World's Cutest Direwolf
I don't think Nightblood would let a servant of Odium within sensing range without trying to murder them in every orifice. Helping the god of hatred fuck things up fits most definitions if "evil."
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
maybe Nale will wrap Szeth up in law texts and throw him down into a basement full of Lawspren to train him as a Skybreaker
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World's Cutest Direwolf
And afterwards whenever he sees a law he'll freak out and go into a berserker state where he thinks he is a law. Ingenious.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
I know, amirite?
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There are loopholes, though. Denth was immune to Nightblood's tempting because despite all the evil he was doing and wanted to do, he very much did not want to use Nightblood to do it. Of course, that was a unique situation. I still think Nale is Nale.
Absolutely no relation to NLK
I think things are what they seem, here. Nale is Nale, he wants to make Szeth a Skybreaker because they're pure Lawful Neutral and Szeth tore himself and the world to pieces over following his code no matter what, and he gave him Nightblood because, I dunno, maybe two utterly messed-up moral compasses balance out and average a rational person? Wonder how Nightblood would interact with a hypothetical Skybreaker spren, though. Just what a mentally unstable Person of Mass Destruction needs: two extra voices in his head. Fun!
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.
World's Cutest Direwolf
Hey, it worked for Spook. And, um, nobody else who tried it in all the Final Empire. But Spook made out like a bandit!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I still don't think that's how it's gonna work. When the Knights bond with a spren, that spren is their Shardblade. Since Nightblood is going to be Szeth's Shardblade, I take it to mean that Nightblood is also fulfilling the role of spren in their relationship.
Most people have Shardblades without having Surges. Besides, in Warbreaker Vasher used Nightblood without getting anything remotely similar to Surges. The only power Nightblood granted his wielder was being a dangerous sword that evil people kill to get.
Most people have dead Shardblades, while Nightblood is very much alive.
And while Nightblood didn't give Vasher Surgebinding powers, they weren't on Roshar at the time, so forming a Nahel bond may not have been possible. The Knights get their powers by forming a bond with a being from the Cognitive Realm (a spren), and while the Cognitive Realm is something that exists throughout the Cosmere, Roshar is the only Shardworld we've seen where purely Cognitive beings routinely manifest in the Physical Realm. On worlds where the barrier between the Physical and Cognitive Realms is stronger, it makes sense that forming a bond with a being from a different Realm would be far more difficult, if not impossible.
Huh. If Ghost Kelsier had somehow made it to Roshar, would he have been able to bond with someone? Or manifest as a little Kelsierspren? Turn into a shardblade? Would the person he bonded have received Allomancy?
According to Shallan, spren are pieces of natural forces, which is why they can grant the Surges. Nightblood isn't a piece of anything. He's just a sword plus a buttload of magic and a poorly thought-out Command. It's possible he'll be able to grant some special ability, but I just don't find it likely.
I think that depends a lot on what the nahel bond is. The back of the books talk about power filling cracks in the soul, so... maybe? If Kelsier was willing to sit still long enough to form a deep bond with a living person, maybe that sort of thing would be possible.
Relevant to both of these points about non-standard "spren" is the fact that the Knights Radiant are a lot more formalized than anyone else would be. The spren had thousands of years to explore the limits of the bond and figure out what works and what doesn't, as well as the Honorblades to use as models. Nightblood and Kelsier have none of that.
So, the person most likely to turn into a Knight Kelsier would be Spook then. I wonder what oaths they'd have? "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination", "Kill all nobles", "There's always another secret"...
I'm deeply tempted to make a crack fic...
World's Cutest Direwolf
I very much doubt that a Kelsierspren would demand the death of Breeze. Or of Spook, for that matter. Hard to get more noble than the fucking Emperor.
I imagine "Fight when you are beaten! Survive!" would be one of the oaths, especially if it's Spook swearing them.
There'd probably be an oath about fighting against those who abuse their power.
Jupiterian Local
Some oath-ified version of "survive" and "there's always another secret" would definitely be on Knight Kelsier's shortlist.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
The second oath of the Stonewards is "I will stand where others fall" (though Sanderson hasn't nailed down the exact wording yet), which sounds like something Kelsier would say. I have a feeling the Dustbringers probably have some oaths about killing bad guys that Kelsier might like, but we still don't know enough about them to be sure. They and the Willshapers are the only Orders we don't have a representative for yet (if you're counting onscreen Heralds).
