Jump to content

Search the Community

Showing results for tags 'listeners'.

  • Search By Tags

    Type tags separated by commas.
  • Search By Author

Content Type


Categories

  • Brandon and Book News
  • Events, Signings, & Giveaways
  • Columns and Features
  • Site News
  • Shardcast

Forums

  • 17th Shard
    • Introduce Yourself!
    • 17th Shard Discussion
    • The Coppermind Wiki
    • Arcanum Discussion
  • Brandon Sanderson
    • General Brandon Discussion
    • Events and Signings
    • Sanderson Fan Works
    • Arcanum, the Brandon Sanderson Archive
  • Spoiler Zone
    • The Sunlit Man (No Cosmere Spoilers)
    • The Sunlit Man (Cosmere Spoilers)
  • The Cosmere
    • Cosmere Q&A
    • Cosmere Discussion
    • Stormlight Archive
    • Mistborn
    • Other Cosmere
  • Non-Cosmere Works
    • Cytoverse
    • Other Non-Cosmere
    • The Wheel of Time
  • Related Works
    • Writing Excuses and Intentionally Blank
    • Reading Excuses
    • Sanderson Curiosities & Unpublished Works
    • TWG Archive
  • Community
    • General Discussion
    • Entertainment Discussion
    • Forum Games & Random Stuff
    • Creator's Corner
    • Role-Playing
    • Social Groups, Clans, and Guilds

Blogs

  • Chaos' Blog
  • Leinton's Blog
  • 17th Shard Blog
  • KChan's Blog
  • Puck's Blag
  • Brandon's Blog
  • The Name of your Blog
  • Darth Squirrely's Blog
  • Tales of a Firebug
  • borborygmus' Blog
  • Zeadman's Blog
  • zas678's Blog
  • The Basement
  • Addy's Avocations
  • Seshperankh's Blog
  • First time reading The Well Of Ascension
  • Zarepath's Blog
  • "I Have Opinions About Books"
  • Test
  • Which actors would you like to see playing the characters of Mistborn?
  • Drifted Mists
  • Jaron's Realm
  • Roshar Speculative Theories
  • ChrisHamatake's Blog
  • Paradox Flint's Blog
  • Deoradhan's Blog
  • Storm Blessed's Blog
  • Elwynn's Blog
  • firstRainbowRose's Blog
  • Rotabush ShardBlog
  • Hoid's Compendium
  • InterContinental Adventures
  • Claincy Creates
  • Theories, quotes, and details to keep it all straight.
  • WoR Thoughts and Questions
  • Blogfalcon
  • David Coppercloud's Blog
  • yurisses' notes and theories
  • Lark Adventures
  • LUNA's Poetry
  • Inspiration Board
  • Trying to be Useful for a Change
  • Cosmere Nerd Things
  • The Way of Toasters
  • An Elephant's Blog
  • Shhh Spoilers for Ronald.
  • Wyn's Adventures in Geekiness
  • Words With Ene
  • Dapper's Blog
  • Things to talk about, stuff to do
  • Zelly's Healthy-Accountability Blog
  • Dapper's Music Blog
  • GM Test Blog
  • Rhythm of War Liveblog
  • Zephy’s Art Blog
  • Axioms Idioms & Adages
  • Weather Reports
  • Unnecessarily Overcomplicated
  • 5
  • The Blog of Dubious Copyright Legality
  • Trutharchivist's Rambles
  • Xino's corner of insanity
  • The Perfect Space Opera
  • My Journey Through Roshar (A Liveblog)
  • Lost Metal Liveblog by ccstat
  • D&D campaign design.
  • My Depression Log
  • Story Ideas and Whatnot
  • deltarune AU concept.
  • How I Relate to Every Character in The Stormlight Archive
  • A thing
  • random jank and jabber.
  • FNF crem

