New character in Edgedancer [Edgedancer Spoilers]

[WeeDunadan Skaa]

Hey folks, I had to register and join you guys as this has been driving me crazy the last for the last few days. Being in the UK I was lucky enough to pick my copy up last week, so have already read Edgedancer.

not sure on the exact spoiler policy so won't say any name yet, but does anybody have any insight on who the new character introduced near the end is? 

WeeDunadan

[WeiryWriter Prime]

4 minutes ago, WeeDunadan said:

not sure on the exact spoiler policy

Our spoiler policy on Arcanum Unbounded stuff can be found here. So unfortunately no one who has read the story can answer this before tomorrow.

[Chaos Adonalsium]

You'll have to wait about 10 hours from now.

[Chaos Adonalsium]

Okay, it's time. I'm going to put this in spoiler tags just in case. 

I assume this is about the Sleepless.

Weiry figured out the race (and I'll let him explain, so he gets those upvotes) but I'll start with saying that what I noticed immediately was that the way he talks is the same as the way the back covers on Way of Kings and Words of Radiance.

The Sleepless are the ones who wrote those. 

"We watch the others. The assassin. The surgeon. The liar. The highprince." 

It's exactly the same.

This is crazy important. I remember at the Words of Radiance release I asked Brandon to sign in my book who wrote the back covers. Brandon does like to please fans, and he looked physically pained by the question. He wanted to answer but he said that he could not. It was that important.

These guys? These guys are super important.

Ian figured out the race of these guys very easily, which I had missed, but 100% the Sleepless wrote those back covers. It's awesome and terrifying we see them now.

[skaa Mistborn]

I thought it was pretty obvious that Arclo is a Dysian Aimian. Hoid already described the "tear off chunks of body parts" ability of that particular type of Aimian way back in WoK. Name-dropping Axies was probably another hint from Brandon that this is an Aimian we are seeing. And given that Arclo implied he wasn't Siah, he could only be Dysian.

Edited November 22, 2016 by skaa

[WeeDunadan Skaa]

Thanks all, I'd completely forgotten about that Hoid reference. Seems like I definitely need to re-read WoK and WoR before next year! 

[WeiryWriter Prime]

3 hours ago, skaa said:

I thought it was pretty obvious that Arclo is a Dysian Aimian. Hoid already described the "tear off chunks of body parts" ability of that particular type of Aimian way back in WoK. Name-dropping Axies was probably another hint from Brandon that this is an Aimian we are seeing. And given that Arclo implied he wasn't Siah, he could only be Dysian.

Yep, Arco is definitely a Dysian Aimian. I asked Brandon about whether "the Sleepless" was how Dysian referred to their species or a specific group of Dysians and a Brandon responded with the former. I'll be posting a picture of that latter today.

[Blightsong Highprince]

It is interesting to me that the Aimain here says that the Siah are "better" at seeming human. I wonder if the Aimians all function by having hordlings, but the Siah's species of hordling has enabled then to seem more human-like.

[Argent Splinter]

Aye, definitely a Dysian. I briefly thought he might be a Herald, based on the strange powers he showed and the familiarity with which he spoke of Nale, but his dialogue made it pretty clear - I think - that he is a Dysian. I do wonder if all Sleepless are... made up... of the same kind of hordelings, or if different individuals are composed of different animals. I think my terminology is not quite right here...

[WeiryWriter Prime]

So here is the aforementioned picture. The exact phrasing is:

Me: In Edgedancer we see what I believe is a Dysian Aimian, Arclo, refer to the Sleepless. Is this the term the Dysians use to refer to their species or is it rather the name of a group of specific Dysians?

Brandon: This is how they speak of themselves. Good question.

[Blightsong Highprince]

Something that just popped into my head after thinking about how the Sleepless would know so much about the characters judgong by the back covers. I wonder how many of the cremlings we've seen have actually been Sleepless. It would be a real twist if every cremling secretly was secretly part of a larger sentient being.

[Argent Splinter]

29 minutes ago, Blightsong said:

Something that just popped into my head after thinking about how the Sleepless would know so much about the characters judgong by the back covers. I wonder how many of the cremlings we've seen have actually been Sleepless. It would be a real twist if every cremling secretly was secretly part of a larger sentient being.

A lot of Arclo's hordelings look... unique. Specialized. Like the ones that are essentially his eyes. I think Edgedancer is the first time we hear about strange cremlings, though it is interesting how Lift remarks that it's "weird how you could forget you were in a different country until you saw the cremlings." 

I wonder if different Sleepless are monitoring all the nations of Roshar...

