[OB] On the Missing Shardblades

[Chaos]

I had an idea in Discord tonight, upon discussing the Recreance. We ended up talking about spren and Shadesmar, of course, and it got me thinking about deadeye spren.

Remember in Way of Kings, in the first vision of the Recreance? 

Quote

The scout outside backed his horse up. There looked to be a good two hundred Shardbearers out there. Alethkar owned some twenty Blades, Jah Keved a similar number. If one added up all the rest in the world, there might be enough total to equal the two powerful Vorin kingdoms. That meant, so far as he knew, there were less than hundred Blades in all of the world. And here he saw two hundred Shardbearers gathered in one army. It was mind-numbing.

There's a huge amount of missing Shardblades. That's not even close to all the Windrunners (this wasn't the main front of the war), and that's just one of the orders. Granted, Skybreakers didn't betray their oaths, and there was only one Bondsmith in that generation, but there's still seven other orders full of Radiants who would have broke their oaths. This is to say that there is a metric truckload of missing Blades and this has never come up in the text again. 

But we do get more information on Shardblades in Oathbringer. They are deadeyes in Shadesmar and they are common enough in Shadesmar that they have a common term for them. 

Now, some background. It seems that deadeye spren are actually separate from their Blades in Shadesmar: 

Quote

"Can't stand the thought of him wandering around somewhere," Ico said, eyes forward. "Have to keep him locked away though. He'll go searching for the human carrying his corpse, otherwise. Walk right off the deck."

This suggests that deadeyes are always in Shadesmar, regardless of the state of the Blade (summoned or unsummoned) in the Physical Realm. But if deadeye spren are separate entities, isn't that a bit strange? Adolin cannot summon Maya in Shadesmar. So these two entities are linked intrinsically. That's obvious, because in the Physical Realm, the Blade is the spren after all, but is a curious split between the dead spren in Shadesmar and the "corpse" in the Physical. (It seems highly unlikely that the deadeye would vanish when the user of the Blade summoned it to the Physical Realm. I certainly don't get that impression from Ico. Additionally, it isn't like when Syl is dismissed she goes back to Shadesmar.)

Anyway. Here's my idea: what if somehow some spren, or other entities took Shardblades--which were unbonded, of course--through a Perpendicularity into Shadesmar, in an effort to revive some deadeyes? I don't know what would happen if you actually take a Shardblade into Shadesmar. There's a lot of possibilities. I don't think the Blades could manifest as Blades in Shadesmar, so maybe they'd just... go back "into" their deadeye spren? 

That's my idea. A lot of deadeyes in Shadesmar already "have" their Shardblades inside them. It didn't fix them, but it did prevent them from being found in the Physical Realm. Not all deadeyes would be like this--the ones we've seen, from Ico, tend to wander to the person "holding" their corpse--but for the Blades that are unbonded? They wouldn't wander around at all. 

I realize this is a pretty crackpot theory, but I think if you asked, "where are the missing Shardblades?" the answer being "in Shadesmar, as some of the deadeyes" seems reasonable. Previous hypotheses were things like, "Maybe there's a giant cache of them somewhere!" or "Maybe the Skybreakers collected them!" But they'd probably be found in two millennia since the Recreance if it was a cache, and I think the Skybreakers having a cache of somewhere like a thousand Shardblades seems crazy. Wouldn't there have been a situation where you'd use one of your thousand extra Blades? 

But you know where absolutely no Rosharan would have found the Blades since the Recreance? In Shadesmar. They'd probably be pretty difficult to separate from the deadeye who metabolized that Physical part of them...

That's my midnight theory for you all. It's probably wrong, but at least you all remembered that there's a crapload of missing Blades around. I'd like to hear your ideas for where they might be.

[+Extesian]

As I said on Discord, I think it's a great explanation for the missing shardblades. It waa a great brainwave

As i also said there (but i understand arguments against it, such as the WoB about syl if kal broke his oaths) i think more simple than someone transporting the blades to shadesmar is that the spren that hadn't been summoned as shardblades at the time the bond was severed simply never manifested in the physical realm as shardblades, and that the bulk of radiants (unlike the ones at feverstone) hadn't summoned their blades when breaking the oaths. But I'm very happy to be proven wrong on that, i just couldn't think of evidence against it and it makes your theory simpler of it works. Yeah you still have to account for the ones just at feverstone, and wherever else it happened with the spren already summoned. But it makes the numbers easier if many or most of the spren never manifested as shardblades in the first place. 

