New character in Edgedancer [Edgedancer Spoilers]

[soulcastJam]

The way he talks about breeding cremlings for specific body parts makes me believe that he can possess any cremling he desires, although there would be a limit to the number, and possibly distance.

[Yata]

Some new information about the Sleepless here (in the spoiler tag):

Quote

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The sleepless.)

 

[Titan Arum]

Glad to know that the Sleepless are Dysian Aimians! As I was reading that scene with Arclo, it seems to me that his race is purely of Cultivation. They breed and grow their hordelings to shape them for their needs. They're ancient friends of the KR according to Arclo, but his wording seems like his kind were not exactly of honor like the KR: 

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Your war is my war, and has been for millennia. Ancient Radiants named me friend and ally before everything went wrong. What wonderful days those were, before the Last Desolation. Days of...honor. Now gone, long gone.

That pause before "honor" seems telling to me. As if he wanted use a big H. And knows Honor is dead. 

[Iarwainiel I]

What about the 2 "enormous" "glowing" figures "striding the storm" in WoR chapter 74? They must be important, as that description is the chapter title. Might they be Dysian Aimians, and Investiture from the storm makes them glow somehow? I really don't think they're all made of cremlings - we haven't had such detailed descriptions of cremlings anywhere else before.

[ccstat]

8 hours ago, old aggie said:

I really don't think they're all made of cremlings - we haven't had such detailed descriptions of cremlings anywhere else before.

 

On 11/27/2016 at 1:20 AM, ccstat said:

I am positive that the Sleepless have shown up multiple times in the books so far. There are too many descriptions of cremlings in the middle of scenes for that not to be the case.... Several scenes spring to mind as likely candidates, but I'll wait to list them until I can include exact quotes. 

So, I did go through WoK and find all cremling references. It turns out they aren't at all the obvious-in-retrospect Sleepless presence that I expected. Over half the uses of the term are pejorative towards people rather than descriptive of fauna. When actual cremlings do appear, they don't warrant much description and aren't noted during important character/plot moments. Shallan does describe some when noticing the cremling-shalebark commensalism, but that segment seems purely about the normal ecology of Roshar. Kaladin notes the regional change in cremling type/color as the slave wagon travels, but in a way that suggests such geographic variation is common knowledge 

I guess I had expected to have a moment like when Lift sees the odd cremling with a spongy patch on its back, inserted into an exchange between Kaladin and Teft or after a soulcast experiment. Nothing like that occurs in WoK. I still have to check WoR, but the identifiable foreshadowing so far is minimal or absent.

I'm still of the opinion that the Sleepless are all cremling hordes, but I guess I won't be surprised if that turns out not to be the case.

 

On a tangent: Arclo says the Sleepless have mostly ignored Lift, instead choosing to watch the"big four". Why on earth are they ignoring Jasnah? Does he think she's dead and therefore not worth mentioning? Or does the person who's been a proto-radiant for the past 6 years somehow not matter to the Sleepless as much as the ones who get to be main characters in the front five books?

Edited November 30, 2016 by ccstat

[BeskarKomrk]

9 hours ago, old aggie said:

What about the 2 "enormous" "glowing" figures "striding the storm" in WoR chapter 74? They must be important, as that description is the chapter title. Might they be Dysian Aimians, and Investiture from the storm makes them glow somehow? I really don't think they're all made of cremlings - we haven't had such detailed descriptions of cremlings anywhere else before.

The prevailing theory is that those are two of the Unmade.

34 minutes ago, ccstat said:

On a tangent: Arclo says the Sleepless have mostly ignored Lift, instead choosing to watch the"big four". Why on earth are they ignoring Jasnah? Does he think she's dead and therefore not worth mentioning? Or does the person who's been a proto-radiant for the past 6 years somehow not matter to the Sleepless as much as the ones who get to be main characters in the front five books?

They may not know. We don't even know how they've identified the big four as proto-radiants. Could be similar to Mr. T's method (look for people who survive when they shouldn't), in which case I don't know that there's an event with Jasnah that would identify her as proto-radiant.

[Yata]

1 hour ago, ccstat said:

On a tangent: Arclo says the Sleepless have mostly ignored Lift, instead choosing to watch the"big four". Why on earth are they ignoring Jasnah? Does he think she's dead and therefore not worth mentioning? Or does the person who's been a proto-radiant for the past 6 years somehow not matter to the Sleepless as much as the ones who get to be main characters in the front five books?

