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[OB] The voidspren isn't


shawnhargreaves

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I think there is some serious misdirection about what is going on with voidspren.  I don't believe that the yellow spren which Kaladin sees guiding the listeners is of Odium.   Either it's not actually a voidspren, or perhaps there is a larger confusion about what voidspren and voidbringers are in the first place.

Toward the end of WoR, we saw what a bad spren does to Eshonai.  Those chapters are suffused with a feeling of dread - it's powerful, scary stuff.  I don't get anything like that vibe from the recent Kaladin chapters.  Sure, the yellow spren hasn't bonded any listeners yet, but why not?  It had plenty of opportunities.  Actually it seems to have been advising them well, eg. keeping them safe from the Everstorm.  The yellow spren doesn't trust Kaladin, and Syl doesn't trust it, but this is similar to the initial suspicion between Syl and Pattern.  Yellow spren just smells different to what Venli did to Eshonai.

Bigger picture, I don't buy the whole Parshendi-as-voidbringer theory.  That doesn't fit with the slavery theme (including aftermath of what having previously been enslaved does to a society) that Brandon is starting to explore.  There probably was massive war between humans and listeners in the past, but it wasn't a simple Odium-corrupted-the-listeners-so-they-are-bad thing - instead Odium played both sides off against each other, causing massive damage where none was needed.  Odium surely had a few agents under his direct control (on both sides of the conflict) and would have been able to indirectly influence far more (eg. the Thrill), but the vast majority of the combatants on both sides were misled rather than directly evil.

So my prediction:

  1. The yellow spren is not the same as the one that Eshonai bonded
  2. Yellow spren is not of Odium
  3. Eshonai's spren is of Odium
  4. Much of what people remember as "voidbringers" or "voidspren" is incorrect, and really just means "the other side from that huge unnecessary conflict"
  5. Kaladin's next task will be to figure this out, and help Dalinar understand what "unite them" really means
Edited by shawnhargreaves
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I disagree with you on almost every point :-)

Syl didn't trust Pattern, but she said he wasn't evil. Not so with the voidspren.
The yellow spren isn't bonding the parshmen because it A can only bond one, and B because the new form would probably scare the dickens out of the other Parshmen.
The Listeners' own history points to them being possessed or overcome by "forms" in the past, which is what makes most people believe they ARE, in large part, the voidbringers.
You can't really call someone possessed evil, since it's not them doing it, so I agree that the voidbringer's weren't evil, but what possessed them was.

If there's misdirection I think it's more along the lines of Kaladin being misled. "Oh, this voidspren isn't that bad, let me see what all happens down this road...(down the road)...Oh god, the horror, I never should have trusted that bastard yellow spren"

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I don't think all listeners will end up being with Odium, but the fact that the Everstorm healed them, and then immediately a spren that Syl explicitly says is a voidspren.

Quote

“From him,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself and growing small—actively shrinking to about two-thirds her normal size. “Voidspren.”

The spren can also sense the Everstorm coming, but not the highstorm.  All in all, that's pretty strong evidence it's a voidspren

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1 hour ago, bo.montier said:

Syl didn't trust Pattern, but she said he wasn't evil. Not so with the voidspren.

I don't believe that Syl is omniscient.  We know that her memory is only slowly coming back, piece by piece.  And if my theory is correct that Odium has been influencing both sides of conflicts on Roshar throughout its history (as opposed to fighting directly as one side of a simple good vs. evil battle), that means he was deceiving spren as well as humans and listeners.  Back in the days of the Radiants, tricking humans would have meant tricking their spren as well.

Not entirely sure I believe this part, but I can't help wondering if there is any correlation between the Recreance and the old Radiants realizing they had been misled in this way?  "OMG, this entire conflict is not what we thought" seems like the kind of discovery that could lead to such a drastic decision...

