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Theories About Szenth's Dark Sphere


The Unhallowed

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Each gem stone is associated with something unique, so what would associate here?

 THe shards dont get a material form that often, as it seperates power from a shard wielder. So if void spren are part of odium, is htey seperate it from him? It weakens him, so leave him vulnerable. We know some void spren are greater than the rest, so if they target them, they could hurt him.

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. . . um, yes, Spren are shard splinters.

AFAIK they are a natural phenomenon on Roshar. Odium had no choice when he was forced to settle on Braize.

You can't kill a spren completely though, so that's pointless. It's about as helpful as smashing atium beads or, well, killing people from Scadrial, because they're also made from Shard investiture. Probably other humans too. That does no permanent damage at all.

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I already established that i was discussing stormlight sitting in a sphere.  It also works for an honorblade holder, except that the rate of diffusion is much higher because of the lack of a "membrane".  Same with a Radiant, except that they (may) have a gemheart, which would serve as a membrane and limit (or eliminate, possibly) any diffusion.

 

Using Stormlight does not defuse it.  Stormlight doubles as fuel, which makes utilizing surges entirely different from standard diffusion.

 

 

Well, I am terribly sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about, because I am not an electrician and do not have any idea at all how electricity works.  Can you at least try to explain it in a way that I can understand?

 

Hello there, just passing by to clear this up.

 

A good analogy to understand this, would be to compare stromlight to heat. Let's be honest, stromlight is nothing like heat (heat is not a gas, it's just energy. And stormlight may be energy who has taken the form of a gas, which is weird), exept for one thing :

Heat moves from hot areas to colder ones until both areas are at the same temperature. Like when you're outside and naked when it's cold : your body temperature gets lower and lower, and if you stay too long outside, you'll freeze to death. That's because the membrane (your skin) is not perfect and allows heat to leak off your body to get outside on amazing adventures.

Add something a bit harder :

 

Some materials have a higher conductivity (i don't know if this is the exact term, i'm not a native speaker) than others. Conductivity is the capacity of a material to conduct heat (no rust, sherlock).

Heat transfer occurs at a lower rate across materials of low thermal conductivity than across materials of high thermal conductivity. Materials of high thermal conductivity are widely used in heat sink applications (sucking heat out of something, think systems to cool down something) and materials of low thermal conductivity are used as thermal insulation. The reciprocal of thermal conductivity is called thermal resistivity.

 

 

Now let's look at Stormlight.

There goes the cycle : an Hightstorm comes, infuse gems with stormlight. When Stormlight is stored somewhere, it leaks off. Stormlight in a gem : it leaks off. Stormlight in a Knight : it leaks off. The light leaks because the "membrane" is far from perfect : There is no insulation between the air and the gem. The Stormlight goes from the gem to the air because the permitivity of the air is higher than the gem. It's physically "easier" for the stormlight to be in the air than it is in the gem. It's a kind of gas, and gas have the tendancy to expand to fill all the volume they can.

Add conductivity : with the Heat, your knight would be the steel handle : fast to leak off once it's charged because the skin is too imperfect to hold Stormlight. Plus breathing out leaks a toncrap of light.A Knight in a true Shardplate might be better.

The gem is the wooden handle : once infused it's slow to leak because the insulation between the center of the gem where most of the light stands swirling and the outer rim where the light leaks is very good.

ie to hold stormlight on a long time without using it: gem > Shardplatted Knight > Knight.

 

 

Now, we add the capacity of a Surgebinder to breathe in and out Stormlight. With heat, the analogy is Convection, ie transfert of heat by moving particules. Think of water :

convectpot.gif

Forced convection is the act of forcing the movement of particules to speed up the process. Think of a climatisation coupled with a fan : it's more effective that just a bloc of ice sitting in the room.

 

When a Surgebinder breathe in Stormlight, he forces the transfer of energy from the Gem to his body. It is a faster process than if the gem was just leaking into the air.