Another random thought. If the Seons and Skaze were brought to Roshar, would they turn into Spren?
Theyprobably wouldn´t turn into spren, but the bond between the seon/skaze and the person would act rather similiar to nahel bond (point 3
)
Absolutely no relation to NLK
For some reason the idea of a Kelsierspren is deeply hilarious to me.
Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.
Jupiterian Local
It probably would be to Kelsier, too.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Chapter 89 reread is up (finally). Last chapter before the epilogue, and there are about a billion things going on. Grabbed the biggest ones.
This seems fairly clear, once you separate the words. Apparently genius-Taravangian realized that if one of the Parshendi made the connection with the Odium spren, it would set up... well, exactly what it set up. Unfortunately for genius-T's credibility, his solution—"destroy them outright"—is also what pushed them to the desperation that resulted in Eshonai's bonding with the stormspren. Two questions arise, though:
1) Did the Diagram actually have any influence on the Alethi trying to destroy the Parshendi, or was that normal Alethi hawkishness?
2) Was Eshonai "the one" who formed the bridge, or was it Venli? I'm becoming convinced that Venli had already bonded a Voidspren before she trapped the first stormspren, so my answer is leaning toward "Venli." What's yours?
When I first read this, I thought it was about one of the Parshendi becoming a Surgebinder, which would change the nature of the conflict with them significantly. After all, though the Alethi don't know it, a large part of the war ultimately boils down to the ancient betrayal of the spren. If that begins to reverse, things change.
A major question for Oathbringer is how successfully Adolin managed to destroy the evidence. At first I thought that he'd done a good job, but... Did anyone see him in that part of the tower, someone he didn't see? What did he do with his bloodstained cuffs? How is he going to explain cutting them off, if someone notices before he can destroy the shirt entirely? Also, why toss Oathbringer out the window? Granted it takes the Blade (theoretically) out of the control of Team Sadeas, but eventually someone's going to wonder where it got to. Then what? Maybe he should have tossed Sadeas out the window, too.
As a side note, this is one of the rare cases where Sanderson puts in a bit of graphic violence... and I think it's more disturbing for being the exception. It sets the scene apart, in a sort of bizarre I-fell-into-the-wrong-book way... which is, I think, pretty much how Adolin is feeling the whole time. Effective, no?
Several people have commented that they think Adolin left his extremely recognizable side knife behind, since there was no explicit mention of him retrieving it. I'm pretty sure he'd be smart enough to grab it.
We all know this is a matter of some debate. We have only Renarin's word that his spren, Glys, has made him a Truthwatcher. To support his side of the argument, we know (and Shallan knows) that Truthwatchers are one of the Orders; we also know from Wo B that Renarin does see a spren no one else sees. His eyesight has healed from holding Stormlight, and he certainly hears the screaming of the dead spren when he summons his Shardblade, which only happens when a bonded (proto-) Radiant touches it. If he is a Truthwatcher, his Surges would be Progression and Illumination—a combination eminently suited to creating an Order's "quirk" of looking into the future. It's worth pointing out that Honor claimed Cultivation was better at seeing the future than he was; with Palah/the Truthwatchers directly opposite Ishar/the Bondsmiths on the KR diagram, it seems reasonable that they would be the ones most closely tied to her abilities. Also: why put Palah in the chapter arch, which most readers don't really notice, unless she's there in the same capacity as the other three?
The arguments against are, IMO, mostly a matter of people trying hard not to fall for an unreliable narrator. The readers have neither seen nor heard Renarin's spren, probably because Brandon wanting this scene to be a surprise. Renarin seems to use his unique ability very reluctantly and perhaps involuntarily, which is different than the experiences of Kaladin, Shallan, and Lift... although I'd suggest that Shallan has come pretty close to "involuntary" a couple of times. The only other argument I can recall—and I'm mostly drawing on the Coppermind, since whoever wrote Renarin's entry seems to be on the skeptic side—is that he and Shallan should share the Surge of Illumination, but we haven't seen them do any of the same stuff. He hasn't created any Illusions (that we know of) and she doesn't use Illumination to see the future, so they must not be using the same Surge. As noted, though, every Order has something unique—it's "quirk"—in the way the Surges combine, so that two Orders which share a Surge won't necessarily be limited to using that Surge the same way. We'll have to wait and see if Renarin (perhaps with Shallan's teaching) can learn to create Illusions. I don't recall anyone suggesting it, but perhaps the best argument "against" is Renarin's apparent fear in claiming to be one of them. With Kaladin and Shallan being heroes, and his father demonstrating his own Radiant development, why would Renarin be so nervous about admitting it to these three? ::RAFO-sigh::
I still don't know why this is even up for debate. I haven't seen any reasonable evidence that Renarin isn't a Truthwatcher. And the dearth of evidence that he is one (before this point) can be easily explained as not wanting to spoil the surprise.
