[OB] Voidplate

[+ElephantEarwax]

There is speculation about shardblades and shardplate, and their theorized cousins, voidblades and voidplate. I do not think that they would be fundamentally different than regular shardblades and plate. The metal would be different, but that would come from the shard being Odium instead of Honor/Cultivation. The plate would also probably feed off voidlight. Could anyone help me with some quotes or shoot me down?

[jefftucker0525]

Well we've never heard of or seen either of those things and u would think remnants would exist since shardplate and shardblades still do so I kind of doubt they exist. But that's just me

[Head Crabs]

Maybe parshendi carapace gains some extra power when they are full of void investiture? So there wouldnt be any leftover from the last desolation. Not sure about the blades. Maybe some of the dead spren blades that have been going around were void blades the whole time? But since they are dead no one knew the difference the whole time? 

[Shig]

3 hours ago, jefftucker0525 said:

Well we've never heard of or seen either of those things and u would think remnants would exist since shardplate and shardblades still do so I kind of doubt they exist. But that's just me

Well, we do know that the blades are left behind because of broken oaths, but if there is no oath needed for the voidspren bonds, perhaps the spren can never die.

[CaptainRyan]

I do expect to see some sort of countermeasure to Shardblades. As it stands, they are overwhelmingly powerful. Nothing that Odium has fielded so far seems capable of blocking/resisting a single swipe from a Shardblade but I expect that will change. Will it be Voidblades and Voidplate? Maybe, maybe not.

[jefftucker0525]

35 minutes ago, Shig said:

Well, we do know that the blades are left behind because of broken oaths, but if there is no oath needed for the voidspren bonds, perhaps the spren can never die.

A good point, still don't buy the idea, but a good point.

 

25 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

I do expect to see some sort of countermeasure to Shardblades. As it stands, they are overwhelmingly powerful. Nothing that Odium has fielded so far seems capable of blocking/resisting a single swipe from a Shardblade but I expect that will change. Will it be Voidblades and Voidplate? Maybe, maybe not.

Well there's thunderclasts (might be the wrong name/spelling) but honestly it seems like the main advantage of the Voidbringers is numbers. Even I'm past recreances the ratio of Voidbringers to Radiants was favorable to the Voidbringers. And "favorable" is being pretty generous. When the entirety of an opposing force has surges and only a few of the good guys do, that's a pretty distinct advantage.

[CaptainRyan]

4 minutes ago, jefftucker0525 said:

When the entirety of an opposing force has surges and only a few of the good guys do, that's a pretty distinct advantage.

We have no idea whether or not this is what will happen. Will all Parshendi/Parshmen change into a Voidform or are there limited number of Voidspren to go around? Once Radiants gain Shardplate then it becomes even more overbalanced in favor of the KR. Remember how useless Stormform's lightning was against Adolin in WoR? Imagine Kaladin, with Sylblade and Radiant Shardplate - he would be able to defeat hundreds of Stormform without really breaking a sweat.

I think we are going to see more from Voidforms then Surges and weird carapace. I mean, come on, some researchers in Jah Keved developed half-shards that can block Shardblades; if they can do it then Odium's forces have to have something up their sleeve haha

[Ciridae]

Odium's champion was being represented wearing dark plate in Dalinar's vision. It might not be literal, just symbolic of a great warrior, but I'd say voidplate and blade are a possibility.

The main issue for listeners is that their bonded spren resides in their gemheart and isn't free to move around or form a blade, as far as we know. 

A separate free spren, like all of those yellow spren guiding the listeners to the cities could be something like a third party to the Fused, being their eyes and ears and maybe blade, where their main spren is trapped in the listener's gemheart. 

Historically I think this might have been the reason listeners couldn't become radiants. The nahel spren didn't want to live trapped in a gemheart. 

I think if we ever see a Listener become a radiant (I have high hopes for you Eshonai), they will be a radiant without a blade or free spren, only hearing their spren in their mind. I hope I'm wrong though, poor spren.