 

1 hour ago, bo.montier said:

The Listeners' own history points to them being possessed or overcome by "forms" in the past

Yep, and this is exactly what we saw happen to Eshonai.   But I think it's too simple to be the whole truth (probably not even most of the truth).  It doesn't fit with the feel of the latest Kaladin chapters, or with the various hints that the real enemy is not who we think, or with the scale of carefully foreshadowed and yet surprising twists that I've come to expect from Brandon, or with things he has said in the past about disliking the fantasy cliche of an "evil race" opponent.  Looks to me like he is going somewhere bigger, and to my way of thinking much more interesting, than "not evil race, but possessed by evil forms".  That would really just be a layer of window dressing on top of the evil race cliche...

 

59 minutes ago, Rillian said:

The spren can also sense the Everstorm coming, but not the highstorm.  All in all, that's pretty strong evidence it's a voidspren

Are we sure the Everstorm is of Odium rather than Cultivation?

We have two shards fully invested on Roshar, plus Odium interfering but primarily based elsewhere.  And two storms, going in opposite directions.  One per local shard makes a lot of sense to me.

In terms of what we've seen the Everstorm do, so far we have a lot of blowing things about, plus releasing the listeners from slaveform.  I'm guessing that involves some kind of spiritweb healing, aka. regrowth.  Where's the Odium in that?

(aside: I will be very interested to see whether Pattern can sense highstorms and/or the Everstorm...)

The main reason the Everstorm seems scary is that we saw it get summoned by really scary listeners who clearly had some bad possession stuff going on.  But we haven't seen it do anything comparably scary since then, and the freed listeners aren't scary at all  (completely unlike the ones who summoned this storm).  I think Odium's plan goes something like:

  1. Trick humans into being scared of listeners
  2. Use a small number of possessed listeners to summon a storm that releases all listeners from slaveform (in a very visible and scary way while humans watch them do it)
  3. Trick the now intelligent listeners into blaming humans (it doesn't matter whether rightly or wrongly) for their prior enslavement
  4. Everyone fights = Odium wins

So far we have seen mostly the human side of all this, which means we are seeing exactly what Odium wants the in-world humans to see, and are drawing the same conclusions he wants them to draw.  But I'm convinced there is more going on.

Edited by shawnhargreaves
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Edgedancer spoilers

Spoiler

I went back to look at edgedancer. I was trying to remember if we had seen any parshmen actually become "voidbringers" from the everstorm. I was thinking maybe there had to be a "choice" made to bond a spren (I know Eshoni changed her mind but she went into HIGHSTORM to change, not the everstorm, as did all her people) and took a void spren with her.

There was a scene where Lift and Nale were fighting and they look and see parshmen with red glowing eyes. I am assuming then that they had some "void-form". So that theory was smashed. My second possible theory was that they had to be healed by the everstorm, then change in a highstorm. That theory is also smashed now.

So that leaves me with this possibility. They didnt have the spren they needed to change. If i remember correctly Veneli (sp?) had to "gather" enough spren to make the change. Its possible that the storm doesnt have enough void spren to transform all the parshmen yet so they may need to be brought over (how i have no idea) and "gathered" for the next storm.

 

 

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I like where you are going with this Shawn,

In the first instance it's a classic case of divide and conquer. Why expend energy you don't have to?

Also your point regarding  possessed by evil forms is good. "Humans" bond Spren, but are listeners bonded by Spren?  In artform, scholar form etc. they go out looking for the Spren they want. Taking his further, maybe it is a case of bonding the voidspren because they are seriously angry, which is understandable as this feeling and voidspren are closely related..

"Humans" bond based on ideology, Listeners by need? 

That's vaguely cognitive vs. physical right?

Edited by el_warko
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The most Realmatic Aware beings we have for now in SA Identify the Everstorm with Odium... I am talking of the Stormfather and other Radiant Spren.

The Spren are not allknowing but they are able to recognize Intuitivelly the Investiture's source...I am really skeptical if Syl detects wrong the golden-spren's origin.

Edited by Yata
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We have every reason to believe that this Spren is of Odium. It is described as such by Syl, it can sense the Everstorm, and it’s behaviour is extremely suspicious. In addition, we already know of cultivation-Spren (Wyndle). 

