Shallan's random sketch... OR IS IT?!?!

[Krazeemee]

I was going through WoK with some friends of mine (aeromancer and AH) and I noticed something interesting.
 
So some background.
 
-One of Shallan's many abilities is her artistic skill.
-She can draw scenes exactly as she remembered them.
-It takes her a second to remember a scene.
 
All these are mentioned in the book.
 
-She killed her father (No, Luke, I AM your father! (sorry))
-with a Shardblade
-a Father who happens to be a Brightlord.
 
Now, to the story.
 
Shallan and Jasnah take a walk, they goad a couple dudes into attacking them, and Jasnah kills them. (I know I'm simplifying things A LOT, but I'm trying to get to the point.)
 
Now, Shallan is thinking to herself the moralities of the issue, and trying to draw what Jasnah was doing with the fabrial. She spaces out as shes thinking about Jasnah/fabrial but continues to draw.
 
When she looks down, she has a mini heart attack. Why? She drew a picture of a room. In that room (which is a nice room, I may add. It was large, with swords and shields on the wall, etc.) there was a large table. On that table is a half eaten meal, and beside that is a DEAD BRIGHTLORD.
 
Still, not so much a reason to freak out. So its a little discerning that shes drawing dead people, but the book tells us she broke out in cold sweat, took the picture, crumpled it up, and chucked it out. The way it was written, you could feel that Shallan was shaken up.
 
But, what if that Brightlord was her father, and the picture was the moment right after she had slain him with her shardblade? Drawing a picture of her mysteriously dead father's corpse would certainly freak her out, and being an extremely traumatic moment, it would stick to her mind (if not that, definitely her subconscious). It could also be considered incriminating, if someone were to walk into her room and see that.
 
One more thing. When would be the very best time to assassinate your very busy Father that likes to dote upon you?

 

Now, I know that this isn't some huge, plot-turning discovery, and I'm sure many of you sharders are lining up to destroy this theory, but I think this is a cool little 'proof' that seems like a Sanderson thing to throw in there. So...

[Mysty]

I think you are totally right that she drew her fathers death. I never noticed that before, it was overshadowed by the spanreed conversation right after. She was thinking about killings and morality at the time, so it makes sense that the deed was fresh in her subconscience. But I don't think she killed him with a shardblade. I think she claimed the blade after killing her father. After all, the image had him lying in blood, and shardeblade don't leave bloody wounds unless you strike again after killing the victim.

Also, on page 395 in the ebook when she is thinking about her father it says "and the burden she NOW carries, hidden ten heartbeats away." This seems to indicade the shardblade is a very recent aquisition.

[marianmi]

To go even more here on a limb.. her father's soulcaster was working (for her father) but then after fixing it it stopped working...

Her father had a shardblade...

 

Her father was a surgebinder with a shardblade?

[Argent]

I hate to make the following sound like it will, but it was always obvious to me that this was exactly the case. It's not like Shallan has seen dozens of murdered Brightlords. The only thing that interests me about this scene is the fact that she drew her father in a pool of (his own) blood - which rules out the "death by Shardblade" cause of death. It makes sense though - if her father was a Shardbearer (though not a full one), she would have had to kill him with more mundane implements. The way I always imagined the scene playing out is as this: Lord Davar lost his temper, not for the first, but finally for the last time. He got into a fight with (at least) one of his sons and the fight probably turned physical. It says it somewhere in the book that one of them was bloodied, maybe unconscious on the drawing. Maybe it was a beating, not a fight. Seeing her brother's life in danger, Shallan acted on impulse and attacked her father with whatever she had around. His death was probably an accident. How she ended up with the Shardblade is a mystery to me - though I suspect she and her siblings decided that the newly materialized Blade should go to her, since she killed the Shardbearer and all.