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start

    End


Last Updated

  • Start

    End


Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


Website URL


AIM


MSN


ICQ


Yahoo


Jabber


Skype


Member Title


Location


Interests

  1. It's interesting to see that even temporary changes made to the Spiritweb can leave permanent changes to the Spiritwebs of a person's offspring. For example, we see this in the Koloss-blooded, where they retain a portion of their Koloss parent's strength, toughness, and altered genetic makeup. Listeners and Singers are capable of doing something similar with humans, being able to produce half human and half Listener/Singer children. Additionally, a Listener's or a Singer's Form is very similar to what Hemalurgy does, but in a more natural fashion. I think, therefore, that if a Listener or Singer had a different Form "equipped" that their offspring with a human would have effects from that Form, similar to how different Hemalurgic constructs should have different effects on their offspring. This could be part of why Horneaters and Herdazians have such different ethnicities (though it could also be due to more mundane reasons, such as being separate long enough to make distinct changes to their gene pools). As a side note, another interesting way that changes to the Spiritweb have been seen effecting offspring is due to Lighteyes; their Radiant ancestors had eyes that were only temporarily lightened, yet their children have a more permanent eye color change.
  2. Warning: This post contains a single Stormlight 5 prologue spoiler, masked, and potentially significant spoilers should these theories prove accurate. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. Just as the Stormfather provides Stormlight and surgebinding powers to all of Honor's children, Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM) became the Voidmother proving Voidlight and voidbinding powers to all of Odium's children, all of her Singers, during the False Desolation. One BAM to Connect them all One BAM aligned them One BAM to draw them all And with her Voidlight bind them One gem severs the whole One gem divides them One gem rips away souls And then the darkness finds them In the Land of Roshar Where the Singers die And Listeners live We'll explore much relevant history leading up to and beyond BAM's imprisonment (see Coppermind's BAM and False Desolation articles for supporting canon references) and theories explaining the magical science behind what happened with BAM, her Singers, and related events. BAM-SINGER CONNECTION HISTORY The lead up to and fall out from BAM's gemstone capture includes: Long, long ago, Odium unmakes 9 spren who fight during many desolations in which BAM serves as highprincess and commander of Odium's forces, The last desolation comes where all but Taln survive, Taln holds Odium and his Fused on Braize all by himself (spanning a total of 4500 years), During the long imprisonment of Odium and the Fused, BAM somehow gains the ability to pull Voidlight into the Physical Realm and to Connect herself with all the Singers of Roshar, a feat previously only managed by Odium, making herself a little god (RoW 847-848), Even though Odium and the Fused are still trapped on Braize, BAM's newfound powers give her the ability to provide Singers with forms of power including all the Regal forms plus stormform, which allows BAM to wage war against the Knights Radiant during the False Desolation, with no end in sight, The Listeners, tired of endless war and manipulation from both Odium and Honor, "cast off everything - including our very forms - to find freedom," which severs their Connection to BAM (RoW 159), Honor's long, slow death begins around this time, The Knights Radiant form a special Strike Team to imprison BAM inside a gemstone in order to end the False Desolation, Because BAM is a little god and holds strong Connection to the spren and souls of every Singer in Roshar except the Listeners, these tethered souls and spren get sucked along their Connection to BAM, ripping out pieces of their souls, removing both their Identity and Connection, and possible damaging or destroying their gemhearts in the ripping process, Somehow even Honor and Cultivation's spren and the Sibling get damaged by BAM's imprisonment, though to a much smaller degree that perhaps signals a much smaller Connection between the Voidmother and "all who belong to Roshar," affecting the Sibling's abilities to make Towerlight and crippling Urithiru (RoW 621), Close to dying, Honor cannot help the Sibling, Urithiru, or the Knights Radiant, The Battle for Feverstone Keep begins before BAM's imprisonment since the enemy still pushes for that ground and parshmen are anything but pushy (OB 809), BAM's imprisonment, if during the Battle for Feverstone Keep, would have caused all fighting Singers to experience excruciating pain and then simultaneously transform into docile, mindless parshmen, All Singers Connected to BAM become parshmen through a break in Identity and Connection; only the Listeners escape because of their previously broken Connections to her, Hundreds of Windrunners and Stonewards at Feverstone Keep become the first to abandon their oaths en masse as Honor says, "they are the first" (OB 547), Two thousand years later, the Everstorm travels to Roshar through the Cognitive Realm and is brought through to the physical realm, and The Everstorm restores both Identity and Connection by repairing the Singers’ souls and possibly their gemhearts. SCIENCE-MAGIC THEORY BEHIND CONNECTION, CAPTURING SPREN, AND THE SINGERS' SOULS From Newton, we know: Force = mass * acceleration From Jasnah (OB 1179), we know that "concentrated Stormlight has a faint mass to it." So the more we accelerate the physical mass of the Stormlight, the stronger the physical