Edgedancer spoilers: 

Spoiler

The storm as shown in Edgedancer is pretty clearly very very bad. Silent, red lightning. Deliberate destruction. Parshfolk with glowing red eyes. It convinces Nale that another desolation has come. 

I like some of your bigger picture stuff. I definitely feel that Odium is manipulating people. 

 

One thing to consider - some Spren are closer to Honour, others closer to cultivation, but some are also in-between. Is it possible that some voidspren are on that same spectrum? Some Honour mixed with Odium? Others cultivation mixed with Odium? Others still pure Odium? In which case this particular Spren could be only slightly Odious. 

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1 hour ago, Erunion said:

One thing to consider - some Spren are closer to Honour, others closer to cultivation, but some are also in-between. Is it possible that some voidspren are on that same spectrum? Some Honour mixed with Odium? Others cultivation mixed with Odium? Others still pure Odium? In which case this particular Spren could be only slightly Odious. 

This is tricky but unlikely, because some spren are closer to H or C depending on their amount of Investiture in them. I believe the Voidspren are not mixed with H&C but I believe we have not explicity proof of that

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Worth noting that the spren Syl is talking about is a "he", while the spren Kaladin interacts with is a "she". We may well have a couple of Spren hidden from Kaladin, one Voidish, one not. 

Sensing the Everstorm is pretty damning though (Which is a shame, I want to like her! :( ). One potential saving grace would be if this was the comet-like Spren that Eshonai was interacting with in WoR, still bonded to her in some way (But not the voidspren giving her Stormform) and able to sense the Everstorm through her, rather than it's own natural ability. 

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On 17-10-2017 at 11:12 PM, shawnhargreaves said:
Spoiler

 

I don't believe that Syl is omniscient.  We know that her memory is only slowly coming back, piece by piece.  And if my theory is correct that Odium has been influencing both sides of conflicts on Roshar throughout its history (as opposed to fighting directly as one side of a simple good vs. evil battle), that means he was deceiving spren as well as humans and listeners.  Back in the days of the Radiants, tricking humans would have meant tricking their spren as well.

Not entirely sure I believe this part, but I can't help wondering if there is any correlation between the Recreance and the old Radiants realizing they had been misled in this way?  "OMG, this entire conflict is not what we thought" seems like the kind of discovery that could lead to such a drastic decision...

 

Yep, and this is exactly what we saw happen to Eshonai.   But I think it's too simple to be the whole truth (probably not even most of the truth).  It doesn't fit with the feel of the latest Kaladin chapters, or with the various hints that the real enemy is not who we think, or with the scale of carefully foreshadowed and yet surprising twists that I've come to expect from Brandon, or with things he has said in the past about disliking the fantasy cliche of an "evil race" opponent.  Looks to me like he is going somewhere bigger, and to my way of thinking much more interesting, than "not evil race, but possessed by evil forms".  That would really just be a layer of window dressing on top of the evil race cliche...

 

Are we sure the Everstorm is of Odium rather than Cultivation?

We have two shards fully invested on Roshar, plus Odium interfering but primarily based elsewhere.  And two storms, going in opposite directions.  One per local shard makes a lot of sense to me.

In terms of what we've seen the Everstorm do, so far we have a lot of blowing things about, plus releasing the listeners from slaveform.  I'm guessing that involves some kind of spiritweb healing, aka. regrowth.  Where's the Odium in that?

(aside: I will be very interested to see whether Pattern can sense highstorms and/or the Everstorm...)

The main reason the Everstorm seems scary is that we saw it get summoned by really scary listeners who clearly had some bad possession stuff going on.  But we haven't seen it do anything comparably scary since then, and the freed listeners aren't scary at all  (completely unlike the ones who summoned this storm).  I think Odium's plan goes something like:

  1. Trick humans into being scared of listeners
  2. Use a small number of possessed listeners to summon a storm that releases all listeners from slaveform (in a very visible and scary way while humans watch them do it)
  3. Trick the now intelligent listeners into blaming humans (it doesn't matter whether rightly or wrongly) for their prior enslavement
  4. Everyone fights = Odium wins

So far we have seen mostly the human side of all this, which means we are seeing exactly what Odium wants the in-world humans to see, and are drawing the same conclusions he wants them to draw.  But I'm convinced there is more going on.

