Visit scenic Roshar! You probably won't die...
Hi Internet! I'm Steve, and this RAFO.
Of all the planets in the Cosmere, nowhere is investiture more integral to
the workings of the world than on Roshar. Most other planets simply manifest
investiture in their magic systems, like Scadrial, Sel, or Nalthis. Some few have
ecosystems or environments that are affected by investiture, like Threnody or
Taldain. One planet has plant and animal life that has evolved to utilize
investiture - First of the Sun. But on Roshar, investiture has not only shaped the
evolution of life there, but has also fundamentally altered the entire planet.
Now, let's visit scenic Roshar! First off, the planet itself: Once upon a time,
there was no landmass, just probably one big ocean covering the entire surface of
the planet. Then Adonalsium (remember him?) decided he really liked fractals and
made a continent out of one. I mean fractals are cool and all but - oh
okay, no that's legit. Fractals are basically infinitely repeated patterns
where each piece of the pattern is made up of smaller versions of that same
pattern. Roshar is specifically based on the Julia set, where each repetition
is just a teensy tinesy bit different from the others, which results in
dramatic changes on the large scale. Even at this point in the history of the
planet, massive storms circled the globe which scoured the shiny new
supercontinent down to bare rock. This single supercontinent in the southern
hemisphere is the only major landmass on Roshar: about 40 million square
kilometers or 15 million square miles, which is basically Africa and Australia
put together. And just like Australia, most everything on Roshar wants to
murder you. Given that there's no plate tectonics - no earthquakes or volcanos
bringing new rock to the surface - the only thing keeping everything from
eroding away is deposits of crem: a clay-like substance found in highstorm
rain that hardens into rock. This also is causing the continent to shift ever so
slightly to the east as stone is eroded and crem is laid down. These highstorms
have existed for as long as we've known about the planet; they were happening
before Adonalsium did any fiddling or busted up. And in fact if the lack of
tectonics means a crunchy rather than a gooey center of the planet,
the highstorms may be what provides Roshar with a magnetosphere
and protection from the solar wind. Thanks for it came from hell! Not only do these
storms have wind speeds over a hundred miles per hour faster than anything
we've seen on earth - actually comparable to the wind speeds in the Great Red Spot
on Jupiter - but they are also bursting with investiture, and they sweep across
the planet every few days. Twice weekly magic filled super storms have
predictably shaped life and existence on Roshar in
foundational ways. As you tour are the 26 different nations on Roshar you'll see -
Wait, 26? Game of Thrones has 7, Lord of the Rings has like 10, and this one
world out of the seven we know of in this universe has 26?!? Somebody's got an
overactive imagination! Thank You Brandon, never stop. All the plant life across the
entire continent has evolved with a myriad of different strategies for
surviving these recurrent hurricanes: "recurricanes." Many of these adaptations
seem aquatic in nature. Most varieties of plants, including grasses and chasm vines
are able to retract their stems and stalks away from movement, kind of like a
sea anemone. Others, like the various varieties of shalebark absorb then
secrete minerals to form rock-like outgrowths similar to coral. But
technically both coral and sea anemones are not plants at all but instead are
oceanic animals, so does that mean that many if not all of the so-called plant
life on Roshar is instead water dwelling animals that have simply been
transplanted from the ocean floor to the regularly flooded surface of the planet?
Anyway! Some plants, like prickletac, actually use highstorms to spread seeds
to other areas. Others like the Azimir dropdeads simply flop down and hunker
through it. Because of the plants need to survive highstorms, and humanity's
general desire, to you know, eat things, the main grain producing plant the Lavis
polyp or rock bud protect their fleshy insides with a hard shell, which will open
up after a hightstorm, releasing tendrils that will absorb water. There are other
plants that survive simply by growing on the leeward side of boulders or hills
where the winds are weaker, but even those are sort of ocean-flavored.
Speaking of ocean flavored - CRABS. Lots and lots of weird massive crabs. Many of
the animals on Roshar are similarly aquatic in nature, with multiple sets of
legs, a chitinous outer shell, and freaky mandible arm things. Many of these are
analogous to creatures we're familiar with: chulls are like crab-oxen,
axehounds are like crab-dogs, cremlings are like crab-mice, and chasmfiends are
basically crab-dinosaurs. Oh, and sabertooth crab-tigers. And crab-people.