[NotBurtReynolds]

It may be a crackpot theory, but at least it’s something to think about. The question, “but where are all the Shardblades?”, is always on my mind. And ‘secret cache’ explanations don’t really do it for me. At Feverstone alone there were what, a few hundred sets of mail and plate? All of them would be claimed in the bloody aftermath.  In fact, anywhere this scene was repeated would have the same result; of all of it being claimed. And Shardblade/Plate ownership would be a thing most people public. So you have to think post-Recreance, there would be 100’s, if not 1000’s of Shards that had been battled over...And the winners would be recognized and remembered. But somehow over 2000ish years, Roshar went from arguably 1000+ known Shards to less than 100? Where. Are. The. Shards? 

[ccstat]

I like it. I've been asking those same questions about summoning/dismissing blades since reading Ico's comments. 

I'm not sure how many they would have actually moved to the CR, if the goal was really to help the deadeyes. Once the first hundred didn't receive them, would they have kept trying?

As for the possible hidden cache, there is at least one place in the physical realm that we know has been inaccessible to humans for quite a while. While I'm of the opinion that the Sleepless are hiding something far more significant than a pile of spren corpses, I could totally see them using such a cache as a distraction, setting things up so that anyone who comes looking will discover the blades and assume that's all the treasure there is to find.

Edited December 10, 2017 by ccstat

[NotBurtReynolds]

8 minutes ago, Ookla the Indivergable said:

As I said on Discord, I think it's a great explanation for the missing shardblades. It waa a great brainwave

As i also said there (but i understand arguments against it, such as the WoB about syl if kal broke his oaths) i think more simple than someone transporting the blades to shadesmar is that the spren that hadn't been summoned as shardblades at the time the bond was severed simply never manifested in the physical realm as shardblades, and that the bulk of radiants (unlike the ones at feverstone) hadn't summoned their blades when breaking the oaths. But I'm very happy to be proven wrong on that, i just couldn't think of evidence against it and it makes your theory simpler of it works. Yeah you still have to account for the ones just at feverstone, and wherever else it happened with the spren already summoned. But it makes the numbers easier if many or most of the spren never manifested as shardblades in the first place. 

It certainly is a more manageable situation, numbers wise, if many of the Radiants hadn’t summoned their blades when breaking their oaths. But what was the point of the KR at Feverstone summoning their blades, knowing they’d be leaving them to others? Why wasn’t just breaking their bond good enough?

[Steeldancer]

9 hours ago, ccstat said:

I like it. I've been asking those same questions about summoning/dismissing blades since reading Ico's comments. 

I'm not sure how many they would have actually moved to the CR, if the goal was really to help the deadeyes. Once the first hundred didn't receive them, would they have kept trying?

As for the possible hidden cache, there is at least one place in the physical realm that we know has been inaccessible to humans for quite a while. While I'm of the opinion that the Sleepless are hiding something far more significant than a pile of spren corpses, I could totally see them using such a cache as a distraction, setting things up so that anyone who comes looking will discover the blades and assume that's all the treasure there is to find.

That's smart. 

You see, i think multiple things happened to these blades. Some of them might have been cached, some of them might have been lost, some might have been taken to Aimia, maybe even one or two to Nalthis...

I still am amiable to the idea that Nightblood was an awakened shardblade...

[Cenanin]

Adolin couldn't summon his blade in Shadesmar. I don't believe the "blade" part can exist outside the physical realm. So any deadeyes that had been a shardblade would always have to appear as a shardblade in the physical realm. 
 

 

[Cenanin]

19 hours ago, NotBurtReynolds said:

It certainly is a more manageable situation, numbers wise, if many of the Radiants hadn’t summoned their blades when breaking their oaths. But what was the point of the KR at Feverstone summoning their blades, knowing they’d be leaving them to others? Why wasn’t just breaking their bond good enough?

When they broke their oaths the spren died and became shardblades. I don't think they summoned their blades. I think they killed their spren at that moment.

[Kaladin Zahel]

20 hours ago, NotBurtReynolds said:

It certainly is a more manageable situation, numbers wise, if many of the Radiants hadn’t summoned their blades when breaking their oaths. But what was the point of the KR at Feverstone summoning their blades, knowing they’d be leaving them to others? Why wasn’t just breaking their bond good enough?

Perhaps only the Windrunners decided to leave shardplate and blades for future generations for PROTECTION.

So maybe the real number of spren corpses is in the hundreds as opposed to thousands. And I can realistically conceive of a hundred or so going missing through loss or being stashed away.

[digitalbusker]

Spoiler

That's why the kandra only accept payment in Shards, to take them out of circulation.