 

 

I very much agree here. An evil race is indeed not a Sanderson-thing to do, as he tends to create much more three-dimensional worlds. Of course, there are (original Mistborn trilogy spoiler)

Spoiler

the Koloss, but they have been created specifically be controlled by someone

while the Listeners, I am pretty sure, have not been created by Odium. I cannot actually find a source for that, but it is both logical (they're clearly sentient, and Odium would most likely not give up power for that) and I do believe I've read Sanderson confirming it just this week (though in an older interview).

On 18-10-2017 at 8:09 AM, Erunion said:

We have every reason to believe that this Spren is of Odium. It is described as such by Syl, it can sense the Everstorm, and it’s behaviour is extremely suspicious. In addition, we already know of cultivation-Spren (Wyndle). 

Edgedancer spoilers: 

  Reveal hidden contents

The storm as shown in Edgedancer is pretty clearly very very bad. Silent, red lightning. Deliberate destruction. Parshfolk with glowing red eyes. It convinces Nale that another desolation has come. 

I like some of your bigger picture stuff. I definitely feel that Odium is manipulating people. 

 

One thing to consider - some Spren are closer to Honour, others closer to cultivation, but some are also in-between. Is it possible that some voidspren are on that same spectrum? Some Honour mixed with Odium? Others cultivation mixed with Odium? Others still pure Odium? In which case this particular Spren could be only slightly Odious. 

This is also an idea that I really like. According to the coppermind page, spren are "powers of creation" (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Spren), which gained sentience due to human intervention. This would imply that they are not directly created by Honor and Cultivation, and have merely gained their characteristics over time because Honor and Cultivation were around. Odium, however, has also been around - so maybe, we should not be looking at a line, but instead a triangle, where sprens can be at a corner (100% influenced by one Shard), a line (influenced by only two Shards) or somewhere on the inside (influenced by all three shards). Hope that makes sense to everyone, but otherwise I'm happy to clarify.

EDIT: To expand upon this, I came across a question asked to Brandon before the release of WoR (http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=747#5), which says that all the spren we are running into (but only in the first and maybe second book) are of Honor and Cultivation. I'm not sure wheter this is intentional or not, but Brandon is excluding later spren, which might include spren that are part Odium and part Honor/Cultivation.

Edited by Leyrann
And 6 days later I for some reason read this post again and realized I said WoK instead of WoR
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14 hours ago, shawnhargreaves said:

I don't believe that Syl is omniscient.  We know that her memory is only slowly coming back, piece by piece.  And if my theory is correct that Odium has been influencing both sides of conflicts on Roshar throughout its history (as opposed to fighting directly as one side of a simple good vs. evil battle), that means he was deceiving spren as well as humans and listeners.  Back in the days of the Radiants, tricking humans would have meant tricking their spren as well.

Not entirely sure I believe this part, but I can't help wondering if there is any correlation between the Recreance and the old Radiants realizing they had been misled in this way?  "OMG, this entire conflict is not what we thought" seems like the kind of discovery that could lead to such a drastic decision...

 

Yep, and this is exactly what we saw happen to Eshonai.   But I think it's too simple to be the whole truth (probably not even most of the truth).  It doesn't fit with the feel of the latest Kaladin chapters, or with the various hints that the real enemy is not who we think, or with the scale of carefully foreshadowed and yet surprising twists that I've come to expect from Brandon, or with things he has said in the past about disliking the fantasy cliche of an "evil race" opponent.  Looks to me like he is going somewhere bigger, and to my way of thinking much more interesting, than "not evil race, but possessed by evil forms".  That would really just be a layer of window dressing on top of the evil race cliche...

 

Are we sure the Everstorm is of Odium rather than Cultivation?

We have two shards fully invested on Roshar, plus Odium interfering but primarily based elsewhere.  And two storms, going in opposite directions.  One per local shard makes a lot of sense to me.