Edited by Rasha
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It's amazing how energy can be compared to ideal gas theory so closely eh? And the diffusion of aqueous solutions too.

Everything pretty much works that way. Except man-made things like money of course. Money gravitates to the more concentrated direction . . .

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Thanks for explaining it better than me, Rasha.

 

It's amazing how energy can be compared to ideal gas theory so closely eh? And the diffusion of aqueous solutions too.

Everything pretty much works that way. Except man-made things like money of course. Money gravitates to the more concentrated direction . . .

 

Heh, pretty much.

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Rasha, thanks for the explanation.  Upvote for that.  Also, is there a way that we know of to contain Stormlight completely?  I had heard of something like that in one of the books, but I can't remember.

 

As radiants advance, they hold stormlight more effectively.  Full fledged voidbringers and five oath radiants may hold it perfectly.

 

Plus, there's always food.  It's perfect enough for Lift.  Doesn't matter if it's moldy, still full of juicy awesomness :)

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Full fledged voidbringers and five oath radiants may hold it perfectly.

 

They don't:

 

Argent

--than Stormlight. So when you are holding the Breath it doesn't expire when you put it in something it doesn't go away. Can you tell me something about why that's happening?

Brandon Sanderson

Part of this is kind of inherent to the Shard and the power it's coming from. I mean the power of Endowment is just going to stick, that's part of the nature of its magic. Does that make sense? But it also kind of has to do with how the ecosystems are working. For instance the Stormlight is essential to the ecosystem of Roshar, it needs to be expended, it needs to get out and-- It's like evaporation, does that make sense?

Argent

Recycling? Not the recycling but the cycle of--

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, yeah like the cycle of water. And so just part of the way the nature of it works, it has to get out, it has to leak out, it has to run out. I mean it leaks even from spheres, right?

Argent

And when you lash things it's temporary--

 

Brandon Sanderson

Yep. And even though Szeth says that he thought Voidbringers could hold it they can't. Like it is just not the way that it works.

Argent

Can they just hold it better?

Brandon Sanderson

They can hold it better. It's not permanent. Now there are things that can do it permanently but--

 

(source)

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You're welcome for the explanations.

 

 

It's amazing how energy can be compared to ideal gas theory so closely eh? And the diffusion of aqueous solutions too.

Everything pretty much works that way. Except man-made things like money of course. Money gravitates to the more concentrated direction . . .

 

 

A lot of fields in physics have similarities. Like Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism, and apparently Chemistry (I just have basics in Chemistry and now kind of regret not having looked in it further)

 

 

 
They don't:
 

 

(source)

 

That's interesting. It confirms that even if Stormlight is pure energy (Investiture), it does not act like pure energy, but like a gas. Energy does not expands, it dissipates into something else and is irrecupevorable in any form. Stormlight is far more durable than any energy we know in our universe.

Surely because it's magic, and Shards are involved.

Edited by Rasha
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Back to the original question... what are the chances that the black sphere (possibly holding a voidspren) was given to Gavilar by (what would become?) Venli's contingent? That woman has secrets yet untold; what if this is one of them?

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Back to the original question... what are the chances that the black sphere (possibly holding a voidspren) was given to Gavilar by (what would become?) Venli's contingent? That woman has secrets yet untold; what if this is one of them?

 

Close to zero.  Why would Venli give it to him, rather than unleashing it herself?  It doesn't make sense.

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Maybe she didn't quite have the means of unlocking the power, or she gave it to Gavilar to wreak havoc, like in his brain or something.  That is, IF she was the original holder.  It would tie some loose ends regarding the Parshendi.  Not all, though.  That probably won't come for a long time.

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Maybe she didn't quite have the means of unlocking the power, or she gave it to Gavilar to wreak havoc, like in his brain or something.  That is, IF she was the original holder.  It would tie some loose ends regarding the Parshendi.  Not all, though.  That probably won't come for a long time.