force we have acting on the Stormlight and anything Connected to and by the Stormlight. How do we move or accelerate Stormlight? Navani's lecture on fabrial mechanics includes details on sucking Light into a gemstone in order to trap a spren inside a gemstone. We first lure a spren into close proximity to a gemstone with something it likes (e.g., flames for flamespren) and by using the type of gemstone it prefers (RoW epigraphs, Chapter 1). Interestingly, we already know the type of gemstones preferred by each Order of Knights Radiant (and each associated herald). Moash's knife had a large sapphire gemstone hilt that gave a subdued glow after capturing Jezrien's spren-soul (OB 1205), which makes me wonder if the gemstone in Leshwi's spear (RoW 80) that drained Kaladin's Stormlight and nearly sucked out his soul (RoW 101) was sapphire, as well. The first questions we must ask ourselves would be 1) what would BAM be attracted to and 2) what kind of gemstone would she prefer? To answer the second, maybe the Voidmother would prefer a heliodor, as the Stormfather would. As for the first question, she appears to like war and commanding, and she has shown particular interest in Feverstone Keep (OB 809). One might imagine Melishi, the False Desolation's Bondsmith, and her Strike Team showing up at the Battle for Feverston Keep with a large and perfect (or nearly perfect) heliodor gemstone, knowing that BAM would be nearby commanding her troops and in search of something in the area that interested her. Navani's next stages in capturing a spren (RoW epigraphs, Chapters 2-5) would be filling the gemstone to around 70% full of Stormlight (Voidlight in BAM's case) and then quickly sucking that Stormlight out to create a vacuum that will suck in a nearby spren. Suppose you take a brown paper lunch sack and suck the air out. It collapses, right? The same would be true of a Ziploc bag. By collapsing to reduce the volume, the bag equalizes the pressure. But what about something that has a rigid structure like a gemstone, especially a gemstone that doesn't leak? If you suck all the air out of a glass, for example, you'd suction that glass to your face since you've created a vacuum of extremely low pressure. Because air and Light will always seek the lowest pressure possible, they'll get sucked into a vacuum until the pressure outside of the gem roughly equals the pressure inside the gem. Since volume is inversely proportional to pressure, the larger the gemstone, the lower the pressure (where the lower pressure goes the stronger the vacuum becomes). And finally, the tighter the seal, the less a gemstone will leak and the stronger the vacuum will be. So large, perfect gemstones make the perfect traps for these gods. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how does the spren gets sucked in along with the Stormlight? That's where Connection comes in. When the Stormfather gives Stormlight to his children - his spren and his surgebinders - an invisible cord of Stormlight will Connect that spren or that Radiant to the Stormfather. The same can be said for the Voidmother's children - BAM's spren and her Singers: they're all Connected to their mother by a physical force from the Voidlight she provides. Let's say you have a massive gemstone and a larkin quickly sucking a ton of Light out of your stone. The gemstone will quest out seeking to replace all or almost all of the light it just lost with a powerful force. Once it captures a nearby Stormlight Connection cord, the spren will be drawn in along with the Stormlight the spren is tethered to. Yes, the Connection is mostly spiritual, but there is a small physical Connection, too (because the Stormlight Connecting them has a small mass, as Jasnah said, and mass * acceleration is force, as Newton said). If we yank hard enough on that tether, the spren cannot help but be pulled in. We see this with spren pulled into fabrials, yes, but also with human and Singer souls, tethered to their home planet by their Connection to the Investiture there. We saw Jezrien's spren-soul sucked into Moash's sapphire knife and Kaladin's soul nearly sucked into Leshwi's gemstone-capped spear, both of which had metal that specifically draws in Stormlight including the Stormlight cords of Connection. Let me digress for a smidge to explain that Identity and souls are nearly synonymous. For instance, the Fused (where each Fused is the soul of one ancient Singer fuzed together forever to a surgebinding spren, granting surgebinding powers and immortality) maintain their Identities - and most of their intellect, knowledge, and memories - even though they constantly lose the rest of their bodies because Identity is stored in the soul. Connection for the traditional Singer bond appears to be stored in their gemhearts since that is where their spren and probably their souls reside. Now I said all that to say this: this, this, this is how Singers' souls were ripped away, how their Identity and Connection were stolen, and how they became mindless parshman slaves, by having parts of their souls that were tethered to their Voidmother ripped free, likely destroying their gemstones in the process, as BAM and all her many Connections were sucked into her gemstone prison. With Singer souls damaged, they were not quite soulless and mindless nothings but nearly so. And with Singer gemhearts damaged or destroyed, the parshmen lost their abilities to bond any other spren or to hear the rhythms of Roshar inside their gemhearts. The Listeners were spared, maintaining their Identity and their abilities to Connect with other spren because they had previously severed their Connections to BAM before her imprisonment. TRAVEL & WORLDHOPPING We'd be remiss if, while we're here with Connection, we didn't speculate on travel and worldhopping. Connection tethers Invested individuals to their home planet, not letting them escape lest they rip out part of their souls, their Identity, and destroy their Connection. But of course there is a way around this problem, a way out, because this is Sanderson, after all. The remainder of the post includes a little speculation about how off-world travel may be possible based on what we know of Connection above and a single spoiler from the Knights of Wind and Truth prologue that gives a bit more detail regarding the quote above. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. I've kept all non-Stormlight cosmere spoilers out of this post.
