Parshman reproduction

[ReaderAt2046]

With the revelation from Eshonai's sequence that the Parshendi reproduce by entering "mateform", a question arrises: how do the parshmen, who can't enter any form, reproduce? Even if parshmen don't age naturally (an assertion I find immensely improbable), they must occasionally get killed, so new ones must come from somewhere or all the parshmen would have died a long time ago. If we imagine that parshmen are limited to slaveform and mateform, that begs the question of why nobody notices the parshmen in mateform. Are the parshmen being manufactured somewhere?

 

Thoughts? Speculations? Words Of God?

[Asha'man Logain]

I'm pretty sure Eshonai mentions(in one of the previews) that they have Listeners in human cities and camps in 'dullform'. I believe this is what the parshmen are, parshendi without the spren.

[Moogle]

I am quite satisfied by the idea that the parshmen are immortal, myself. Parshmen breeding would be an incredibly lucrative profession if it existed, and as such I think we would see a lot more parshmen than we do if they could be bred (there is a huge demand, so supply would grow to meet it).

 

I don't think they die all that often, personally. They're too valuable to use in battle as bridgemen, so what's going to kill them?

 

Why would they need slaves if they could breed parshmen?

Edited February 25, 2014 by Moogle

[ReaderAt2046]

Yes, but she distinguishes between "dullform" and "slaveform". I'm sure some of the parshmen are actually disguised Parshendi, but I doubt that all of them are.

Edited February 25, 2014 by ReaderAt2046

[Asha'man Logain]

Well, sure if you want to go and recall everything from the start. lol. I just assumed that with the Esonai confirmation of pashendi being among humans that ALL parshmen were a type of parshendi. You're right it could be different,

[Sylveris]

From what I understood,

While mateform is more suitable for mating (surprise surprise), mating isn't limited to it, just as warform can still try to make art.

So the parshmen, who are parshendi in slaveform, without free will (unlike dullform who look the same but only act as if with no free will), can still reproduce, through it probably require someone telling two parshmen to do it (which is weird on its own).

[TomR]

I am quite satisfied by the idea that the parshmen are immortal, myself. Parshmen breeding would be an incredibly lucrative profession if it existed, and as such I think we would see a lot more parshmen than we do if they could be bred (there is a huge demand, so supply would grow to meet it).

I doubt they're immortal solely because the Parshendi do reproduce.  Their population doesn't seem very large for a thousand years without death from age.  Also, I wouldn't be surprised if parshmen are bred and we just haven't seen it yet.

 

From what I understood,

While mateform is more suitable for mating (surprise surprise), mating isn't limited to it, just as warform can still try to make art.

So the parshmen, who are parshendi in slaveform, without free will (unlike dullform who look the same but only act as if with no free will), can still reproduce, through it probably require someone telling two parshmen to do it (which is weird on its own).

 

I agree.  Parshmen/Parshendi still aren't completely neuter outside of mateform, they're malen and femalen, so I don't think asexuality is a limitation. The forms would be specialization inherited from the basic template.

Edited February 26, 2014 by TomR

[Moogle]

I doubt they're immortal solely because the Parshendi do reproduce.  Their population doesn't seem very large for a thousand years without death from age.  Also, I wouldn't be surprised if parshmen are bred and we just haven't seen it yet.

 

Parshendi regularly fell to battles (even before the Alethi's war, they were sending assassins at each other) and lived rather primitively in wilds, so death would be a mite more common for them than parshmen. They also seem to have no strong desire to have kids. If they were immortal, I could see why they wouldn't have a huge population. They can't even really sustain themselves that well.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Moogle

[Gloom]

It is commonly believed that the Parsh have existed for more than 4500 years. Slave form may lack for ambition and drive, but it appears to be quite versatile otherwise. The Parshmen make excellent slaves. Why is this? Because they are versatile. Parshmen can be taught to care for manuscripts and books in the Palaeneum, they can be taught to farm, they left to care for human children, they can carry bridges, and much more. They are not stupid. If they can do all of these varied and often complex tasks with limited supervision, then I find it hard to believe that they would be completely incapable of reproduction when ordered to do so. I do feel that they may be far less fertile in slave form than they are in mate form. This, along with the general lack of desire to see their race flourish, could result in a stagnation of their numbers while maintaining a viable population.