 

I have a pet theory that the Soulcaster was damaged with the Blade somehow, killing the spren inside, thus rendering it nonfunctional. Either that or her father was a Soulcaster - but I find that unlikely, since he made a deal for it. It's possible that Luesh was the one who was doing the Soulcasting, but then I doubt he would've gone along with the whole "go steal Jasnah's" plan. Actually scratch that. I am now more convinced that Luesh was the one doing the Soulcasting and the fabrial was a front. We suspect (know?) that the Ghostbloods wanted to get their hands on it, and since Luesh was one of them, he would've supported, if not outright suggested, this course of action.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Argent

[Gloom]

Eh? I think it is at least as likely, if not more, that even her own family was unaware of her fathers Shardblade. I think Shallan may have been aware he had it, but it's altogether possible none of her brothers did. So the Blade appears after she kills him and she grabs it and makes it go away. The other possibility is that they did know about the Shardblade, and Shallan realized that whoever killed her father would have taken it, so she claimed it and told those who were not present that the killer took the Blade. The last possibility is that I don't have any idea what I'm talking about and someone is going to throw a bunch of quotes at me proving me dead wrong and make me feel silly for making this post.

[Argent]

Not much to quote that will contradict you, though it would've been my pleasure

 

I wasn't trying to imply that the family knew of the Blade. In fact, I too happen to think that they didn't. Shallan, in my opinion, killed her father to protect her brother(s) and was likely pretty surprised when a Shardblade popped out of nowhere. I don't remember whether her brothers know that she has it - it's possible that everyone else in the room was either dead or unconscious, and so she made the Blade vanish before any witnesses could appear. In fact, her brothers probably don't know about it - otherwise I'd imagine they would've tried to sell it before sending Shallan on what must've looked like a suicide to them all. 

[marianmi]

I don't think anyone in the family knew about the Blade.

It might be that even the ghostbloods do not know about the blade, else we might see them start killing her brothers and come after her to recover the blade.

Edited October 29, 2013 by marianmi

[Gloom]

Yes, I find it hard to believe that her brothers would have been okay with Shallan keeping a Shardblade if she knew about it.

 

Now, that is an interesting theory...

 

Luesh being a Surgebinder. So what if neither the Ghostbloods or Amaram killed Luesh? What if he was killed by someone else for being a Surgebinder instead?

[Argent]

An assassination like that would be heralding an age of dark justice, indeed...

 

Puns aside, he probably died in his sleep, normally:

 

She reached for the reed to reply, but it started scribbling again.

Shallan, it said. This is Nan Balat; I have sent the others away. It is only Eylita and me writing you now. There is something you need to know. Luesh is dead.

Shallan blinked in surprise. Luesh, her father’s steward, had been the one who had known how to use the Soulcaster. He was one of the few people she and her brothers had determined they could trust.

What happened? she wrote after switching to a new sheet of paper.

He died in his sleep, and there’s no reason to suspect he was killed. But Shallan, a few weeks after his passing, some men visited here claiming to be friends of our father. In private with me, they implied they knew of Father’s Soulcaster and suggested strongly  that I was to return it to them.

 

EDIT: I did get my chance to quote stuff!

Edited October 29, 2013 by Argent

[marianmi]

From the same quote, I gather they (the ghostbloods) don't know about the blade.

I would say the blade is far more precious than the soulcaster, and they would not hesitate to kill everyone until the blade pops up.

Edited October 29, 2013 by marianmi

[Argent]

Sounds reasonable.

[The Count]

I don't think either Luesh or Shallan's father was a Soulcaster...

 

I think the Soulcaster was a genuine greater soulcaster supplied by the Ghostbloods to held Davar gain money / power / influence etc.

 

It seems like the men visiting Nan Belat, did so in response to Luesh's death... this leads me to think that he was the one supposed to be in control of the soulcaster.

 

I suspect that when the soulcaster was broken he conceived of the plan to steal Jasnahs in the hope of saving his own skin as he knew the Ghostbloods plan was in dissarray after Davar died.

