stormlight archives Why did the Parshendi not use a shardblade for gemheart harvesting.

[entropyincarn8]

Words of Radiance Spoilers!
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 (Pardon my spelling errors as I've only experienced the books through audible) 
So why do the Parshendi not use their shardblade to cut the gem hearts from the chasmfiends asap when getting to a plateau with one. I get they are trying to get into a war of attrition with the Alethi. Strategically though it would be better to get there quick and get away with the gem hearts while the Alethi are just arriving, that would demoralize them and would make them get bored of the war effort more quickly. Showing up with your army and using hammers to break the shells open seems like a stupid waste of life. 

Thoughts? Is this explained somewhere I missed? They have a shardblade, so why not use it to win all the gem hearts they can since they are able to move to the plateaus much faster. Seems like a pretty big oversight.

[FlowerGirl]

I agree, maybe they just didn't want to risk their only shardblade getting gemhearts, idk.

[entropyincarn8]

1 hour ago, FlowerGirl said:

I agree, maybe they just didn't want to risk their only shardblade getting gemhearts, idk.

The only thing I can think of is they didn't want to risk losing their shards to the Alethi. If multiple shard bearers came for them they could have been overwhelmed and lost the last of their shards. However this doesn't really hold water when you think about how the Parshendi are faster and could escape easier. 

[Treamayne]

11 hours ago, TheDanimal said:

Words of Radiance Spoilers!
 (Pardon my spelling errors as I've only experienced the books through audible) 
 

Spoiler

So why do the Parshendi not use their shardblade to cut the gem hearts from the chasmfiends asap when getting to a plateau with one. I get they are trying to get into a war of attrition with the Alethi. Strategically though it would be better to get there quick and get away with the gem hearts while the Alethi are just arriving, that would demoralize them and would make them get bored of the war effort more quickly. Showing up with your army and using hammers to break the shells open seems like a stupid waste of life. 

Thoughts? Is this explained somewhere I missed? They have a shardblade, so why not use it to win all the gem hearts they can since they are able to move to the plateaus much faster. Seems like a pretty big oversight.

 

The "Eye" icon in the toolbar is for spoilers (as edited above)

11 hours ago, FlowerGirl said:

I agree, maybe they just didn't want to risk their only shardblade getting gemhearts, idk.

It's heavily implied (both in WoR and in the Row flashbacks) that they had a few Shardblades when Gavilar was killed. Doing this is how they lost them all (since their concepts of war, strategy and tactics were primitive - as shown in the Flashbacks) and they don't want to risk losing their last Shards, which is why Eshonai fights in person so rarely.

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Treamayne

[entropyincarn8]

9 hours ago, Treamayne said:

The "Eye" icon in the toolbar is for spoilers (as edited above)

It's heavily implied (both in WoR and in the Row flashbacks) that they had a few Shardblades when Gavilar was killed. Doing this is how they lost them all (since their concepts of war, strateg,y and tactics were primitive - as shown in the Flashbacks) and they don't want to risk losing their last Shards, which is why Eshonai fights in person so rarely.

 

Ah I must have missed where they implied that is how they lost them, I knew they had mutliples but assumed they were lost in single combat duels, not while attempting to smash (slice?) and grab some gemhearts as quickly as possible. It is the only thing that makes sense though, especially with their primitive knowledge of strategy and war, I forgot about that part. 

 

And sorry, new to the website but I will remember that. Copied this right from another post on another site where I did not get any satisfactory answers.

 

Thanks! 

[+Harrycrapper]

There's another reason not cited here that RoW shed some light on. The Parshendi (mistakenly)believed that the Alethi would tire of war. They wanted to have those constant skirmishes that only slowly moved the war forward. They realized their mistake towards the end, but by then it was too late. At any point during the war, if the Parshendi started beating the Alethi to all of the gemhearts, the Alethi would have started making a real effort to win the war. Think about how Dalinar was completely unsuccessful in getting the Highprinces to do anything else but go after gemhearts. If the Highprinces were denied the gemhearts, they would have pushed to end the war, one way or another. And Elhokar would have pushed for finishing the Parshendi off over giving up the war. 

[+Invocation]

I think another thing easy to forget here is the same reason Dalinar needed a hammer to help hammer out that latrine trench: Shardblade cuts are too smooth. All they'd be doing is slicing a straight line into it, potentially chipping the gemheart, and still have to find a way to efficiently remove that chunk of flesh from its channels. If they'd had lifting pulleys or fabrials or something that might be able to help, but that would take as long to set up as just carving straight through the flesh does.