We don't know enough about regular plate to say for sure, but if it's formed from stormlight then it stands to reason that it can be formed from voidlight. If it is composed of the lesser cousin spren, there are probably enough smaller odiumspren around to make that happen too. 

[jefftucker0525]

1 hour ago, CaptainRyan said:

We have no idea whether or not this is what will happen. Will all Parshendi/Parshmen change into a Voidform or are there limited number of Voidspren to go around? Once Radiants gain Shardplate then it becomes even more overbalanced in favor of the KR. Remember how useless Stormform's lightning was against Adolin in WoR? Imagine Kaladin, with Sylblade and Radiant Shardplate - he would be able to defeat hundreds of Stormform without really breaking a sweat.

I think we are going to see more from Voidforms then Surges and weird carapace. I mean, come on, some researchers in Jah Keved developed half-shards that can block Shardblades; if they can do it then Odium's forces have to have something up their sleeve haha

Sure, we can't know. But based off the fact that tens of thousands of Parshendi turned into one type of Voidbringer, I think it's a safe bet that Odium has enough spren to go around. And while I could see there being less of certain orders (for lack of a Canon term) of Voidbringers, I think we have enough evidence to say all Parshendi/parshmen can become Voidbringers at the same time. And they have spawns from the unmade (i.e. the midnight mother) on their side an who knows what else.

Beyond that we've only seen 2 orders of Voidbringers, and only 1 to the full extent of their ability. So it's completely possible and honestly pretty likely that there is a void form that can destroy Shardplate. 

And @Ciridae I like your argument for Voidplate, I'm in the Shardplate is made from spren camp and I didn't even consider the possibility of the same things being the case for Voidbringers. Might have to reconsider my stance on it lol

[Guest Edonidd]

On 11/7/2017 at 7:27 PM, Ciridae said:

Odium's champion was being represented wearing dark plate in Dalinar's vision. It might not be literal, just symbolic of a great warrior, but I'd say voidplate and blade are a possibility.

The main issue for listeners is that their bonded spren resides in their gemheart and isn't free to move around or form a blade, as far as we know. 

A separate free spren, like all of those yellow spren guiding the listeners to the cities could be something like a third party to the Fused, being their eyes and ears and maybe blade, where their main spren is trapped in the listener's gemheart. 

Historically I think this might have been the reason listeners couldn't become radiants. The nahel spren didn't want to live trapped in a gemheart. 

I think if we ever see a Listener become a radiant (I have high hopes for you Eshonai), they will be a radiant without a blade or free spren, only hearing their spren in their mind. I hope I'm wrong though, poor spren.

We don't know enough about regular plate to say for sure, but if it's formed from stormlight then it stands to reason that it can be formed from voidlight. If it is composed of the lesser cousin spren, there are probably enough smaller odiumspren around to make that happen too. 

Sometimes I don't know if I'm reading the same books as everyone else?

Where do you get the listener gemheart thing from?

[StormingTexan]

24 minutes ago, Edonidd said:

Sometimes I don't know if I'm reading the same books as everyone else?

Where do you get the listener gemheart thing from?

I’m not exactly sure either I think it is just a theory at this point. It has been asked and RAFO’d though. Btw holy crap I love the new Arcanum. So easy to find WoBs now.

 

Quote

 

Questioner

When a Parshendi changes forms, are they taking different spren into their gemhearts?

 

 

 

Quote

 

Brandon Sanderson

When a Parshendi changes forms, they are *carefully* entering into a symbiotic relationship with a new spren.

Questioner

But-- *audience laughter*

Brandon Sanderson

That's the answer you're going to get. That's a RAFO.

 

 

 

Quote

 

Questioner

Do the Parshendi have gemhearts?

Brandon Sanderson

Do the Parshendi have gemhearts? That is a RAFO.

 

 

[Calderis]

As natives to Roshar gemhearts aren't unlikely. It would be a natural place within the body to house the Spren that they bond for their transformation, just as a spren is held in the gemstones in fabrials. 

The argument I've seen against this is that the Alethi would have noticed. Seeing as the Alethi hadn't inspected the bodies well enough to know that roughly half of their opponents were female, I think that argument is rather weak. 