In terms of what we've seen the Everstorm do, so far we have a lot of blowing things about, plus releasing the listeners from slaveform.  I'm guessing that involves some kind of spiritweb healing, aka. regrowth.  Where's the Odium in that?

(aside: I will be very interested to see whether Pattern can sense highstorms and/or the Everstorm...)

The main reason the Everstorm seems scary is that we saw it get summoned by really scary listeners who clearly had some bad possession stuff going on.  But we haven't seen it do anything comparably scary since then, and the freed listeners aren't scary at all  (completely unlike the ones who summoned this storm).  I think Odium's plan goes something like:

  1. Trick humans into being scared of listeners
  2. Use a small number of possessed listeners to summon a storm that releases all listeners from slaveform (in a very visible and scary way while humans watch them do it)
  3. Trick the now intelligent listeners into blaming humans (it doesn't matter whether rightly or wrongly) for their prior enslavement
  4. Everyone fights = Odium wins

So far we have seen mostly the human side of all this, which means we are seeing exactly what Odium wants the in-world humans to see, and are drawing the same conclusions he wants them to draw.  But I'm convinced there is more going on.

I don't think Syl is omniscient, I just trust her judgement. She feels things intuitively, it seems to me, and that's significant. I don't think having the listeners being led by voidspren makes them an evil race. Right now they are just trying to survive, and then this thing shows up saying "I'll help you escape human lands and thrive and good things will happen..." Well, why wouldn't they follow that thing? They don't really know what else to do right now, and they know they're going to meet other listeners. That doesn't make them evil, just naive. 
Now, I think what is going to happen is, as a result of human/listener conflict, most of the freed parshmen are going to CHOOSE to side with odium and the voidspren in order to fight the humans. They will only realize their mistake when, like Eshonai, they realize their free will is gone. 

I don't see how this is significantly different from your 4 steps, with the exception that I think the spren with the parshmen are voidspren. You thinking there is more going on is a bit confusing, because the 4 steps are obvious. You just left one out between 3 & 4 - Trick listeners into becoming voidbringers. These spren are leading the parshmen so they form a large group, rather than isolated small groups which are easily attacked.

Now, my usual disclaimer. I've been fooled before, I've thought things were going in a different direction before. I don't know for sure where we're going. I just see a lot of theories around that unnecessarily complicate things, and the spren with the parshmen not being voidspren seems to be one of those unnecessary complications. We'll find out soon, I hope.

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It seems that Syl is unfamiliar with the yellow spren.  She also may not have any intuitive feeling about them. 

The inception of the idea that the yellow spren are Voidspren actually seems to come from Kaladin.  At least, the idea isn't given to him by Syl, as an intuition or memory of hers.  Syl is not necessarily detecting or describing anything about the other spren - she may simply be deducing that these "must be" Voidspren as Kaladin is, or accepting his deduction as correct.

Quote

"And that other spren is still here too. A higher spren, like me.”

"Where?” Kaladin asked, twisting.

“He’s invisible to you,” Syl said, becoming a group of leaves and blowing around him. “I think I’ve fooled him into thinking I’m just a windspren.”

She zipped away, leaving a dozen unanswered questions on Kaladin’s lips. Storms… is that spren how they know where to go?

The column started again, and Kaladin walked for a good hour in silence before Syl next decided to come back to him. She landed on his shoulder, becoming the image of a young woman in her whimsical skirt. “He’s gone ahead for a little bit,” she said. “And the parshmen aren’t looking.”

“The spren is guiding them,” Kaladin said under his breath. “Syl, this spren must be…"

“From him,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself and growing small—actively shrinking to about two-thirds her normal size. “Voidspren.”

The fact that she calls it "that other spren" implies that it is a type Syl is encountering for the first time. 

With the Cryptics, Syl remembered their name and something of their nature even before encountering Pattern in the Physical Realm.  She also exhibited a strong feeling regarding them right away.  When she first saw Pattern she could identify what type of spren he was, then remembered more about Cryptics' nature afterwards. 