I have three possible explainations:

- Jasnah was watched before but they discharged her for some reason

- It is just too hard to follow someone who may change Realms or across almost the whole Roshar is seconds

- Jasnah hid better her Radiancy and the Sleepless simply don't know about her

Edited November 30, 2016 by Yata

[Amanuensis]

Well, based on the fact that Kaladin, Szeth, Shallan and Dalinar are implied to be watched by the Sleepless, I'm sure there are cremlings spying on them. Thing is, cremlings are a pretty common part of their ecology. If a story was being told from your perspective, do you think you'd remark on every insect you see? I know I certainly wouldn't, unless they were pestering me, which I doubt the Sleepless are having the cremling spies do to them, as it would likely prompt the characters to squash them. The largest benefit of being a fly on a wall is that no one notices you.

That being said, someone has mentioned a scene where Rock pops a cremling in his mouth. I would not be surprised if that cremling was one of the spies. I look forward to seeing what other scenarios you find in WoR, as it might be a little more obvious there, though personally I doubt we'll find much foreshadowing, as if they are remarked upon, it kinda defeats the purpose of what they're doing to begin with.

As for Jasnah... not really sure. They also don't pay much attention to Renarin, which makes me think there's a limited number of Sleepless after the Scouring, and that only a small group of them care enough to spy enough on the Radiants. Considering much of Shallan's story in the first book aligns with Jasnah, it's possible they had been observing her for a long time, but when Shallan showed up, they took notice of her and were intrigued by her peculiar circumstances and unknown motives. After Jasnah was "killed" (retreated into the CR), it's not like they could continue watching her anyway, so maybe Sleepless just moved onto Shallan, if they hadn't officially already.

I think someone should ask Brandon "Does the back blurb of The Way of Kings come before, after, or somewhere in the middle of that story?"

 

[Stark]

Also, it may not have been as easy to spy on Jasnah as the others just from a location standpoint.  What we have seen of her is that Jasnah was spending most of her time in Libraries in various cities, and specifically the Pallaneum in Kharbranth and its Hospital.  Both Hospitals and Libraries tend to have pretty solid pest control measures in place to protect their wards.  It may not have been possible to infiltrate using cremlings or other small organisms to observe her.

 

Add that to her apparent death and subsequent jaunt into Shadesmar (we have no idea how well the Sleepless are able to view the other realms, if at all) resulting in her not being on the Shattered plains where the world changing action was taking place...  I think those all added together are what relegated her to minor player.  The big four all ended up on the plains, however briefly, and all were there when everything changed.

 

I think that more than anything is why she is not yet getting much attention from the sleepless.

[ccstat]

Okay, here are the WoR scenes with cremlings. In none of them do we get a good description. (I may also have missed a few, since this was a google books search--I don't own the ebook of this one. Notably, the scene where Rock pops one into his mouth describes the creature as a crab, and wouldn't have shown up in my search.)I'll spoiler most of them, for space. The interesting one is during a conversation about the new stormform listeners. 

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"They have specialized subspecies?" Shallan said. Some cremlings were like that, working in a hive, with different specializations and varied forms.

So, maybe the sleepless are a natural extension of communal cremlings? Obviously there are other possibilities.

Spoiler

• Shallan sees a bunch of cremlings and crabs after the shipwreck. (pg 140)
• Kaladin notices some while chatting with Syl about KR orders (pg 295)
• Shallan sketches a cremling in a flashback. (pg 335)
• Adolin notices them in one viewpoint (pg 585)
• Mraize skewers a cremling with a blowdart in front of Shallan (pg 627)
• Syl shows interest in a cremling, first in jail (pg 767) then shortly before Kaladin falls into the chasm. Kal takes it as evidence that her intelligence is regressing with the weakened bond.
• Kaladin notices a cremling when he and Shallan meet after falling into the chasm.
• A cremling is hanging around when Teft tells Sigzil his backstory with the Envisagers, while Kaladin is lost in the chasms. (Teft throws a rock at it, so probably just included there to illuminate his emotional state.) (Ch 71)
• Dalinar notices some just before K and S emerge from the chasms.
• At the end, Wit tells his story to an "ugly lizard-crab thing" and a songling that respond with remarkable timeliness to his comments, though he acts as though he is just projecting a reaction onto it. (pg 1076)

 

 

Also of note: The caption of the illustration on pg 771 reads, "Metamorphosis of the Chull: Larva (The Chull Cremling), First Pupation, Adult Chull, Second Pupation, Senescence" (emphasis mine).

There is no indication of relative scale between the larva and the adult. It does open the possibility, though, that @old aggie is right. Those many-legged things striding the storm could be "enormous" because they are aggregates of chull-size (or even, to stretch credulity, chasmfiend-size) crustaceans, along with the smaller hordelings. In my opinion, the prevailing theory of Unmade is "prevailing" mostly for lack of an alternative, not because of convincing evidence. This is an interesting possibility to consider. (I personally consider the Unmade option more likely, but I think this idea has merit.)

Remember that even if all Sleepless are made up of little cremlings only, Lift does note that there are thousands of cremlings left over even after the man-shaped avatar of Arclo has formed, so there is no reason that they couldn't recombine into all sorts of interesting shapes, large and small.

