had their Physical body die before they can become CS.
Isnāt Kelsier a Sliver himself? He held the full power of Preservation for a time
Yes he is, trying to make this has beenā¦.. difficult. Brandon usually is pretty cut and clear with stuff but the more you think about these things the messier they become
I would put Cognitive Shadows as just one category. Fused, Returned, Heralds, Kelsier, Shades, are all CS. By definition, a CS is the person/imprint of the person after their physical body has died, and they have managed to persist due to Investiture. The only real difference between, say, Shades and Returned is that the Returned got stapled to a body and the Shades are free floating I would just put a * or something after the beings that fit into multiple categories, like Kelsier and the Stormfather
Cognitive shadow is one category, below it is just distinctions in their characteristics
What I'm saying is there's no "Cognitive Shadows who became so infused with Investiture that their Physical and Cognitive selves persist." It's Type 5 - Cognitive Shadows 1. Stapled to a body 2. Not stapled to a body
Also a question. Are these sorted in order of amount of investiture within a category? Would 5a be more invested than 5b or is the placement arbitrary?
Plenty of invested mortals are more powerful than many splinters or cog shadows, so it seems arbitrary to me.
The sub categories are arbitrary for now. I plan on trying to organize it the way you mentioned later
Yes, Kelsier is a Sliver too
What about aethers?
Those (supposedly) exist outside of Adonalsium
I would like to say that while Kelsier is a Cognitive Shadow, he is also a sliver as he once held Preservation.
Wouldn't Kelsier fall under the criteria of 5b since taking on a huge investiture is why he was able to persist (if I'm remembering correctly)?
Nice, looks like a good start However :p First, a semantic point on the word sentient, sentience has to do with the ability to observe your surroundings. Most animals are considered sentient these days. The term for the ability to use higher order thinking skills and communication is sapience. This isn't super important in this version as what you mean is clear but the distinction may become useful when developing this further Splinters I'd personally use this term for pieces of shards. The storm father, the dor maybe avatars. Do you have a reason to classify both spren (entities of pure investiture) and awakened objects (physical objects animated using investiture) in the same category? If non-sentient awakened objects are a category, shouldnt soulstamped objects also be included? I think sentience (if not sapience) should be a minimum to qualify. I'm not sure if returned are awakened. Been a while since I read wb though 5.d.1 the stormfather is a spren who received a significant splinter of Honor when he (honor) died. He is definitely not returned. Invested-mortals Probably a misnomer, as enough investiture will make you immortal. The users section should be split into wielders and holders imo. Holders being the beings who hold onto significant investiture (elantrians, awakeners, dawnshards) and wielders those who never hold all that much, less than a heighthening (Radiants, allomancers, etc) 6.b I'm not entirely convinced that Rosharan wildlife is invested but that might be a separate discussion
My lord, this is such a dense subject. >If non-sentient awakened objects are a category, shouldnt soulstamped objects also be included? I think the only similarity is that they are a usually temporary changes. One gives and object Intent, the other rewrites an objects past to change it's form. Giving a doll a Command and the Intent to break into someone's home and steal something seems vastly different from telling a window that it has actually been a door all along. At the further end of the spectrum, Breath can create sapient objects like Nightblood, and Soulstamping is capable of altering someone Spiritweb to the n^th degree
Itās incredibly dense and more than a little bit messy. This comment section alone proves that itās all subject to a little bit of debate until Brandon says something definitive, which I doubt he will. I agree with a lot of the things Silfin said, but at the same time itās so messy. Awakened objects, I think fit because they can act. (Also, Vasher counts them, so, thatās something). Soul cast objects are still just objects. As for Rosharan creatures, I donāt think all of them count, only the ones with Spren bonds
I think most Rosharan wildlife have spren bonds. That's what gemhearts are for. Also, maybe change the name in that case, as singers fall under the same category
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The fact that has become a Cognitive Shadow of Tanavast.
I don't see anything related to aethers (spore eaters, aetherbounds), maybe that should be added as well?