If she remembers that much about Cryptics from having known them in the Cognitive Realm, I think she would remember something about the yellow spren if she had known them.  And she almost certainly would have told Kaladin right off the bat what kind of spren they are if she knew.

Some of Syl's intuitions seem to be pre-conscious emotional memories from her time in the Cognitive Realm.  Those memories first manifest as immediate, visceral reactions to things she encounters in the Physical Realm, that she can't explain at first.  The exact judgment she makes of Cryptics seems to confirm this.  Syl calls Cryptics:

Quote

"A revolting type." She paused. "But not evil, I don’t think."

This fits the biases and opinions she would have developed living as an Honorspren interacting with Cryptics in the CR.  Honorspren and Liespren are contrary, and are in a complex conflict according to Jasnah, but have also fought against Odium together with their respective orders of KR.

Likewise, Syl knew in the CR that most Shardblades are dead spren, and even before she remembers this in the PR, she has an immediate visceral reaction against Shardblades.

With the yellow spren, she doesn't seem to exhibit an immediate visceral reaction.  For the first while after encountering the yellow spren, she just seems to just be hiding her nature from an unfamiliar higher spren.  The timing of her later fearful reaction implies that she may be reacting in that moment to the idea that this "must be" a Voidspren.

Syl also has intuitions about things she hasn't encountered before, like when she first sees the red spren.  The contrast in her reactions to red spren and the yellow spren highlights the issue:

Quote

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing to the side. “I’ve seen . . .”

“What?”

“Spren like red lightning,” Syl said softly. “Dangerous spren. Spren I haven’t seen before. I catch them in the distance, on occasion. Stormspren? Something dangerous is coming. About that, the glyphs are right.”

With the red spren, Syl expresses an intuition about them right away, as being "dangerous."  With the yellow spren, she doesn't express or show any immediate feelings towards them except caution and maybe suspicion - and as Syl is cautious and suspicious with Pattern, suspicion from Syl towards another spren does not equal that spren being of Odium.

Maybe Syl did have an intuition of her own regarding the yellow spren, and Kaladin just beat her to the punch in expressing it because they couldn't talk much.  Can't know that for certain though, and at the least the contrast highlights how Syl didn't express an intuition of her own regarding the yellow spren.

The yellow spren may still be Voidspren.  Maybe that is why Syl is unfamiliar with them.  But I don't think anything has said about them can be taken as an indication of their nature.

Edited by druets
Edited based on further re-read
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52 minutes ago, Calderis said:

@druets fantastically insightful first post, and I agree completely.

As @axcellence suggested on discord, between the Shin features and the stone pillars, I believe this spren is related to Shinovar, and is typically isolated from the other spren, but not actually a voidspren. 

I think the contrast between the Shin features, and the Spren walking on "pillars of stone" that rise out of the ground is very interesting. This could arise out of the Shin beliefs that touching stone is holy and only reserved for splinters.

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I am beginning to wonder off the voidpren are also pressed in the Spren Realm. Odium doesn't like to spinner his power, so it would make sense that he would recruit Spren from the fringes of spren society. We do know that the Spren have 'royal' spren, as well as the fact that some spren go on 'hunts' of other spren - dare I say the spren aren't so perfect themselves? 

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9 hours ago, teknopathetic said:

I am beginning to wonder off the voidpren are also pressed in the Spren Realm. Odium doesn't like to spinner his power, so it would make sense that he would recruit Spren from the fringes of spren society. We do know that the Spren have 'royal' spren, as well as the fact that some spren go on 'hunts' of other spren - dare I say the spren aren't so perfect themselves? 

I mean as far as we know they hunt non-sentient Spren like (was it exhaustion Spren?) which for all intents and purposes appear to have no thoughts at all and be less then even earth animals, it would be like hunting a boulder. And about them having royalty Spren, was it ever made clear if those Spren are rulers or leaders?

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Pure speculation of course, but I think it's Cultivationspren, who didn't cross from Shadesmar, but lived on the Roshar. 