  3. Hey all! I’ve had this for a while but I finally went and recreated it digitally! Attached below is an unofficial script/language/alphabet that I created for the singer and listener people + a “user manual” because I made it far more complicated than necessary. I don’t know if we have any evidence of them having written language but I decided to make one regardless, and I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!
  4. Something that I’ve been curious about since the start of the series is the physiology of the listeners. They’re described as having carapace, and when Kaladin removes the carapace from one of them in the chasms, he notes how unlike their anatomy is to that of humans. But he doesn’t really go into detail as to why it’s different. We know that they have breasts in mate form, which leads me to believe they could be mammals, but it’s also noted that all of the very few mammals that live on Roshar came over with the original humans from Ashyn. However, the fact that humans and listeners could breed (the horneaters and herdazians both have listener ancestry), seems to indicate that they could be mammals. Is their skin more lizard like, or soft and hairy? The males are mentioned to have beards, but the listeners describe their hair as “hair strands”, so is it the same physiologically as human hair? Ar e there any WOB or in-book quotes that would clarify this?
  5. There are now 8 works in the Rhythms of Desire Collection! All these fics feature singers, listeners, and/or Fused in situations that range from romantic to explicit. Please be kind to yourself and everyone around you - beware the ratings and the tags! The Rhythm of the Lost - Rated Teen, 1100 words Dul and Mazish gain sapience and take Mateform together. The Rhythm of Tension - Rated Mature, 3000 words Several months into their relationship, Renarin and Rlain visit the Listeners together. Renarin is looking forward to getting to know Rlain's childhood friends a little better. Five Rhythms - Rated Mature, 6500 words A series of five interrelated vignettes, exploring Renarin and Rlain's relationship through Rlain's forms - Scholarform, Mateform - and through rhythms - Anticipation, Mourning, Victory. Felled By You, Held By You - Rated Mature, 6000 words (new!) During their research, the tension and curiosity between Navani and Raboniel grows until neither of them can (or want to) deny it. If We Have Each Other - Rated Mature, 15,000 words A couple weeks into Mateform, Rlain and Renarin struggle with the conflict between Rlain's desire for touch and Renarin's aversion to it. Research - Rated Mature, 2000 words Raboniel and Navani discover the Rhythm of War, which leads to an entirely different avenue of research. Sexy Sociology - Rated Mature, 9200 words Set in a future Roshar AU, Rlain is an exchange student in Kharbranth, where Renarin is a classmate in Dr. Sja Anat's Sociology class. Pegged for Destruction - Rated Explicit, 2200 words Lezian the Pursuer is on the hunt for his latest target. Leshwi has taken an interest in the same target and will not allow Lezian to complete his horrible goal.
  6. I couldn't help but notice that a relatively large point repeated throughout RoW is how Venli thought she was the last listener. How she organized Thudd and some others to escape fused rule. But at the same time, I couldn't help but notice that Thudd and Eshonai were kinda taking bets on venli going into mate form when she was looking for war form. Meaning he must too be a listener, who Venli grew up with and would have known. Maybe I missed or misread something but I haven't been able to find much on Thudd in general
  7. So here's my idea. Remember how Navani could faintly feel the rhythms only when she was touching a large amount of Stormlight? Thus proving the rhythms really do come from it? Well, in Mistborn, burning Bronze let a Mistborn hear the Rhythms of other allomancers, therefore giving them the ability to tell which metal they were using. Coincidence? Correlation? Thoughts?
  8. This line of thought springs from Leshwi's reaction to finding out about Venli's bond to her spren. The relationship between Singers/Listeners was never explained in depth beyond the fact that Singers/Listeners can trap them in their gemhearts to switch between different forms. In the listeners' songs, there is mention of a betrayal from the spren, but the information has been passed down verbally for many generations, and is therefore very unreliable. In Rhythm of War, Venli reveals her bond and Leshwi's reaction is to wonder whether they have been forgiven for their betrayal. That of course raises the question: What betrayal? Was their bonding with Odium some kind of betrayal? What was their relationship to sentient spren?
  9. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. How can Parshmen mate if they can’t turn into mateform? Humans bred them in pens. Is mateform even needed? I’m assuming it’s done through conventional human ways as Herdazian and Horneaters have Parshmen blood in them. Reminds me of my musings on how someone had Koloss blood and could cross breed with humans on Scadrial. Welcome anyone’s ideas.