[Pagerunner]

5 minutes ago, ccstat said:

Okay, here are the WoR scenes with cremlings.

  Hide contents

• Mraize skewers a cremling with a blowdart in front of Shallan (pg 627)

 

 

Oh, man, this one seems like it might be significant. If Mraize is aware of the Sleepless, he could be popping them right and left as they're trying to spy on his people. In this case, it could have been one that was watching Shallan. I'll have to look at this passage carefully. Your page numbers are for the hardcover, correct?

[ccstat]

yes, hardcover page numbers (although I pulled them from the google books search results)

[Bromo_Sapien]

This WoB from r/Stormlight_Archive is probably relevant:

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See also: Eastern Rosharans using the word "Wine" for a variety of types of alcohol, when only rare imports from Shinovar actually come from a grape, and naming animals things like "hound" when they only vaguely resemble a creature from Shinovar. (Or the term silk, which is harvested from plants that float in the ocean. Or using the word 'cremling' for any kind of small crustacean or insect, which is a linguistic expansion of the word over the centuries, when there used to be two distinct terms for them.)

Vorin languages, in particular, lend themselves to this kind of simplification of terms.

They were talking about how every bird is called a chicken and Brandon chimed in with this. Given that he said "small" crustaceans, I doubt any are chull-sized. But it does show that there is a wide variety; it could be that the Sleepless are only made up of one type of cremling, but due to the lack of other words for it, Lift simply identified it with the generic "cremling". For example, maybe all centipedes are Aimian spies but all crabs are unique individuals. 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2016 by Bromo_Sapien
Emphasis added by me

[Iarwainiel I]

I know that the prevailing theory re: the "glowing figures" is that they are - or are of - the Unmade. But I agree with @ccstat that it's only "prevailing" because we don't know enough at this point to come up with alternatives. To me, the tone of the scene is one of awe, not horror, and I've never been quite comfortable with the idea that we'd seen Unmade. But that's just my perception; I don't keep up with all the Reddits and Theoryland posts like many of you do.

We know that the Sleepless have been watching Szeth - have cremlings been mentioned in his scenes at all? Or has anything else been mentioned (not a cremling) that might indicate it is a hordeling? Maybe we won't see these until we get to Szeth's book.

Re: Jasnah: Maybe the Sleepless don't spy on her so much because she spends time in Shadesmar? Maybe they can't follow her there, or don't know where geographically she will emerge? Or something related to that ... if anyone else can expand on this idea (or debunk it), please feel free.

Does anyone know for sure if Arclo or any of the other Sleepless will be in Oathbringer?

Edited November 30, 2016 by old aggie
add idea

[Argent]

6 minutes ago, old aggie said:

I know that the prevailing theory re: the "glowing figures" is that they are - or are of - the Unmade. But I agree with @ccstat that it's only "prevailing" because we don't know enough at this point to come up with alternatives. To me, the tone of the scene is one of awe, not horror, and I've never been quite comfortable with the idea that we'd seen Unmade. But that's just my perception; I don't keep up with all the Reddits and Theoryland posts like many of you do.

I actually I think I missed the point when this became the "prevailing theory." Back in my day we thought those things were either chasmfiends or had something to do with chasmfiends. I don't like the idea that they are Unmade.

[Demiandre]

54 minutes ago, Argent said:

I actually I think I missed the point when this became the "prevailing theory." Back in my day we thought those things were either chasmfiends or had something to do with chasmfiends. I don't like the idea that they are Unmade.

Me neither. But so far I only thought that they were Parshendi in Stormform, which might seem silly now...

 

On the other questions :

What if the Santhid was a spy for the Sleepless/belonged to a Sleepless's Hordeling ? (the latter seems unbelievable). The Santhid followed after Shallan and departed when it was clear she was ashore. But it is a huge organism, so it seems unlikely it can "belong" to a Sleepless, or they are capable of amazing feats.

For me nonetheless, both points toward Cultivation watching over proto-radiants. And she seems to have a few ways to do so.

 

Regarding the fact that no strange cremling has been spotted, I thought about all the cremlings Nan Balat has been torturing during his youth. The better way to spy is to be unseen. For that, you would use the local "breed" of cremling and act normally around the grounds of your target to pick every few information. A lot of piece of information is better than no information (even if it is worse than the whole picture). That might be their way of collecting knowledge. Send however number of cremling is needed and replace then if destroyed.

[djammmer]

On 11/27/2016 at 5:04 PM, DSC01 said:

That's what I've been thinking, too--that it could be more than just cremlings.

Maybe he's a cognitive realm being... that manifests or projects into the physical realm by controlling cremlings to create a projection of a physical body.  But really just exists in the cognitive realm. 