Edited November 22, 2016 by Argent

[Landis963 Dakhor Monk]

41 minutes ago, Argent said:

A lot of Arclo's hordelings look... unique. Specialized. Like the ones that are essentially his eyes. I think Edgedancer is the first time we hear about strange cremlings, though it is interesting how Lift remarks that it's "weird how you could forget you were in a different country until you saw the cremlings." 

I wonder if different Sleepless are monitoring all the nations of Roshar...

I know if I could control a horde of bugs like Arclo could, I'd use them to spy.  

[Argent Splinter]

11 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

I know if I could control a horde of bugs like Arclo could, I'd use them to spy.  

This might be just semantics, but I don't think Arclo is controlling his hordelings as much as he is the hordelings. Kind of like a hive mind, but... different. 

[Landis963 Dakhor Monk]

10 minutes ago, Argent said:

This might be just semantics, but I don't think Arclo is controlling his hordelings as much as he is the hordelings. Kind of like a hive mind, but... different. 

He clearly has a level of fine control of his hordelings that baseline humans do not.  Admittedly, he's no Taylor Hebert (protagonist of Worm), who has been known to control bugs several city blocks away from her body, but the level of perception this grants him cannot be underestimated. 

[lookingglass Silent Gatherer]

I thought that Arclo was a voidbringer before he mentioned Axies to be honest. Could they somehow be related though?

[Unhinged Spinner]

11 hours ago, Argent said:

A lot of Arclo's hordelings look... unique. Specialized. Like the ones that are essentially his eyes. I think Edgedancer is the first time we hear about strange cremlings, though it is interesting how Lift remarks that it's "weird how you could forget you were in a different country until you saw the cremlings." 

I wonder if different Sleepless are monitoring all the nations of Roshar...

That scene in WOR where Rock grabs a cremling, pops it into his mouth and eats it, suddenly became a lot funnier.

[vividox Forescout]

Are the back-of-the-book blurbs in the eBooks? I think I've missed them...

[Pagerunner Prime]

8 minutes ago, vividox said:

Are the back-of-the-book blurbs in the eBooks? I think I've missed them...

They're on his website (WoK, WoR), if you can't find them in the eBook.

[vividox Forescout]

Just now, Pagerunner said:

They're on his website (WoK, WoR), if you can't find them in the eBook.

Thanks!

[Droughtbringer Artifabrian]

On 11/22/2016 at 0:47 PM, Argent said:

I wonder if different Sleepless are monitoring all the nations of Roshar...

What if all cremlings are Sleepless? The variance in types of cremlings come, not from region, but from a different Sleepless being the 'Mind' of them?

[Argent Splinter]

Just now, Sasooner said:

What if all cremlings are Sleepless? The variance in types of cremlings come, not from region, but from a different Sleepless being the 'Mind' of them?

I think that would be going too far. I don't know this with certainty, but I think that in every ecosystem the biomass of each individual organism tends to be inversely proportional to that organism's species' population; in other worlds, the smaller a thing is, the more of it there are. Which would suggest there are a lot of cremlings on Roshar. I find it difficult to believe they are all Sleepless...

[Stark Cryptic]

I agree, there is no way they can all be Sleepless.  Otherwise, they'd eventually learn to stay away from people like Nan-Balat, who delight in pulling them apart, piece by piece.

 

Unless, they are a telepathic hive mind, at which point losing one cremling every now and then to a disturbed individual would be no more traumatic than losing a fingernail clipping in return for being able to spy.  Or if there is a limited range of effectiveness for the hive mind, and once a part of the collective is beyond that range, they revert to being a simple crustacean.

 

Regardless, seeing as he mentioned how closely they are watching all the principle players, I am going to watching all future cremlings a lot more closely.

[DSC01 Elantrian]

I don't know why exactly, but something about Arclo made me think that Dysian Aimians are not necessarily all hordes of cremlings; rather, they're all the same type of creature, but their essence isn't exactly physical (so individuals might be composed of hordes of any number of creatures that their true essence is bonded to via a spren-like bond).

[Brgst13 Ferring]

Another question: Arclo claims that Nale could not kill him, and that the Skbybreaker apprentices stood very little chance.  Yet, Aimia was "scoured" and the implication was that most of the inhabitants were slaughtered.  I wonder if this is actually true or if the inhabitants simply broke themselves down into cremlings, waited for everyone to go away, and then quietly reformed into their body shapes.  Also, given what we know of Aimans, why did humans want to slaughter them?  I think there is something very important here.  Looks like a targeted reread is in order.