 

For the Shardblades, I think that Shallan is the only person on Roshar who knows it exists now.

 

I am sure Davar kept it secret, even from his family. The trail of events I see is as follows:

 

Davar went in a rage and started beating Nan Belat (the beating that left him crippled). Shallan came accross the scene and killed Davar, by which point Nan Belat was unconscious. The shardblade droped and Shallan felling both ashamed and suprised, picked it up and accidentally bonded herself to it.

 

Really can't wait to see what really happened!

[aeromancer]

Who says she got the blade from her father? That's my question.

It is, however, very likely she inherited soulbinding.

[Meg]

Who says she got the blade from her father? That's my question.

 

It feels likely to me that she got that blade from the incident with her father.

 

It is, however, very likely she inherited soulbinding.

 

What do you mean with "inherited soulbinding"?

[Argent]

Soulcasting probably. We don't know if Surgebinding is hereditary. And I don't see where else Shallan could get the Blade from - she blocks it from her memories the same way she blocks her father's death, she has promised herself not to use it, she refers to it as an object of her sin, and she had lived such a sheltered life, she couldn't have gotten it from anywhere else.

[Gloom]

He talked about the link between his magic systems. One of the core principles is 'investing'. In a lot of his systems people are through some mechanism invested with magic powers. In Elantris through the Shaod, In Mistborn it's genetic, in The Way of Kings it depends on what someone has done.

 

Yeah, I know you're all tired of reading this quote. Magic on Roshar is not hereditary or genetic. It is based on actions. I suppose since Hoid is on Roshar, an argument could be made that he has a genetic investiture, so perhaps I should say that magic native to Roshar and its Shards is not genetic.

 

source link number 111

Edited October 29, 2013 by Gloom

[Meg]

Yeah, I know you're all tired of reading this quote. Magic on Roshar is not hereditary or genetic. It is based on actions. I suppose since Hoid is on Roshar, an argument could be made that he has a genetic investiture, so perhaps I should say that magic native to Roshar and its Shards is not genetic.

 

source link number 111

 

source without scrolling

 

(I only want to help, please don't feel insulted, Gloom)

[Moogle]

I don't think the Shardblade came from Shallan's father. If it did, how would the Soulcaster have been damaged after he died and Shallan picked it up? I would guess that Shallan killed her father with the Blade and accidentally cut the Soulcaster. Of course, I don't know why there would be blood in that case. Maybe she stabbed him a time or two after he was dead.

 

The entire thing is confusing, though I think Luesh's death was anything but natural. I'd pin it on Restares. Amaram did find out who the Shardbearer was, and I think it very likely to be Helaran. Combine that with the fact that assassins are a fact of life for the Alethi, and I think any 'natural' deaths of important figures should be treated with extreme suspicion. I am also not entirely sure that the 'Ghostbloods' who came to visit Nan Balat were in fact Ghostbloods, but since they came after Luesh died and stopped sending in regular reports, I guess it's most likely to be them.

[Gloom]

We really don't know how durable a fabrial is. What we do know is that fabrials are created by trapping spren. It seems to me that the spren would be trapped in the gemstones. If the casing of the fabrial is a cage, than if it was damaged in such a way as to disrupt the pattern, then the spren might be able to free themselves. This is contingent on the the fabrial being a real fabrial in the first place. So if a fabrial is made of gold, and it gets bent enough to disrupt the pattern that binds the spren in place, you have a pretty piece of jewelry until new spren can be trapped inside.

[WeiryWriter]

We really don't know how durable a fabrial is. What we do know is that fabrials are created by trapping spren. It seems to me that the spren would be trapped in the gemstones. If the casing of the fabrial is a cage, than if it was damaged in such a way as to disrupt the pattern, then the spren might be able to free themselves. This is contingent on the the fabrial being a real fabrial in the first place. So if a fabrial is made of gold, and it gets bent enough to disrupt the pattern that binds the spren in place, you have a pretty piece of jewelry until new spren can be trapped inside.