[DSC01]

@djammmer That's my current hypothesis. So much on Roshar works by way of bonds. You have the Listeners, the Radiants, the Voidbringers, the skyeels (probably), the macro-fauna... I think that the Dysian Aimians are the same thing: beings similar or even identical to spren who bond with many organisms instead of a single one. Their symbiosis works opposite to how it does with, say, the spren that prevent chasmfiends from collapsing under their own weight. That is, while a chasmfiend's spren basically serve the Physical creature, the Physical creatures involved in the Dysian Aimians' bonds serve the Cognitive/Spiritual creature.

[djammmer]

17 minutes ago, DSC01 said:

@djammmer That's my current hypothesis. So much on Roshar works by way of bonds. You have the Listeners, the Radiants, the Voidbringers, the skyeels (probably), the macro-fauna... I think that the Dysian Aimians are the same thing: beings similar or even identical to spren who bond with many organisms instead of a single one. Their symbiosis works opposite to how it does with, say, the spren that prevent chasmfiends from collapsing under their own weight. That is, while a chasmfiend's spren basically serve the Physical creature, the Physical creatures involved in the Dysian Aimians' bonds serve the Cognitive/Spiritual creature.

Yeah - I like this.  I'm thinking I need to go back and read the interlude in Way of Kings... where the scientists are testing spren; and the connectivity between them.   I think there might be something there about spren being connected; or things in the physical being connected by something you can't see in the physical.  Another thought... is there something going on related w/ spanreeds?   Are they a hive mentality across great distance connected by something in the cognitive realm?

 

 

[DSC01]

It's the Rosharan version of quantum physics. I think that what's happening with the spanreeds is that they trap a spren in a gemstone, then cut that gem in half and put one half in each of a pair of linked spanreeds. Okay, yes, the Coppermind confirms. That is how all conjoiner fabrials work. Even though it's based somewhat in quantum physics, I'm sure that the Cosmere explanation leans heavily on Realmatic Theory.

[Zmann966]

On 11/30/2016 at 10:49 AM, ccstat said:

Okay, here are the WoR scenes with cremlings.

  Hide contents

• At the end, Wit tells his story to an "ugly lizard-crab thing" and a songling that respond with remarkable timeliness to his comments, though he acts as though he is just projecting a reaction onto it. (pg 1076)

 

 

I could totally see this particular instance harboring more than the amusing comedy we expect of Wit scenes... I mean, if the Sleepless were watching Kaladin, they'd have picked up on Wit in WoK, even as slippery as Hoid is, it might provoke interest. 
And the fact that Hoid is so clearly ignorant of any "intelligent audience" is far, far more amusing if it actually was a Sleepless Hordeling.

[Droughtbringer]

On 11/30/2016 at 6:37 AM, ccstat said:

On a tangent: Arclo says the Sleepless have mostly ignored Lift, instead choosing to watch the"big four". Why on earth are they ignoring Jasnah? Does he think she's dead and therefore not worth mentioning? Or does the person who's been a proto-radiant for the past 6 years somehow not matter to the Sleepless as much as the ones who get to be main characters in the front five books?

Why is it that these four are the four of the first half? There might be some event, some direct thing that we can't see that these four are destined to act in during Stormlight 5...It could connect.

[Ciridae]

What kind of bothers me is that they are watching Szeth. Why? He isn't a budding Radiant like the others. Yeah he's been making a lot of noise across all of Roshar but why would the Sleepless lump him together with the other Radiants? It seems like they would know about him being Truthless and his Oathstone and probably that he has an Honorblade if they've been watching him.

So either they really do think he's a Radiant if they don't know he has the Honorblade or they think he may redeem/destoy them because of something non-Radiant related.

[CaptainRyan]

On 11/25/2016 at 1:12 PM, Kanrei said:

Which bring question, do we have any idea what happen when you get hit by blunt Shardblade? Like maul?

Yes, we do. During Kaladin's fight with Szeth at the end of WoR we see Szeth hit by a "shardhammer". It merely breaks bones. It does not cut through Szeth like a blade would.

As another example, the reason you can catch a shardblade using the "last clap" method is because only the edge of the blade is dangerous; the flat of the blade is not dangerous to the touch. 

[BeskarKomrk]

9 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

Yes, we do. During Kaladin's fight with Szeth at the end of WoR we see Szeth hit by a "shardhammer". It merely breaks bones. It does not cut through Szeth like a blade would.

As another example, the reason you can catch a shardblade using the "last clap" method is because only the edge of the blade is dangerous; the flat of the blade is not dangerous to the touch. 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but my recollection is that a "shardhammer" is not actually a shardweapon (e.g. not made of a spren, whether living or dead), but rather is just a really freaking huge hammer that only someone in Shardplate could use.

I also believe that the blade part being dangerous and the edges not being dangerous is more a matter of perception/intent on the part of the wielder.