Hey Roshar, you got crabs. Not all of the animals are crabby, however. You also see
normal not-crab mice and rats, hogs - both wild and domesticated, minks, and sky eels -
five foot long eels that can fly. Most of these animals have evolved due to the
influence of the investiture and other forces present in highstorms. One thing
unique to Roshar, however, is a life-form that is actually made up entirely of
investiture: spren. We know from realmatic theory that everything, from people, to
buildings, to sticks, has a body, mind, and spirit. Everything. If something exists
for a long enough time in a certain state, it will think of itself as that
thing. According to Brandon: "the general fundamental rules that create spren
are Cosmere-wide. Spren are pieces of investiture that because of human or
other sapient creatures thinking about it or interacting with the power,
the power starts to take on a life of its own - develops personalities and comes
alive, so to speak - and this can happen on any planet in the Cosmere with
significant amount of free investiture." Because of the huge amounts of
investiture inherent in the highstorms on Roshar, that's been applied to more
abstract concepts: emotions like anger, joy, or fear; untouchable things like
light, laughter, and music; physical phenomena like fire, rain, or wind; even
metaphysical ideas like life, creation, or honor have spren associated with them.
As Jasnah says: "Spren are those ideas - the ideas of collective human experience -
somehow come alive." These spren are associated with and drawn to certain
phenomena like sharks to blood or Kaladin to depression. There's debate in
world of which causes which on certain situations. Do rotspren cause
sickness, or does sickness draw rotspren? Given that painspren don't hurt and
rainspren don't start rainstorms, I'm inclined to think the latter. One of the
fascinating things about spren is that they don't necessarily live in isolation.
As we've talked about before, it's possible for spiritual bonds to
form between humans and splinters of investiture. The most dramatic example of
that is with the Knights Radiant, where the spren gets to enter the Physical
Realm and the Knight can fly. While it's theoretically possible for any spren to
bond with a human, because of the ten orders of radiant it's safe to assume
that there are only ten types of spren that could grant surgebinding. So at
this point we don't know all of them. Honospren for the Windrunners,
Highspren for the Skybreakers, Ashspren for the Dustbringers, Cultivationspren
for Edgedancers, the spren of the Truthwatchers, Cryptics or Lifespren for
the Lightweavers, Inkspren with Elsecallers, Lightspren of the
Willshapers, some type of Stoneward spren, and three specific spren for
Bondsmiths, one of which is the Stormfather. However,
humans aren't the only creatures that can bond with spren. Consider the
greatshell - the crab dinosaur we mentioned earlier - even with Roshar's higher
oxygen content and decreased gravity - roughly 70% of Cosmere standard due
to its smaller size - a chasmfiend should still collapse under its own weight, let
alone one of the Tai Na islands in the Reshi sea. Chasmfiends have been seen with,
and so have presumably bonded to, luckspren, which allows them to grow to such
large sizes. The same spren are often seen around skyeels as well, so bonding
to them must make possible some type of weightlessness. And it's not just the
weird animals that can bond spren. The Alethi warhorses - Ryshadium - likely
are bonded to musicspren, which can often be seen while they run, which
grants their larger size, hardened hooves, and increased intellect. Spren are found
all over Roshar except for one place: Shinovar. Shinovar is the one nation on
Roshar that's not ravaged by the highstorms, because the Misty Mountains - sorry -
the Misted Mountains shield the entire eastern edge of the country. These act as
a massive Windrunner - Skybreaker - Windbreaker, diverting the force and
investiture in the highstorms, leaving an earth-like haven: the only place on
Roshar with actual dirt and what we would call normal plant and animal life -
grass that doesn't get scared and run away, different varieties of fruits such
as strawberries or grapes, and it's the best place on Roshar where animals
like horses and chickens can be safely raised domestically. Birds don't do well
in regular gale force winds. Has Shinovar always been the weird normal place
on a world where weird is the new normal? Did the whole continent once have
soil, or was Shinovar created special? Here's my theory:
Adonalsium first created the continent by raising landmass up from
the ocean floor, bringing with it all the ocean life that was already there. This
forced the existing plant and animal life to adapt not only to highstorms, but
also to live on land. That's why everything seems oceanic. Shinovar
was likely created afterward as a place humanity could safely hang out. Thank you
all for watching this video! Thank you as well to the Watercolor Naturalist and
Botanica Xu for their wonderful art! Check out more of their work in the
links below. We're going to continue the exploration of investiture in the
Cosmere in my next video, so drop a comment below and tell me which book or
magic system is your favorite. If you haven't yet, hit subscribe so you're
notified as soon as it's posted, and you can keep exploring the Cosmere by watching some of my other videos.
If you want to learn more about why Shadesmar is the way that it is, we won't get Szeth's
flashbacks until book 5, so you'll have to Wait and Find Out
Come on 2022!