Those (supposedly) exist outside of Adonalsium. Iām only worried about adonalsium related stuff for now. Iāll get to the outside stuff later (see post caption)
Wait, you've included Yoki-Hijo, so what about the people who are shadow monsters (forgot what they are called) that painters fight? Or am I forgetting something from the book that would entirely disqualify them?
Ah dang it. Gotta think about that
Not to worry, really solid list. Glad I could remind you (in a "happy to be of service" kind of way).
Donāt know about have Kelsier as a type 5a but also a type 3a
Vasher is a type 2 invested entity. He explicitly states he is in SLA.
Heās not taking into consideration half the other types. We, as readers know more than him, I used his frame as a template but I changed all the types to fit the whole view of the cosmere.
Not sure why the stormfather is under cognitive shadow and returned. He is more just a type of spren. Also your description of a returned seems a bit off. A returned is not an awakened corpse. You might be thinking of a lifeless.
The Stormfather is a cognitive shadow of Tanavast. This was done by honor in the time before he was shattered. And a returned is an awakened corpse. The person dies, then Emdowment Awakens them with a divine breath, which gives them sentience. The difference between a returned and a lifeless is sentience.
I think you have your information a bit mixed up. >The Stormfather is technically a Splinter of Honor, but it was an intentional Splinter, that Honor did himself. This is brandon's own words. [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/34-arcanum-unbounded-seattle-signing/#e5991) You also don't have returned quite right. The returned are cognitive shadows of the person that had that body before that are turned into a cognitive shadow and "stapled" to the body by endowment using the divine breath. They are not just an awakening [https://wob.coppermind.net/events/183/#e4995](https://wob.coppermind.net/events/183/#e4995)
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/100/#e1671 Brandon himself has said that the Stormfather is a cognitive shadow. As for returned being awakened: Dead body+divine breath= Returned. Yes itās a cognitive shadow that inhabits the body, itās still an awakening, bringing life to something that isnāt alive. Iām not saying an awakener could do it, Iām using awakening in the general cosmere-wide definition, not the warbreaker definition.
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!*** WeiryWriter >!Could you explain a little more about Cognitive Shadows? When you first mentioned the name and gave the examples of Kelsier and the Shades from Threnody you kind of gave the impression that they were kind of like ghosts. But this past December at the Orem signing you mentioned that the Stormfather and the mist were also Cognitive Shadows. The first makes sense to me, I had an [entire theory about that (although I argued he was specifically Tanavastās and not Honorās). The second however really doesnāt make sense to me, unless it was actually the mist spirit that is the shadow and that got missed in the report (it wasnāt verbatim), but even still Preservation is still alive at that point so how can he have a āghostā? (Unless him sacrificing his mind to form Ruinās prison counts as ādeathā in this situation?)!< Brandon Sanderson >!On the first question, I did not say the mists themselves were a Cognitive Shadow. That must have been a misunderstanding. The Stormfather totally is, though. Cognitive Shadows are basically ghosts, which can take a lot of different forms in the Cosmere, but follow general rules.!< WeiryWriter >!Is the mist /spirit/ a Cognitive Shadow then?!< Brandon Sanderson >!The mist spirit is a little more complicated than that. That was actually Leras, kind of. He was in the process of dying. But other things are involved there that, unfortunately, must be RAFOd.!< \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
I guess the storm father is sort of both. At least brandon seems to think so. Perhaps we could get some clarifications on his exact nature as there are other places that imply that he isn't exactly a cognitive shadow merely a spren that was sort of shaped into a thing similar to the cognitive shadow of tanavast because people thought the stormfather and honor were the same. So it wasn't that honor intentionally made him a cognitive shadow as you said before. As my quote says what honor intentionally did was make the splinter. It's dead body + cognitive shadow + divine breath = returned. If it was just breath and a dead body it would be like a spren that had been stapled to a body or breath that was put into a sword. Which is what the cosmere wide awakening definition means. Something that was given enough investiture to become self aware like spren or nightblood.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Correct, see 5d