 

I might be reading this wrong but are you implying the metal is what is keeping the spren inside?  If so that is incorrect, the gem is what captures the spren, nothing else.  A gem with a captured is referred to as a fabrial (the actual devices that people refer to as "fabrials" are referred to by artifabrians as "machines" which differentiates between the two).  The "pattern of the gold" has nothing to do with containing the spren.  It could however by part of what directs the spren's power.  We still don't really understand much about the principles of how soulcasting fabrials work at this point.

[hoser]

The new fabrials don't necessarily work like the old ones.  If we believe Navani, they definitely do not.  Soulcasters are invested objects.  The metal must be the invested part, since the gems are disposable.  Modern fabrial "science" does not invest metal. 

 

If some act of investiture (performed by a Bondsmith?) creates the invested metal object, what happens when cut by a Shardblade?  Shardblades sever connections to the spiritual or cognitive realm.  What happens to the "soul" of the Soulcaster? It is either split in two or destroyed.  Welding the metal will not recreate the act of investiture that created the fabrial, nor merge the pieces of the fabrial's "soul".  

[Meg]

The new fabrials don't necessarily work like the old ones.  If we believe Navani, they definitely do not.  Soulcasters are invested objects.  The metal must be the invested part, since the gems are disposable.  Modern fabrial "science" does not invest metal. 

 

Please excuse, what exactly do you mean with "Soulcasters"?

I believe that the gems with their captured spren are (and were) the invested objects, though it might be that there were "fabrials" that only were for storage (that's what I think the female Knight used in the Starfalls-Vision).

[Shardlet]

Weiry, the rub with that is we really don't have a great description of soulcasters.  So far, the only gems we have yet seen described in conjunction with soulcasters are the replaceable 'battery' gems.  Also, soulcasters are themselves commonly referred to as fabrials.  I suspect that genuine soulcaster fabrials are truly relics of the past like shardplate and shardblades.  If they could be currently manufactured, they would not be nearly so few and would not likely be nearly wholely in control of the ardentia.  I think we need to keep ourselves open to soulcasters being very potentially different from modern fabrials.

Edited October 29, 2013 by Shardlet

[marianmi]

The metal is not invested in the fabrials. The metal is used to create a pattern from the (storm)light coming out of a gem that has a spren trapped. The combination of gem + spren contains somehow the investiture (I'm not sure that the spren alone is the investiture, although it might be possible).

 

I don't think they were used for storage, else all would have been using the same type of cut & gem. The KR in the vision seems to be using a fabrial that works according to the same principles as "new" fabrials do.

 

Of course, the spren might not have been "trapped" in the "old" fabrial, but free to do as it wished - similar to this I have a theory that the plate acts like a fabrial when having a spren in it....

[hoser]

Please excuse, what exactly do you mean with "Soulcasters"?

I believe that the gems with their captured spren are (and were) the invested objects,

The translated Navani notebook pages describe modern fabrials that cut gems to trap specific spren. The spren and the stormlight are the invested elements.

The radiant-era fabrials (Soulcasters, Regrowth, Shardblades, Shardplate, Oathgates (we don't know whether Oathgates have invested metal yet)) all have invested metal and the gems are generic and easily replaced (as Jasnah does with her soulcaster, she doesn't seem to care about the cut and whether a spren has been trapped inside).  Consider what Navani says about Shardblades and Shardplate just before the Nohadon vision:

The design and workings of Shardblades and Plate are completely different from everything we have discovered.

 

though it might be that there were "fabrials" that only were for storage (that's what I think the female Knight used in the Starfalls-Vision).

Consider this chart with WoB and confirmation from Peter: Stonewards do not have access to the Growth surge.  The Stoneward must be using a fabrial.  It seems obvious to me that the fabrial she is using is the one she is holding.