  10. I am confused as to whether the listeners expected the Fused to return to Roshar when they summoned the Everstorm. They assassinated Gavilar in order to prevent the Fused from returning. As far as I understand it, they didn't want the Fused to come back and dominate their people. Could they have summoned the Everstorm in such a way that the Fused wouldn't have returned? Was summoning the Fused a way of acknowledging that they had no chance of winning the war against the humans without the help of the Fused?
  11. I just wanted to think for a second about why humans had the ability to bond higher spren but singers, who seem to be fully rational creatures like humans, at least in any form besides dullform and slave form. I think the reason for this has to do with evolution on Roshar and what higher spren get from the Nahel bond: sapience in the physical realm. Humans are physical beings--their cognition is a product of biological processes of the physical realm which obviously are manifested in the cognitive realm, and facilitated by innate investiture in the spiritual realm. The Parsh natives of Roshar evolved on a planet where the cognitive-based investiture was all over the place, and from evolutionary terms, the path of least resistance to developing sapience was a symbiotic process between humanoid and spren, rather than a fully physical process. The result is, obviously, that the sapience of singers is less physically grounded than that of humans, and thus a nahel bond is not nearly as firm a grounding in the physical realm as it is for humans, whose sapience is a result of their physical brains, at least on a material level. I think this is correct, but what has changed recently? Are spren bonding singers like Venli or (hopefully) Rlain even though the bond is less secure because they think it's just the right thing to do, and it CAN serve, just less well, or is there some other difference?
  12. So I'm chugging along in my full Cosmere reread in preparation for Dawnshard and Rhythm of War, and I'm on I think the third Eshonai interlude. The parallel I noticed is, Eshonai seems clearly not to be herself, but to be influenced by an external force, while thinking she is being herself. I think this external force might be the stormspren, which acts both as the mechanism by which the form is attained, and a direct connection to Odium. Singer mental acuity seems, to a major extent, to be a biproduct of the symbiosis between the physical singer brains, their cognitive minds, and connection with a spren acting the enhance the connection, and also to alter their physical forms based on a cognitive idea. The form-of-power spren are like an Odium filter there, so all thoughts get a hint of odium. I suspect other non-dullform spren are either of honor, cultivation, or some combination, but there is less powerful investiture in them to act as a filter, and less will put forward by the shards to make the filter achieve a particular end, rather than to let the singers be themselves. I thought the net result, however, was very very similar to the effects Calamity's selfishness and misanthropy has on Epics, and that Brandon is working with the theme of not being yourself, but almost being possessed, in both places. I don't think in Stormight it's a fear-based system like what we got in Reckoners, but the connection is strong, and fear is one of the main motivators in getting the Listeners to take Stormform in the first place. Eshonai's truespren seems to be trying to insulate her from the influence of the stormspren, and that's what it eventually does for Venli when it decided to bond her instead, though I think the form she was given might have been less intensely odious than a stormspren, at least in terms of its ability to motivate evil in an otherwise good person. I don't know what to draw from all this, but I wanted to share the connection I think really is there and see what other people thought.
  13. What form do the listeners have following the Everstorm? It isnt dull form given how easily they can speak and interact. Do they have spren in their gemhearts? If not, how can they be in an intelligent form? I could be completely misunderstanding the nature of their beings, but does someone have some insight?
  14. So while this could be nothing, I was looking through some discussions about stormlight 4 and I started to connect some dots. While it is not confirmed, a lot of the fandom- and myself- believe Hesina, Kaladin's mother, to be originally from Kharbranth. If this is true, we known from the end of Oathbringer that all those who were born in Kharbranth and their spouses will be spared from Odium. We also know that Odium is bound by his word and so he must follow this deal he struck with Taravangian. While I've seen quite a few people saying this deal will end up being bad for Taravangian and that Odium ultimately got the better deal, I think this deal is what will bring about Odium's downfall, not Taravangian's. Now I should say this having any sort of possibility weighs heavily on Hesina being born in Kharbranth, but under the assumption that she is then this means that Lirin is spared by association. And yet, even with this deal potentially protecting him, much of the fanbase believes Lirin will die in Stormlight 4. This is where I think Odium trips himself up. If Lirin were to die as a result of Odium- so be singers, listeners, or corrupted spren- the deal between Odium and Taravangian will immediately become void. And while we don't necessarily know what happens when a shard's word is broken, it is my personal headcanon that a big part of the process for Honor being shattered was that he in some way broke his word. While obviously this has a lot holes in it, I just wanted to point it out as I've been seeing a lot of people talking about the Kharbranth deal and whether or not Lirin will die in the next book.
  15. GoWibble

