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Shardblade Forms


DocHoliday

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Just a thought, Dalinar mentions that he and Adolin are trained in Wind stance. He also mentions in one of his visions about switching to Smoke stance. He also remarks that Adolin' s opponent in a duel was using Rock stance.

 

Is it possible that the stances reflect orders of the Knights Radiant? Wind Runners (Wind stance) Stone Wards (Rock stance)?

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Just a thought, Dalinar mentions that he and Adolin are trained in Wind stance. He also mentions in one of his visions about switching to Smoke stance. He also remarks that Adolin' s opponent in a duel was using Rock stance.

 

Is it possible that the stances reflect orders of the Knights Radiant? Wind Runners (Wind stance) Stone Wards (Rock stance)?

Either Orders or Essences, probably. Not that there's that huge of a distinction there given how orders are set up.
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I'm not Phantom, but I do think that there's some pretty serious distinctions there. The orders are fairly obviously groups of Radiants with various powers. The Surges are the forces manipulated by Radiants, shared between orders, such as Gravity, Pressure, Transformation, and Travel. Essences are things purest and easiest products of Soulcasting. They are associated with orders, but not the same thing as them.

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IIRC, in the Radient / Midnight Essence Vision., the male Radient (Windrunner?) comments that he does not recognise Dalinars sword form.

 

Not conclusive by any means but I am not certain that the forms themselves have any direct relation to the orders.

 

More likely they are named to mirror attributes, for emxample:

 

Wind Stance - fast, lots of movement.

Smoke Stance - Distraction, Multiple enemies.

Rock Stance - Powerful, immobile

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Here's my opinion. After the Recreance, training in the Surgebinding arts became a rarity, and so the kingdoms had to rely only on non-Surgbinding ways of fighting. This led to an advancement in "normal" martial arts, including new swordfighting techniques, etc. This is why Dalinar's way of fighting wasn't familiar to that Knight Radiant in his vision.

 

I think that the first post-Recreance non-Surgebinding sword masters named the stances after the Essences for purely symbolic purposes. Perhaps they still recalled the time when warriors could magically manipulate the Essences in battle, and they wanted to connect their new fighting techniques to that glorious past. But I also like MadRand's theory that the Essence a stance was named after reflects the attributes of that stance.

 

Edit: By the way, I think the stances aren't for Shardbearers only. They aren't "Shardblade forms", but rather are "swordfighting forms". I mean, if Dalinar could use Smokestance with a poker, then obviously any Lighteyed officer should be able to use it with a normal sword. (Note that only Lighteyes are allowed to carry swords in Alethi society.)

Edited by skaa
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I think that rosharan society just likes to use names of the essences fofrom their religion and mythology for everything. Not unlike our own society.

I also tend to imagine those forms as reflecting the kind of fighting one does. For example I imagine that windstance involves lots of moving while stonestance will put lot of power behindd every blow, and smokestance will try to avoid direct confrontation when possible.

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i think there are alot of influrences.

 

fighting styles propably depend alot on the weapon.

 

for normal weapons it is based on.

-the weapons length, balance and wight.

-the type of weapon you fight against.

-the number of oponents you fight at once.

-> there are just things you dont do with a heavy weapon, because you would tire faster.

 

here in stormlight archives come new factors.

 

like shardplate

-so you can use larger weapons, or have much more endurrence.

-when you fight against a person using a shardplate, you cant be hit by them or you die. so you need something quick, evasive.

 

then come shardblades.

 

thouse have new issuses - you propably need to learn a very different style of fighting.

->youre weapon is not stopped by anything - so no need for forcefull strikes.

->you can easly hurt youre own ppl

->quick strikes are more rewarding

 

 

i would go as far as to say a shardblade is a different weapon compared to a sword.

it is just like a sword when you fight another person with a shardblade.

 

 

all of thouse styles and different strikes of thouse need names to be tought properly.

 

maybe the names of the stances are inspired on things ppl saw.

like the windrunners were very quick fighters - so a quick fighting style was named after them - wind stance.(but it could be named after the storms too or what ever =))

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I'm not Phantom, but I do think that there's some pretty serious distinctions there. The orders are fairly obviously groups of Radiants with various powers. The Surges are the forces manipulated by Radiants, shared between orders, such as Gravity, Pressure, Transformation, and Travel. Essences are things purest and easiest products of Soulcasting. They are associated with orders, but not the same thing as them.

True, Im of the opinion the Order names were based off of Surges used by the KR (which includes Soul-casting). So Wind Runners could be considered a firm of shorthand. Like a Pewter arm is a burner of Pewter. Essences though, eh. Thinking of the chart with the Essences in the back and crystals and body parts gives me the impression that stuff is going to be much more important shortly.

 

Thanks for the feedback everybody. I think Mad-rand and King of Nowhere might be into something

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  • 1 month later...

I was hoping this topic was more based on the fact that the Shardblades change form to adapt to their owner. lol.

No I feel that the stances are probably something every Lighteyes who wears a sword learns and they are then adapted in order to work better for a Shardbearer. In fact, and I don't have my copy of the book atm, I recall someone making a passing note of it. Just like one sentence about how it's different with a normal weapon than a Blade. Perhaps when Dalinar picks up the poker to use as a weapon?

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