 

Venli rediscovered stormform and has been channeling odious powers for a while now.  If she had the sphere, she would have been able to use it.

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Stop putting words in my mouth. I'm not suggesting that Venli gave it to Gavilar because she couldn't use it, or didn't know what it was, or needed his help - but because if he (or the humans in general) used it, something she wanted would happen. I'm suggesting a very deliberate plan (by some not in the Parshendi leadership) which would have made use of the humans to unleash the forms of power seven years earlier, for reasons we don't know yet.

 

I think what was in the back of my mind is along this line: Gavilar was planning to do something that would bring back the Parshendi's old gods. Venli has been actively working to bring back the old gods. Perhaps it was she (or a mentor/colleague) who gave it to Gavilar to use in a way that would accomplish both their purposes. This would mean that a contingent among the Parshendi were already working toward this end many years ago, and that they had reached some understanding with Gavilar. Perhaps he thought that they were more representative of the whole group than they actually were, but in any case he clearly thought that the Parshendi would approve of what he planned. He was assassinated because the leaders agreed that he could not be allowed to do whatever it was he revealed that night - but he told them his plans thinking they would welcome the return of their gods

 

Recall that Eshonai, at one point, thinks about how this new form hasn't changed Venli's personality in the same way it changed her own - as if it was not so foreign to Venli as it should have been. How long has she been working on this? How long has she actually had stormform? Has she merely been waiting until the situation was such that Eshonai could be manipulated into approving/using it openly, since her previous plan failed? 

 

We won't know, of course, until we find out more about the sphere and/or about Gavilar's plan, but I think it's at least a non-zero possibility that some of the Parshendi who wanted the return of the old powers would quite readily have given Gavilar something that would make it happen. Whether he fully understood what would happen is probably questionable, but that's rather beside the point. I'm merely suggesting that they had planned something that could be better facilitated by Gavilar using the sphere than they themselves doing so.

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Stop putting words in my mouth. I'm not suggesting that Venli gave it to Gavilar because she couldn't use it, or didn't know what it was, or needed his help - but because if he (or the humans in general) used it, something she wanted would happen. I'm suggesting a very deliberate plan (by some not in the Parshendi leadership) which would have made use of the humans to unleash the forms of power seven years earlier, for reasons we don't know yet.

 

I think what was in the back of my mind is along this line: Gavilar was planning to do something that would bring back the Parshendi's old gods. Venli has been actively working to bring back the old gods. Perhaps it was she (or a mentor/colleague) who gave it to Gavilar to use in a way that would accomplish both their purposes. This would mean that a contingent among the Parshendi were already working toward this end many years ago, and that they had reached some understanding with Gavilar. Perhaps he thought that they were more representative of the whole group than they actually were, but in any case he clearly thought that the Parshendi would approve of what he planned. He was assassinated because the leaders agreed that he could not be allowed to do whatever it was he revealed that night - but he told them his plans thinking they would welcome the return of their gods

 

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.  My issue with your theory is that from what we've seen, there's nothing Gavilar could do with the sphere that Venli couldn't.  As such, it would be counterproductive for her or for a member of her scholars to give it to him.

 

However, I'm fully open to a third party (maybe linked to Sons of Honor, or maybe of Anarchy) giving him the sphere.  I just can't see it being from members of the Parshendi.

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I'm thinking something subversive. Give the Alethi king a sphere and tell him to use it thus and so... He thinks he'll be doing a good thing, but really he'll be bonded to a Voidspren, or possessed by an Unmade, or something like that. Open him to the kind of influence that would lead him to do the same kind of thing as Alakavish, severely weakening the human race and simultaneously strengthening Odium's influences on Roshar. This time humanity loses the fight when the Desolation comes, and Odium reigns unopposed. That sort of thing.