    Rhythms

    So Brandon said: Ansalem1 Hypothetically, if all of the Listeners were to go extinct would the Rhythms still exist? Brandon Sanderson Yes. WeiryWriter Are there any other species in the cosmere that also interact with the Rhythms like the listeners do? (Though not necessarily in the same way?) Brandon Sanderson Yes. /r/books AMA 2015 (Aug. 24, 2015) And Im thinking that he is talking about the seons. any ideas?
  16. Parshendi. Listeners. Singers. All the same? When'd the names "listeners" and "singers" divide? So they lived on Roshar with Cultivation and Honor. Then humans brought Odium with them to Roshar after destroying their last home with Surgebinding. Parshendi gave them Shinovar. Then...what? Used Surges forbidden to the Parshendi? When did the humans start fighting the Parshendi? I seem to remember something about the humans gradually taking over the homes of the Parshendi. And what's the deal with the spren abandoning the listeners for humanity? I don't remember any of the spren saying anything like that. From what I remember of Syl and Pattern, it seems like they fear the Parshendi and seek to eradicate them for fear of being forced into bonding with them.
  17. Corax

    Parshendi Teeth

    This is... not exactly a deep question, but, Are Parshendi teeth covered in white enamel, the same as humans? Or does the color match their red bones? Yeah, it's silly.
  18. Apologies if this has already been discussed and I missed it, but do we know why the Listeners were hunting chasmfiends so vigorously on the Shattered Plains? We know they have been experimenting with capturing spren in gems, but that doesn't seem to account for why they would need greatshell gemhearts. And it can't be just about killing them, because then why bother fighting pitched battles with the Alethi? I have a vague sense it has something to do with thunderclasts, but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe I'm just missing something obvious. (I've only just crawled out of the woodwork because I'm re-listening to the series from the beginning.) Anyway, hi folks!
  19. At the beginning of WoK the Alethi first encountered the Listeners, who they dubbed the parshendi . At this time the parshendi had no shardbearers. Jasnah confirmed this by her conversation with Dalinar in WoK . In WoR we find out after 6 years of battle Eshonai is the last Parshendi shard bearer.. so sometime after Gavilar death and the beginning of the Vengence Pact the Singers found a cache of shardblade . If you remember the Singers learned Alethi rapidly and the first question they asked was to see the Alethi maps. So did Ulim Who was around back then “ he was the voice that told Klade to buy Szeth. Tell the singers about a city where they could find shards? The most obvious answer is Urithiru . The Singers beat them ( alethi their long ago ) and took all the shards . Szeth could of took them thru the Oathgate. Maybe that is what he meant when he said he had seen this before when shallan activated the Oathgare. I assumed it was someone in Shinovar that went there but it could of been the singers guided by Ulim . What do you guys think ? Where did they get all those sets of shards??
  20. I would like to discuss the Singers . Compare notes and see if we are overlooking anything. To begin with i’d Like to go over the difference between Singers and listeners . The Singers are the original race that became the Parsh when a Bondsmith imprisoned one of the Unmade which trapped them into Slaveform . The listeners were the last company of Singers that turned. Away from the “Old gods” and eventually became the parshendi. I thought that all the listeners were wiped out in the creation of the Everstorm except for Rlain, Venli and demmed. However on my last re-read Venli spoke of 2000 listeners that survived the Everstorm . It is worth noting that the Listeners are considered traitors by the Fused for turning away from them and actively preventing their return by assasinating Gavilar. The Singers and Listeners both have 4 sexes . Malen and Femalen, which are appear like male and female but are asexual and have no reproductive parts. As far as I can tell all forms of power and most forms that the pashendi know are Femaen and malen. The only forms that are male and female that are in use are mateform , dullform , and slaveform. This is how the parsh were able to reproduce. The. Current hierarchy of the singers is as follows . The Singers are on the bottom . They have no forms of power.; Limited to mateform workform, nimbleform, slaveform, dullform , The next in power are the Regals which are Singers and Listeners who have taken a lesser voidspren into their gemhearts, they still possess their own minds . So far we have only seen Regals in Stormform and Envoyform. Lastly we have the Fused , who are Cognitive Shadows that all occupy Forms of Power. And exist by killing the spirit web of a Singer. They see the Singers as cattle and are the true Leaders of the Race. A last note is the Singers who have been awakened by the everstorm. To fill the gaps in there spriteeb they have all been given the consciousness of whatever country they served as parsh. Parsh from Alethi , act Alethi , parsh from Thaylan act Thaylan . now hear are the things we must figure out. Can singers use stormlight ? Can they become squires , can they bond spren. I strongly believe that singers cannot ! That is why Rlain says he has to adopt a form to be able to embrace stormlight . I think only Regals can use stormlight or bond a spren. i have discussed this with Sages before and I strongly feel they are totally misreading what Rlain is saying . Buf here is the more interesting question ? We have seen Venli bond a spren and thus be on her way to becoming a KR ( specifically a Willshaper. Can the Fused bond Higher Voidspren like Ulim? If so can they eventually learn to create living shardblades ? Can they learn to developer shardplate . Syl said the spren saw what honor did with the honorblade and they copied it. Can Ulim and the higher Voidspren learn to copy what Syl and wyndle do? This has never happened before but a lot of things are happening that has never happened before? And our last big question is what would happen if Dalinar and Venli and Kaladin and Rlain convince the Singers to abandon the Fused . Will this deny them bodies to posses or can the Fused force themselves into any Singer unfortunate enough to be caught in the Everstorm? I think the Singer has to open his body up to receive the Fused. What do the sages say? Are there any other forms that are male and female? Scholar form perhaps.?