1. Cultivationspren wouldn't be able to sense storms, since they are of Honor, not Cultivation.  

2. Cultivationspren could have predicted Everstorm and arrived in its aftermath to guide Parshmen. I believe Cultivation's ability to see future is pretty good and she seems to be one for making careful plans. Perhaps she plans to cultivate Parshmen into something aligned with her goals. 

 

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I, too am of the opinion that the voidspren is a voidspren. Syl wouldn't have been familiar with the spren because it wasn't around until the everstorm brought it across.

Remember, the Arcanum Unbounded essay on the Greater Roshar system states that Braize is home to sentient splinters (what we would know as spren). We also know Braize is the current residence of Odium. Remember also that Shadesmar is just the Cognitive Realm version of Roshar. A spren from Shadesmar would not interact with a spren from Braize, because they are a planet apart. 

May I suggest that the Everstorm brought already existing voidspren from Braize, and dumped them into Physical Realm Roshar, and that Odium healed the Listeners because it fit into his greater plan, even if he hates everything, and hatred tends not to heal.

13 hours ago, Kessler said:

Pure speculation of course, but I think it's Cultivationspren, who didn't cross from Shadesmar, but lived on the Roshar. 

1. Cultivationspren wouldn't be able to sense storms, since they are of Honor, not Cultivation.  

2. Cultivationspren could have predicted Everstorm and arrived in its aftermath to guide Parshmen. I believe Cultivation's ability to see future is pretty good and she seems to be one for making careful plans. Perhaps she plans to cultivate Parshmen into something aligned with her goals. 

 

A few questions regarding your post:

If cultivationspren were not able to detect the highstorms because they were of Honor, why would they be able to detect everstorms? Them not being of Odium would make that rather unlikely by your logic.

If any spren we have been exposed to already were a cultivationspren, it would be Wyndle and his kind. Syl, an honorspren, shared the ideals that most closely resembled what would have been Honor's. It would make sense that Wyndle, who only wants to grow a garden, and who is made up of growing vines, is a Cultivationspren. Why, then do you, and apparently many others, think that this new spren is a cultivationspren?

Additionally, I am pretty sure that the highstorms were present long before Honor and Cultivation, which does raise some questions as to how Syl could feel one coming, any suggestions?

Edited by TheTigerKandra
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1 hour ago, TheTigerKandra said:

Additionally, I am pretty sure that the highstorms were present long before Honor and Cultivation, which does raise some questions as to how Syl could feel one coming, any suggestions?

I believe Honor's cognitive shadow merged with the Stormfather, or some such.

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3 hours ago, frozndevl said:

I believe Honor's cognitive shadow merged with the Stormfather, or some such.

Isn't it that his cognitive shadow is the Stormfather? To me it felt like the highstorms haven't always been there, but only came 'after' the shards arrived, maybe as something to counter the Desolations? I don't have anything to back it up though.

Coppermind isn't really helpful on highstorms either, but we do have confirmation that they are Invested. Maybe they were made to provide the stormlight? Or to prepare for the Everstorm? Just imagine what would happen if an Everstorm would hit a planet not used to powerful storms every few days... There'd not be a single building left standing. Roshar did much better, even though the storm came from the wrong way.

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4 hours ago, Leyrann said:

Isn't it that his cognitive shadow is the Stormfather? To me it felt like the highstorms haven't always been there, but only came 'after' the shards arrived, maybe as something to counter the Desolations? I don't have anything to back it up though.

Coppermind isn't really helpful on highstorms either, but we do have confirmation that they are Invested. Maybe they were made to provide the stormlight? Or to prepare for the Everstorm? Just imagine what would happen if an Everstorm would hit a planet not used to powerful storms every few days... There'd not be a single building left standing. Roshar did much better, even though the storm came from the wrong way.

The Stormfather existed before Honor's death so he can't be Tanavast's Shadow.

As Honor died, his Shadow merged with the Stormfather and inherit his Connection and probably his memories.

In the Regard of the Highstorms, they predate the Shards' arrival on Roshar and they were Invested from before H&C's arrive

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