 

I can think of a multitude of reasons Venli would capture a spren and give it to Gavilar, and very few of them have to do with him being able to do something she is incapable of doing. Most of them have to do with deceiving him into doing something that will destroy humanity and/or make them subject to Parshendi holding forms of power. All of them have to do with paving the way for Odium to escape whatever binds him to the Rosharan system and allowing him to rampage the Cosmere.

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Wetlander, I like your theory.  Maybe the dark sphere has the potential to grant its possessor power.  Giving it to Gavilar and then sending a powerful assassin after him may have been intended to tempt the most powerful man on Roshar into a puppet of Odium.  If so, then Gavilar's death would be honorable and heroic.

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I'm thinking something subversive. Give the Alethi king a sphere and tell him to use it thus and so... He thinks he'll be doing a good thing, but really he'll be bonded to a Voidspren, or possessed by an Unmade, or something like that. Open him to the kind of influence that would lead him to do the same kind of thing as Alakavish, severely weakening the human race and simultaneously strengthening Odium's influences on Roshar. This time humanity loses the fight when the Desolation comes, and Odium reigns unopposed. That sort of thing.

 

I can think of a multitude of reasons Venli would capture a spren and give it to Gavilar, and very few of them have to do with him being able to do something she is incapable of doing. Most of them have to do with deceiving him into doing something that will destroy humanity and/or make them subject to Parshendi holding forms of power. All of them have to do with paving the way for Odium to escape whatever binds him to the Rosharan system and allowing him to rampage the Cosmere.

How is anything you listed more effective than using it herself? Unless it's the equivalent of a nuke, but even then using it at a time and place of her own choosing would be better than waiting for a human to randomly decide to use it.

That's really my problem with your theory; without foresight (for real future seeing, which is, admittedly, a possibility), such a plan is ridiculous and almost sure to not succeed nearly as well as using it with purpose.

I have several coworkers, and counting on them to do necessary tasks at appointed time is asking a lot, at times; counting on them to randomly do something and have it be useful is preposterous.

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IF it did come from a Parshendi source, my thought was that maybe the plan was to give Gavilar the sphere, then make sure that he failed in his endeavors.  In which case, it would make sense that the Parshendi would assassinate him.  That, or maybe it was going too well and he was no longer their pawn.

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How is anything you listed more effective than using it herself? Unless it's the equivalent of a nuke, but even then using it at a time and place of her own choosing would be better than waiting for a human to randomly decide to use it.

That's really my problem with your theory; without foresight (for real future seeing, which is, admittedly, a possibility), such a plan is ridiculous and almost sure to not succeed nearly as well as using it with purpose.

 

That's what I'm trying to say.  It's unnecessary.  It's such a bad villainous plot that even a Bond film would reject it.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I imagine that it's a prison that contains a different type of Voidspren. We've already seen Stormspren, which make Stormform. They're red, like the opposite color of the blue Windrunner glyph on the chart ( http://omnia-fortunae-commito.tumblr.com/image/79001465674). They were also in a prison made from a gemstone. What if this new Voidspren is the spren for an order of the Voidbringers that corresponds with the Edgedancers (The opposite color of black being white)? Or somehow one of the spren that control the Ten Deaths? I would imagine the Death corresponding with the essence of Smoke, or the Midnight Essence.

Edited by dants
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I imagine it is some sort if gateway to Braize, and Gavilar planned to use it to summon Odium's avatar and kill him. Venli researched the parshendi songs for him and was his test subject to see if he could summon a lesser voidspren and send it back. It worked, but Venli was changed by the experienced, or maybe she actually liked being a voidbringer, so she started working against him, generating misunderstandings between him and the parshendi leaders and convincing them that he was attempting to bring their gods back and unleash them, not destroy them. Gavilar gave Szeth the sphere because he discovered he was deceived and knew that with it Venli could start a desolation by herself. Amaram thinks that Gavilar wanted to start a new desolation because he was mislead by the Sons of Honor, who were Gavilar's allies but didn't understand his full plans.

Edited by CognitivePulsePattern
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