It's Rock a Dawnshard?

[Onironte]

he can't harm or inflict pain, he doesn't bind to a spren (although the rest of "Bridge Four" do)... and: 

  #26 March 29, 2022 Share Copy

 

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8giraffe8

Other than Hoid and Sigzil, have we witnessed "on screen" a character actively under the effects of a Torment in your other published works so far?

Brandon Sanderson

...Yes, asterisk. I mean, you have, but you wouldn't be able to notice it yet.

 

[WandererNearby]

He shoots someone with a bow. Oathbringer spoilers:
 

Spoiler

He shoots Amaram in the back and straight up kills him. 

 

[Little_Dagger]

I was wondering the same. Technically, in the Sunlit Man, we see that the Torment gets stronger over time, so perhaps Rock is still capable to inflict harm at the stage when he kills Amaram, i.e. not lock up yet?  

[+Child of Hodor]

On 6/7/2022 at 8:24 AM, DougTheRug said:

He shoots someone with a bow. Oathbringer spoilers:
 

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He shoots Amaram in the back and straight up kills him. 

 

He does have superhuman strength and can see spren like Syl even when they are not trying to appear to people. 

I think what's going on with Rock has to do with Horneaters being Human - Singer hybrids and some of them may have gemhearts in their bodies like Singers do. Rock may have a lil spren inside him that gives him these unique attributes. 

In Dawnshard we learn that Larkin can grow much larger with the help of a spren. Rock is really tall and broad even for a Human or Singer (depending on what spren they have at the moment)

****

What other current / former Dawnshards are there?

The original 16 Vessels killed Adonalsium using the Dawnshards so they had to have been a Dawnshard or at least 4 of them had to have. I don't know if just 4 used them (what were the other 12 doing?) Did multiple people use them at once or did they quickly pass them off to each other? Either way some of the original 16 Vessels have been on the page and at least some were a Dawnshard.

Frost. (He's "onscreen" in The Traveler and we hear from him in WoR) Hoid mentions how Frost is now essentially immortal in the WoK letter to Frost. Brandon recently confirmed this immortality is due to something other than regular dragon stuff.

 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498/#e15673  

The Lopen  

[Yumiya]

I agree that Frost is a likely possibility. 

[AbeK]

I think this is a really good theory. Or at least Rock might have been a Dawnshard at one time (or had some Connection to one).

A few other points that support this:

*Rock seems to have a very well attuned sense of taste and musical pitch (his humming in WOK when they first enter the chasms). Rsyn similarly gained some heightening like this after she became Change. (Although maybe this is just from the Peaks' investiture pools.)

*It looks like the Dawnshard's effects continue after someone had/was one (like for Sigzil and Hoid, who still can't eat meat even after giving up the DS).

*We know a Dawnshard has come through the Peaks at least once (albeit apparently long ago, but maybe the effects continue or tie to people who have any type of Connection to it).

*Hoid's fight with Kelsior shows that the no-harm effect isn't categorical like Yuliya said (and,if Dalinar is a Dawnshard, we might see the same when he fights in WOK but then gets unnaturally sick about it).

*The Change Dawnshard seems to be self-aware, and it seems to like Cord for some reason (it pulses with warmth when Rsyn lets Cord keep the Shardplate).

*Rock is named after a special rock that his father saw, and it looks like Hoid's prior Dawnshard had some tie to a rock and/or Topaz.

*The Sleepless seem to have an unusual respect for Horneaters.

My best guess would be that Rock either was/transported a Dawnshard for a short time, or the Dawnshard's effects tie to anyone who is significantly Connected to another person who was a Dawnshard (like maybe an ancestor of Rock).

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by AbeK

[ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ]

This all just makes really look foward to the book Horneater. 

Also this theory seems like it makes sense, except that he says that others in the horneater peaks can also see seen. Do they pass around the dawn shard? Or is it just something else?

Edited August 11, 2023 by ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ

[Firesong]

I highly, highly, highly, highly doubt this for several reasons. 

1: We have no indication he is any older than he looks, and in fact he is definitely younger than 74, so we have no physical indication of him taking up a Dawnshard long ago. 

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James M

According to Cord, Rock drew the Bow of Hours at the dawn of the new millennium. Roshar is at year 1173. Do Horneaters have a different calendar, or is Rock just really really old?

Brandon Sanderson

No, Rock is not really old, that's a different calendar. Rock is not old enough to have drawn that bow 74 years ago.

2: He can harm people, he just avoids it due to cultural reasons, as the books state; we see him kill a man in Oathbringer, and most of his pain and guilt comes from feeling that he betrayed his people. Also, as far as we know, the limitation of not being able to harm people mostly comes from Hoid's own Dawnshard, meaning that this theory would suggest Rock has Hoid's Dawnshard, which implies a lot of unlikely circumstances, I feel. I also feel he would have mentioned Rock being a Dawnshard in one of his open and honest talks with Kaladin. At least some brief mention.

3: The rock he was named after was just a random rock that looked pretty due to the water patterns on it. I highly doubt that it is anything all that special. Brandon actually corrobarates this, I feel, as he describes the deeper meaning of what his name means.

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Questioner

How would you pronounce Rock's full name?

Brandon Sanderson

I usually get this wrong. *apprehensively chants the name* I think, but there might be something in there. It actually means... in Horneater you don't have to use a pronoun at the beginning, which is one of the weird things, you usually start with a verb. It means something along the lines of "I saw a beautiful wet stone that no one is paying attention to, but it was really cool because of the water pattern on it." Right, like, that's what his name means, and it kinda just means "Hey, appreciate the beauty of nature." Its kind of a little Horneater, their version of the haiku. The meaning is "Nature is beautiful, don't walk past the beauty of nature and ignore it." But his name actually kinda means "lonely, or forgotten rock". But "I saw a beautiful rock washed by rainwater that everyone is ignoring." Anyway, it doesn't translate all that well, I'm using a bunch of weird Asian and Indo-European language structures for this so its not real easy to translate to English.

So, I just don't think he was every a Dawnshard.