  21. Did Roshar originally have Spren? Sylphrena indicates 4 genders of spren. 2 for the Parsh, 2 for the human. I don't think Roshar was formed like other Shardic worlds. No other Cosmere world has spren like Roshar, so far. It would seem that the Parsh thought of their objects being Malen and Femalen, voila SPREN! Perhaps? Maybe? Did the way they think or sing create the spren way back then? Shard worlds seem to have the 3 realms setup. Roshar wasn't created by a Shard (that I'm aware of.) The way I understand the history is that Odium saw the existing native Parsh and decided to become their god. He got invested to that Solar System. Along comes the human Voidbringers to settle around Shinovar (initially.) Honor and Cultivation either settled with them or decided to call it home at a later time. Introducing Honor's high storms, Odium's Everstorm (old in design) and the Cultivation's/Nightwatcher's Old Magic. When I read TWoK, I assumed Honors' death and Splintering brought about the spren. I have now been proven false. So, I suspect Roshar was similar to an Earth like world and topography. The Parsh evolved naturally and all was pleasant until Odium rolled on in. My question is HOW and WHEN do you think Roshar got spren? A certified timeline of these early events would be great to read. Thank you.
  22. Ok... Just had a crazy thought and I haven't seen any speculation on it. Please feel free to shoot me down. I seem to recall (sorry, can't provide a quote) an Eshonai interlude that suggested the Listeners intentionally severed themselves for their Gods. The Recreance, we have been told, Humans intentionally severed their bonds with their Spren. Causing a great deal of damage and essentially killing their associated Spren in the process. I am getting to a point, maybe. With the advent of the Everstorm and subsequent healing of the Parshmens Spirit Webs, I began thinking. Usually a bad idea for me. However... What if the Recreance and the Listeners Severing were the SAME Event. Something drastically nasty came to light (Spren bonds and Listener Forms both.) And it was decided mutually by both sides that is was necessary? The Skybreakers would have abstained for, insert clever idea here, reasons and a group of Listeners, **idea reasons** possibly abstained as well. Crackpot idea built of Crem and Wattle, but I thought I'd throw it up. Dissect accordingly.
  23. There's been a lot of speculation about what the secret was that destroyed the Knights Radiant, as well as speculation into the causes or mechanics of the Desolations and the Oathpact. I have a wild theory that connects the two. There's probably a thousand things wrong with it, and even I see a bunch of holes and leaps in logic, but hopefully it will at least be entertaining. It starts with a WoB exchange I saw posted in another topic earlier today by Steeldancer, so credit goes to them for finding this quote: So we know that the Heralds all being present on Roshar causes another Desolation to occur. The question is, why? Well let's consider what we know of Worldhopping, because that is essentially what is happening. Spren (and perhaps originally the Listeners themselves) come from Braize to Roshar. Other worldhoppers transition between the Cognitive realm and the Physical realm using Perpendicularities. Other WoB have confirmed that perpendicularities could be caused by a massive amount of Investiture. I believe it was confirmed that Jasnah essentially did a miniature version of this to return to the physical world. My theory is that the Heralds act like Investiture lodestones. If they stay long enough in the world, there is a kind of critical mass that occurs, creating enough of a perpendicularity for Odium's forces to transition en masse into Roshar. This is basically how the new Everstorm worked. Once a critical mass of Fused Listeners was reached, they were able to call the storm. I believe the Everstorm itself is Odium’s perpendicularity on Roshar, at least this time around. We know it carries Voidspren with it, and could be what allows them to come into the Physical realm in large numbers. We also know that it was created by a large number of Fused (ie, Invested) Listeners pooling their energies. That sounds like a recipe for a perpendicularity to me. Now what if the Highstorm works in the exact opposite way (which would make sense, since they are reversed in every other way). The Highstorm is described by (suspiciously colour-obsessed and oddly familiar) “Zahel” as “invested to the hilt and looking for somewhere to stick it.” (As an aside: god bless “Zahel”). The Highstorm disperses Investiture. It takes a huge amount, maybe enough to form a perpendicularity, but then spreads it out across literally the entire world. I submit that this was its primary purpose (because remember, the Stormfather has been tasked with keeping the Highstorms coming, and presumably Honor would have some reason for unleashing these things periodically upon the world). My theory is that there are other ways to enable (or hasten) a Desolation. Perhaps with sufficiently concentrated Investiture, Odium can create a workaround, or at least speed things up, with less time between Desolations. The Highstorm is a check against this by dispersing Investiture, whereas the Everstorm keeps it concentrated (which is which it doesn’t infuse gems with Stormlight). So Honor works to prevent (large) perpendicularities from forming, and Odium tries to create more. Smaller perpendicularities ensure that the two worlds will never be entirely isolated, but might not facilitate a lare-scale invasion. The Oathpact, then , could be an agreement. Honor creates a bargain by which Odium has a shot at Roshar every once and a while. Honor essentially creates the Honorblades as a controlled means of opening a path between worlds by way of highly concentrated Investitute (which could be why Syl refers to Szeth using a dangerous amount of Stormlight with the Honorblade). At the same time though, he makes them double as a means of fighting against the very invasion they facilitate. Odium, in turn, agrees not to just come over to Roshar and destroy it himself, an agreement that binds him even after Honor's death. So how do the Knights Radiant fit in? Well we already know that they were not intended by Honor. They were the result of the spren taking it upon themselves to mimic what he had done. They mimic the Honorblades, which are presumably involved with the Oathpact (see above). What if, unintentionally, they have re-created certain aspects of the Oathpact as well, as a side effect of the nahel bond? The Heralds, when concentrated on Roshar, kicked off Desolations. The Fused, when concentrated on Roshar, kicked off the Everstorm. And for however many centuries, human beings, Invested to the hilt, as it were, were concentrating themselves in a specific location: Urithiru. What if this was enough to, if not cause the Desolations, at least exacerbate them in some way? What if it created enough of a perpedicularity to allow some of Odium's forces onto Roshar in a consistent manner, like a door propped open even between the Desolations. Spoilers from Edgedancer: To me, this seems like the kind of revelation that would utterly crush a group dedicated to sacrificing for the good of all. To learn that they and their spren had in fact been causing or at least hastening/worsening the Desolations, that all of their efforts and sacrifice were only perpetuating a cycle of endless violence, I could see that breaking them, and causing the Recreance.