(Hero of Ages spoiler)

[KidWayne]

13 hours ago, Kaladin Zahel said:

Perhaps only the Windrunners decided to leave shardplate and blades for future generations for PROTECTION.

So maybe the real number of spren corpses is in the hundreds as opposed to thousands. And I can realistically conceive of a hundred or so going missing through loss or being stashed away.

But Maya is not an Honorspren, so that doesn't work.

On ‎12‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 2:17 AM, Chaos said:

a curious split between the dead spren in Shadesmar and the "corpse" in the Physical

So, you raise an interesting question here. What would the effect be of bringing a human corpse into the CR? If that human's consciousness still existed in some fashion in the CR, would it be possible to reintegrate that person's body and their consciousness? Somehow, I doubt it.

I would have thought it would be similar to beads. When the location in the PR changes, the bead vanishes and reappears in the new location. It does seem at odds with Ico's sequestering his father if daddy deadeye disappears when he is summoned though.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Ookla the Hatter

[Blazenella]

On 12/10/2017 at 1:17 AM, Chaos said:

Previous hypotheses were things like, "Maybe there's a giant cache of them somewhere!" or "Maybe the Skybreakers collected them!" But they'd probably be found in two millennia since the Recreance if it was a cache, and I think the Skybreakers having a cache of somewhere like a thousand Shardblades seems crazy.

Maybe it was the Aimians. They are obviously protecting something. Many thought it was the Dawnshards. What if they also have the missing blades

Edited December 11, 2017 by Ookla the Variable

[Torchwood17]

It could also be any number of the secret organizations out there. We've already seen how the Diagramist's had access to hidden shards somehow. Maybe the Sons of Honor or the Ghostbloods have been getting them as well? That wouldn't account for thousands of blades but if the figures more in the hundreds, who knows how many organizations are hiding shards away.

[ccstat]

2 hours ago, Ookla the Hatter said:

When the location in the PR changes, the bead vanishes and reappears in the new location. 

I don't think that's how it works at all. What supports this idea? 

The honorspren captain says you can take beads arbitrarily far from the objects they represent, because the connection between the PR and CR aspects of a thing goes through the SR which is location-independent. I have a hard time believing that you couldn't similarly move the object while the bead remains stationary. According to the captain, beads will slowly make their way to the corresponding location of their object, which sounds like the opposite of vanishing and reappearing.

[+mje89]

I was re listening to TWK when this line struck me. Ch4

Quote

Occasionally light would flash without the thunder. The Slaves would grown in terror at this, thinking about the Stromfarther, the shades of the Lost Radiants, or the Voidbringers - all of which were said to haunt the most violent highstoms.

The seems to so much about the storms we don't know. Maybe the spren were taken into the storm in Shadesmar (heck even in the Physical) to see if the amount of investiture would heal them or something.

Off the wall but it is a interesting line.

[NightFrost]

Personally I think the hidden blades are on Akinah i mean an island that no one is allowed to get to perfect hiding place. but you guys are forgetting one important question where is the plate.  Hidding the blades in shadesmar is all well and good but how do you hid something that doesn't disappear on command?

[aemetha]

This will be the least fun theory in this thread, but I think it's more than possible they just got lost.

Consider that in our world (which doesn't have highstorms burying the land in crem and sinking ships with regularity) we've lost any number of precious artefacts in a similar span of years. The arc of the covenant, the holy grail to name just a couple and those weren't regularly employed in armed conflict. Anything lost at sea would sink, anything lost on land is buried in crem.

[Messremb]

I had a couple thoughts here.

Have we actually seen a blade that would match a windrunner? shouldn't these make up the bulk of them if hundreds were left to people at feverstone.

Do we know where feverstone keep is? Possibly on Aimia?

And I like the idea that the spren only becomes a blade if it was that way when you killed it.

So my theory is that a large amount of the blades (mostly windrunner and whatever the other order was) were left somewhere on Aimia, and remain there. I also think only a few of the blades of the other orders were created, as only those summoned as blades when they were killed remain. We know a large amount of the KR didn't fight, and so wouldn't use blades. so what we are left with is a small amount of the blades from the orders that were not fighting near feverstone. and that Is why there are so few.

 

[.S.A.M.K.M]

Blades are technically still a type of spren, so could be contained in a gem stone. Their killed state might make the process easier.

[spirit]

8 hours ago, Messremb said:

I had a couple thoughts here.

Have we actually seen a blade that would match a windrunner? shouldn't these make up the bulk of them if hundreds were left to people at feverstone.