Anyway. Dalinar's confirmation from the Stormfather that all the parshmen will go Voidbringer on them when the Everstorm comes gives Kaladin a sudden fit of filial duty. Not that I'm objecting to him finally deciding to go back and see his parents, really; I'm just feeling momentarily cynical. He hasn't bothered to write to them and let them know he's okay, but now suddenly he has to fall all the way there, using increasingly valuable Stormlight. Well, I guess. I'm kind of glad he's going—for the sake of seeing what's happened since he left, if nothing else—and glad Dalinar approved it. It's just a little unfair that he's the only person in the world who has the privilege of rushing off to protect his family; everyone else just has to take their chances.
That's a good point about writing home. But on the other hand, Kaladin was swamped from pretty much the minute he became captain of Dalinar's guard. He almost needed to be reminded to eat. I think he just honestly forgot.
It's clear, but worth noting, that the Stormfather speaks of the connection between the Voidspren and the Parshendi, who he calls "the ancient ones." (FWIW, I don't believe he could mean the Unmade instead, primarily because Honor & Cultivation were on Roshar long before Odium showed up and started dropping spren. Also, because the Unmade are more or less spren themselves.) When Brandon was asked (in separate questions) whether the Parshendi were of Odium, or of Cultivation, or of Honor, the first two were answered with "Not originally," while the later just got a "No." My theory is that the Parshendi, along with many of the shelled life forms, are native to Roshar and were there prior to the arrival of Honor and Cultivation; they may even have been direct creations of Adonalsium. Also, I assume that humans arrived with Honor & Cultivation from another place, or possibly that they created humans here like Ruin & Preservation did on Scadrial. Incidentally, I think the extension of the theory would imply that the non-Void forms of the Listeners result from a bond with spren either natural to the planet, or Adonalsium-spren... and the two may be the same thing.
I think people have been saying this for a while. I vaguely remember a word of God that there were spren on Roshar before Honor and Cultivation arrived, which makes me wonder why the spren apparently get more out of bonding with humans.
The Stormfather's description of himself confuses me no end—but almost everything about Splinters, Slivers, fragments, and shadows confuses me if I think about it too hard. This makes me love Dalinar's response all the more: "I'll take what I can get." Another Wo B from Jordan Con this year expanded my previous understanding of the term spren, when Brandon indicated that Rosharans will call anything a spren, if it seems to be a sapient form of Investiture. Nightwatcher, Honor, Nightblood, Adonalsium... to a Rosharan, all of them would be "spren." Which might apply to the Stormfather's words here.
Still not clear what exactly the Stormfather is. I mean, he explains that he's basically power plus memory shaped by humanity, which sounds like Jasnah's definition of a spren. But his hesitance to call himself a spren implies he's something else, and the word is just the best that Dalinar will understand.
World's Cutest Direwolf
Jupiterian Local
My interpretation of spren is that they're beings native to the cognitive realm, like plants and animals are native to the physical realm. Everything (or almost everything) has aspects of all three realms, but spren are primarily cognitive. In effect, they're sort of like kami. They're the spirits of things (not just physical things, but also concepts), except they're not "spirits" as in "of the spiritual realm", but there's no good noun for "of the cognitive realm" except "mind", which doesn't really fit in the case of spren.
In other words, spren are the cognitive embodiments of stuff. That seems to be borne out by the experiments we see the ardent couple doing — as soon as they measure a spren (thus having a fixed idea of what size it is), they stop changing size. Spren are affected by how people think of them, which makes sense for a cognitive being.
As far as the Stormfather, if he's the spren of Honor, then he's the incarnation of what people think the Almighty is. He's not actually Honor, but he's the idea of the Almighty, given an independent existence. The Stormfather is basically the "big angry bearded guy who lives in the sky and throws lightning bolts at people who piss him off" view of Christianity's God.
It's pretty amusing how well that lines up, actually.
edited 29th Jul '16 3:54:20 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Or, to be fair, he's lying to Szeth and manipulating him. Anyone can claim a name. There's no reason to think this isn't a Knight of Odium or something.