  24. [ Spoilers from the first 30 chapters of Oathbringer currently released ] So with the "final Desolation" pretty much officially underway as of the end of WoR, the main question going through my mind has been: how the hell can Odium actually lose??? Think about it. We know from Dalinar's visions and various other lore elements that in the past each Desolation nearly wiped out humankind. In fact, the justification for the current level of technology (or lack thereof) is that civilization is basically pushed back to the bronze age with each Desolation because of how devestating they are. And now consider this: that was with the full, organized strength of the Knights Radiant. Literal armies of them. Plus the Heralds! Now we have the Final Desolation coming, and so far there's only a handful of fledgling Knights Radiant, none of whom even have their Shardplate yet. Not only that, but the existing nations are super divided, and at the start of Oathbringer it looks as though it will not be easy to unite even a small number of them. So how can Odium screw this up? How could this be even a close fight? It seems to me that the only possibility is that the Listeners (at least some of them) are going to fight with humans. This is being set-up already at the beginning of Oathbringer, where we see groups of former parshmen slaves, healed by the Everstorm, basically just on the run. Not trying to attack, not out to kill humans in vengeance even (though they have real cause to want revenge). Just trying to survive, and most importantly not yet infused with any type of Voidspren (at least not in any obvious way). We also know that the Listeners way back made a choice to cut themselves off from their gods (Odium and co), restricting their forms drastically but earning freedom. They assassinated Gavilar in an effort to stop their "gods" from returning. They don't want to be Voidbringers, and I can totally see at least some of them fighting to maintain their freedom, refusing to be used by Odium. This could be what is "different" about this Desolation, the edge that humanity needs to balance the scales just enough to have a hope of winning. It would also fit with the themes established throughout the Cosmere books (spoilers for Mistborn series coming). We know from The Hero of Ages that the Deepness was in fact the mists. But more than that, it was Preservation's power tainted by Ruin. Ruin caused the Snapping process to be more brutal than it needed, killing people instead of just awakening their powers, covering the land and blocking out the Sun when it wasn't meant to, etc... This was Preservation's actual power, but Ruin managed to influence it. This shows that the influence of the Shards is not always rigid and distinct. There is overlap and intermingling, where multiple Shards use the same basic phenomenon. That is what the Thrill has to be. Dalinar's first revealed vision, where he fights Midnight Essence, with a poker. The Knight explains that any who feel the desire to fight should be compelled to go to Aletha. The Thrill USED TO BE a force for good, a way of telling people that they were destined to fight evil alongside the Knights (either as a full member or as a "squire." Since then, it has been twisted by Odium into something that makes people lust for battle and death. And without actual monsters around, they turn on each other, or make a game out of war, or almost kill their own brother. Odium is doing the same thing that Ruin did. But maybe it can go both ways. I've seen others here comment that it is odd that the Everstorm seems to heal the parshmen, making them whole again by reforging their Connection (incidentally, because of how we know this works from the second Mistborn series, this explains why they all speak unaccented Alethi). This seems like a very un-Odium thing for the Everstorm to do, especially since they do not seem to be possessed by Voidspren yet. What if Cultivation pulled the same kind of trick? Twisting the Everstorm just enough that it healed parshmen without automatically dominating them, giving them at least a chance to resist, run, be free, what have you? We know from the Jasnath-Hoid dialogue that the Everstorm is "new" or at least working differently than how the Desolations worked in the past. Perhaps the reason is that this time there are forces other than Odium at work on it. There are even hints about this in the depiction of the Midnight Mother. During Shallan's interactions, it is revealed that she was created to sow chaos, but that over time she became curious. Yes, it is a twisted, warped curiosity. But consider her actions at Urithiru. Did she flood the tower with monsters? Did she set about assassinating actual targets? No, she just copied what humans were already doing. Does this seem particularly effective? Or does it seem like a lost, broken creature trying to comprehend these creatures through the only relationship she understands: violence? My point is just this: she has actually changed since her creation. Just like the Everstorm is different this time. Just like maybe the Listeners aren't behaving the way Odium might want this time around. A big theme so far is how the good guys, left to their own devices, become corrupt and fell. But I think Brandon is hinting that maybe, just maybe, the reverse is true for the villains. Odium is banking on how time changes humans, makes them forget why they fought and abandon what they once were. But wouldn't it be poetic if the same was also happening to his forces? The Unmade have changed, however slightly. The Listeners seem to have changed as well. And maybe this time around they will surprise him, make him think that he could actually lose...
  25. When i first read WoR i assumed that when Listeners whet into stormform they all became like Eshonai. That they lost part of they minds, and something else took over. But looking back on it a lot of Eshonai's action in stormform don't add up with that assumption. If every Listener in stormform fell under the control of Odium then it seams like the first thing stormform Eshonai would do would be to gather all the smartest, freest thinking Listeners and get them into stormform. As a way to neutralize any opposition. Instead she dose the opposite. She seams afraid of anyone too smart going into stormform. She picks out people who take orders easily, and don't think for themselves as the first ones to take on stormform. At first i thought she didn't want strong willed people transforming because they might be able to brake out of being controlled. But then Eshonai super strong willed herself and that doesn't stop her from being controlled. I'm guessing that stormform, and the other 'forms of the gods' make Listeners more pron to hatred, and violence, and open up a doorway for Odium to control them. But that he can only control a few at once. Probably only 9. I think the 9 people Odium is controlling (both Listeners, and humans bonded to voidspren) are spread all over Roshar. And that Eshonai was the only Listener on the Shattered Plains directly under Odium's control.
×
×
  • Create New...