Do we know where feverstone keep is? Possibly on Aimia?

4

from https://coppermind.net/wiki/Feverstone_Keep

we know that Feverstone Keep was a location on ancient Roshar.It was somewhere near Rall Elorim, the capital of Iri

[Naurock]

Crackpot theory! Vasher and Vivenna took some back to Nalthis for their new war they had to fight.

Idk how else to account for so many blades being gone.

[Cenanin]

On 12/9/2017 at 11:36 PM, NotBurtReynolds said:

It may be a crackpot theory, but at least it’s something to think about. The question, “but where are all the Shardblades?”, is always on my mind. And ‘secret cache’ explanations don’t really do it for me. At Feverstone alone there were what, a few hundred sets of mail and plate? All of them would be claimed in the bloody aftermath.  In fact, anywhere this scene was repeated would have the same result; of all of it being claimed. And Shardblade/Plate ownership would be a thing most people public. So you have to think post-Recreance, there would be 100’s, if not 1000’s of Shards that had been battled over...And the winners would be recognized and remembered. But somehow over 2000ish years, Roshar went from arguably 1000+ known Shards to less than 100? Where. Are. The. Shards? 

Maybe the spren are lying. Maybe some / most didn't die. The spren leaders decide to lie to not bond humanity because so many were killed/maimed. Maybe most if not all lived depending on the level of Ideal their Radiant was on or "woke" up later and the shardblade disappeared. The remaining shards are from the highest level Radiants at the time of the recreance and those spren are 99% dead. The rest survived. I think that would have to be what happened. The spren absolutely loathe even the thought of bonding humans. It would be like gay marriage to Americans 50 years ago. So they lie and simply say you killed most of us. One so spren wouldn't be keen on bonding humans and two humans would think twice. Perhaps they're "mostly deadeyes" locked up in a highspren (we haven't seen the highspren or leader spren yet) dungeon in Shadesmar, maybe even most of the spren think they all died but are just running into walls mumbling sad things about their Radiants and being betrayed.

[Cenanin]

On 12/11/2017 at 10:01 AM, Ookla the Variable said:

Maybe it was the Aimians. They are obviously protecting something. Many thought it was the Dawnshards. What if they also have the missing blades

I think it's Odium's body. Which are probably dawnshards. Probably why he's locked on Roshar. He can't get to his body without permission which has something to do with the Aimians(Arclo) for example says they were great pals of the Radiants. Like the Atium.

[Cenanin]

On 12/12/2017 at 3:51 PM, aemetha said:

This will be the least fun theory in this thread, but I think it's more than possible they just got lost.

Consider that in our world (which doesn't have highstorms burying the land in crem and sinking ships with regularity) we've lost any number of precious artefacts in a similar span of years. The arc of the covenant, the holy grail to name just a couple and those weren't regularly employed in armed conflict. Anything lost at sea would sink, anything lost on land is buried in crem.

Maybe some were lost, but the Feverstone keep scene seems to indicate that this was just one scene of the Recreance happening all over Roshar thousands and thousands were dropped. The warlords would risk everything to claim a lost shard from a plateau run, and this world has been in mostly a medieval type state for 4500 years. The honorblades are all accounted for, and the Shin use them.

Not all the spren died is my bet, Syl's Radiant supposedly died and didn't break their Oath, but I'm betting they(her KR) did and she doesn't remember. The damage done to them was dependent on the Ideal their Radiant was up to, and the Spren are also returning from "slumber" but don't remember and the rest of the Spren don't want it to happen again so they lie so that humans will be reluctant when seeking Spren out. Consider Syl. She gets considerably more conscious and self-aware the more Oaths Kaladin swears. She's basically a special girl wind spren when Kaladin meets her. Why would Oaths strengthen her? Because the broken Oaths weakened her to near death, Kaladin almost does it to her again in WoR but then says the words and viola shes back. That, I think is a huge clue we are being lied to about the Recreance "die off." There's a lot of clues now that I think about it.

Keep this in mind also. The Reacher captain keeps his father locked up to stop him from "wandering off", if the deadeyes are really dead and gone, why would it matter?

I bet when Adolin starts swearing Oaths his blade will revive.

Edited December 14, 2017 by Cenanin

[Cenanin]

1 hour ago, Naurock said:

Crackpot theory! Vasher and Vivenna took some back to Nalthis for their new war they had to fight.

Idk how else to account for so many blades being gone.

Shards can also be things like rods, bows, hammers, forks, whatever. Maybe a lot were thrown away as useless. We only see swords, but we know they can be whatever.