To the main thread. Who knows. The the black plate doesn't sound like any Shardplate we've seen. The lack of voidplate/blades as evidence that they couldn't have ever existed is fairly weak, as the method of blade and plate creation (dead spren via broken oaths) may not have an analogous action in the voidbinding system. Even if it does, we have no idea how prevent they would have been, and out of thousands of Shardblades/plate from the Recreance, only around 100 are known now. 

I'm not sure that we'll see these things happen, but I certainly see nothing saying it's impossible. 

Edited November 10, 2017 by Calderis

[Aminar]

4 minutes ago, Calderis said:

As natives to Roshar gemhearts aren't unlikely. It would be a natural place within the body to house the Spren that they bond for their transformation, just as a spren is held in the gemstones in fabrials. 

The argument I've seen against this is that the Alethi would have noticed. Seeing as the Alethi hadn't inspected the bodies well enough to know that roughly half of their opponents were female, I think that argument is rather weak. 

Agreed. It makes sense. We know spren can be trapped in gems and we don't know any other way to imbibe a spren, only to bond with one. But the listeners don't seem to have spren constantly floating around. And they don't seem to have used Nahel Spren yet. 

[Ciridae]

@Edonidd On gemhearts, in the prologue Eshonia thinks to herself that humans, through fabrials, have imitated the way listeners naturally bond with spren. 

Quote

Captive like in a gemheart, she thought, attuning Awe. They’ve built devices that mimic how we apply the forms? The humans did so much with their limitations!

 

About the voidblades, if something similar to shardblades for nahel spren exists for voidspren, I'd say its very unlikely that many dead voidblades exist. There would have to be an equivalent to the Recreance, provided that voidbinding is even an oath based system like surgebinding, which we cant be sure of. 

But I am sure that the Fused will have access to something that can stand up to a shardblade. 

[Aminar]

27 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

@Edonidd On gemhearts, in the prologue Eshonia thinks to herself that humans, through fabrials, have imitated the way listeners naturally bond with spren. 

 

About the voidblades, if something similar to shardblades for nahel spren exists for voidspren, I'd say its very unlikely that many dead voidblades exist. There would have to be an equivalent to the Recreance, provided that voidbinding is even an oath based system like surgebinding, which we cant be sure of. 

But I am sure that the Fused will have access to something that can stand up to a shardblade. 

Dead shards are the most likely answer. Along with other tricks. But I doubt they'll have their own version or anything close. Remember, humans have "won" all the desolations so far as we understand them. And at one point they only had 10 guys with surges and shardblades. 

[Guest Edonidd]

I just don't see gemhearts in the listeners as being even slightly possible.  

 

First of all, gems are actual money on roshar.  That would mean they have slaughtered tens of thousands and literally decimated the population of listeners without ever finding out that "Hey!  Every one we kill has money inside."  Not to mention that Listeners are physically exactly the same as Parshmen, the slaves that everyone across the planet owns in such huge numbers that they think their economy will literally collapse without them.  Which have been slaves for generations to the point people don't even believe they could possibly be anything else.

Even if you subscribe to that theory that Alethi are so dumb and bloodthirsty that they don't know there are differences between boys and girls, you'd still think that one or two noticed dollar bills falling out of the Parshendi they just cut in half.  Even if only by accident.  Plus parshmen are world wide, and not everyone is Alethi.

 

[Leyrann]

1 hour ago, Edonidd said:

I just don't see gemhearts in the listeners as being even slightly possible.  

 

First of all, gems are actual money on roshar.  That would mean they have slaughtered tens of thousands and literally decimated the population of listeners without ever finding out that "Hey!  Every one we kill has money inside."  Not to mention that Listeners are physically exactly the same as Parshmen, the slaves that everyone across the planet owns in such huge numbers that they think their economy will literally collapse without them.  Which have been slaves for generations to the point people don't even believe they could possibly be anything else.

Even if you subscribe to that theory that Alethi are so dumb and bloodthirsty that they don't know there are differences between boys and girls, you'd still think that one or two noticed dollar bills falling out of the Parshendi they just cut in half.  Even if only by accident.  Plus parshmen are world wide, and not everyone is Alethi.

 

You go wrong at the part where you think it's easy to cut someone in half.

Hint: it's not.

[Salkara]

2 hours ago, Edonidd said:

I just don't see gemhearts in the listeners as being even slightly possible.  

 

First of all, gems are actual money on roshar.  That would mean they have slaughtered tens of thousands and literally decimated the population of listeners without ever finding out that "Hey!  Every one we kill has money inside."  Not to mention that Listeners are physically exactly the same as Parshmen, the slaves that everyone across the planet owns in such huge numbers that they think their economy will literally collapse without them.  Which have been slaves for generations to the point people don't even believe they could possibly be anything else.

Even if you subscribe to that theory that Alethi are so dumb and bloodthirsty that they don't know there are differences between boys and girls, you'd still think that one or two noticed dollar bills falling out of the Parshendi they just cut in half.  Even if only by accident.  Plus parshmen are world wide, and not everyone is Alethi.

 

It could just be a matter of scale. Giant, 30 foot tall crustaceans grow gemhearts which are maybe a foot in diameter. It's possible that listeners grow gemhearts, but they're not large enough to justify the cost of extracting them.

[StormingTexan]

As far as the Parshendi gemhearts I don't see how this could not have been discovered. Yes it is possible but there is obviously scholars on Roshar and the Parshendi are alien compared to humans. No one has dissected a Parshman after they die? 

 

[Aminar]

7 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

As far as the Parshendi gemhearts I don't see how this could not have been discovered. Yes it is possible but there is obviously scholars on Roshar and the Parshendi are alien compared to humans. No one has dissected a Parshman after they die? 

 

Or nobody dissecting a parshman found the gemheart. Maybe they're small or worthless or hard to see. Maybe they leak stormlight so badly they're worthless when not contained in a body or the knowledge was lost. But the way Parshendi work suggests a gemheart. 

Also remember that the one thing even regular dullform parshmen care for is not touching the bodies. That can build a social taboo up real quick if its the only thing that makes your docile workforce freak out. (And it suggests they have something, like gemhearts, to hide.)

[StormingTexan]

1 minute ago, Aminar said:

Or nobody dissecting a parshman found the gemheart. Maybe they're small or worthless or hard to see. Maybe they leak stormlight so badly they're worthless when not contained in a body or the knowledge was lost. But the way Parshendi work suggests a gemheart. 

Also remember that the one thing even regular dullform parshmen care for is not touching the bodies. That can build a social taboo up real quick if its the only thing that makes your docile workforce freak out. (And it suggests they have something, like gemhearts, to hide.)

Touche' I yield to your rebuttal. 

[Blacksmithki]

1 hour ago, Salkara said:

It could just be a matter of scale. Giant, 30 foot tall crustaceans grow gemhearts which are maybe a foot in diameter. It's possible that listeners grow gemhearts, but they're not large enough to justify the cost of extracting them.

Or the fact that they would only really see them in decomposing corpses, because really, you can't cut someone in half unless you actively try to, even harder when they have carapace armor. And the parshmen corpses they allow to be left somewhere by their brethren so they wouldn't come across those small gem hearts.

[Calderis]

The chasmfiend at the Hunt in tWoK was the largest chasmfiends that Dalinar had ever seen. It's gemhearts was still able to be held in one plated hand. So a massive gemheart was probably between 6 - 10 inches in diameter, for a creature that was over twenty feet tall and considerably longer. 

The gemheart in a Parshendi would be miniscule when you scale down that size. 

[StormingTexan]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

The chasmfiend at the Hunt in tWoK was the largest chasmfiends that Dalinar had ever seen. It's gemhearts was still able to be held in one plated hand. So a massive gemheart was probably between 6 - 10 inches in diameter, for a creature that was over twenty feet tall and considerably longer. 

The gemheart in a Parshendi would be miniscule when you scale down that size. 

Hopefully not too minuscule and spren has to live in there after all. 

[Blacksmithki]

is a gem heart a part of a circulatory system or just a random organ?