 

Edit: Spelling

Edited February 26, 2014 by Gloom

[WeiryWriter]

My personal thought is that mateform isn't the only form they can reproduce in, but it is the form they are most fertile in.  It is harder to conceive in the other forms, but not impossible.

[el_warko]

They do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight.

[Arondell]

According to Sigzel even Parshmen workers are known for becoming passionate about people touching their dead.  They also have a specific protocol/rite/routine for how to handle the dead.  That makes me think that they are not really immortal and have some form of reproduction or that they started off with a very large population that has slowly dwindled over a couple thousand years due to accidents.

 

In the second case though then each Parshman worker would be a very valuable and in some ways irreplaceable commodity.  Would Hashel have been willing to place Shen with bridge four under those circumstances?  Even as an experiment?

[Morsk]

I'm expecting real forms to be infertile, except for mateform. Fertility is a huge project for a woman's body, and the first thing a race with multiple forms would get rid of. If other forms don't have sexual urges, it makes no sense for them to waste all the resources being fertile. Eshonai mentions that originally the Parshendi only knew dullform and mateform. I think the reason for both is that they needed both, that dullform can't reproduce.

Slaveform could be special, because it's not really a form. Even if my guess is right, it may be that dullform (etc.) suppress fertility and mateform enhances it, not that mateform creates it and slaveform doesn't have it at all.

[Cayden]

It depends, because in some ways it seems like Mateform is basically a form where Estrus is pretty much permanent and they have to really focus to concentrate their desires on anything except making babies and caring for babies. But if thats the case are they infertile in other form or merely very unlikely to conceive? I expect it to be a greatly diminished fertility. Asin 5% chance to conceive opposed to 50%, thats assuming that the Parsh dont have an estrus cycle outside of Mateform. It might be that they are only fertile for a brief period of time.

 

It makes no sense for other forms to have no fertility or they would be extinct as a species, if they were immortal it would have been remarked upon, they might all look similar to humans, but I trust that those humans can count and see that there number of slaves stays consistent over hundreds of years.

 

Parshmen to me seem like that guy everyone knows at work, the one who lacks initiative, who if you do not tell what to do he'll sit there and do nothing. You give him an instruction and he'll do it till its done, but once it is he will sit there until you tell him to do something else, he lacks the initiative to come and ask for the next task.

 

Initiative is what makes a person or a parshendi in many ways. doesnt matter how capable you are if you have no initiative to get it done without being told to do it.

 

Besides, the Parshendi are likely constructs created by Cultivation, it would explain their reverence for the dead, how they want them left on stone, but also how adaptive they are, they're tools which can shape themselves to fit whatever is needed and before Odium arrived they were probably the ideal tools to help mankind. It also explains why they need to bond with specific spren in order to activate those tools and skillsets, if they were native to Roshar, and the spren did not arrive until Honor and Cultivation terraformed the planet then they would pre-date spren.

[Cromptj]

I would not be surprised if Parshmen reproduce by laying eggs, which is how they maintain a stable population with so few mating pairs (before the war)

[Moogle]

It makes no sense for other forms to have no fertility or they would be extinct as a species, if they were immortal it would have been remarked upon

 

Er, how do you know this would be remarked upon? To Rosharans it would be so common and obvious that parshmen were immortal (if they are) that I would argue it would never come up in conversation. Sort of like how they ignore spren for the most part.

[PorridgeBrick]

Besides, the Parshendi are likely constructs created by Cultivation, it would explain their reverence for the dead, how they want them left on stone, but also how adaptive they are, they're tools which can shape themselves to fit whatever is needed and before Odium arrived they were probably the ideal tools to help mankind. It also explains why they need to bond with specific spren in order to activate those tools and skillsets, if they were native to Roshar, and the spren did not arrive until Honor and Cultivation terraformed the planet then they would pre-date spren.

Why are you assuming spren arrived after Honor and Cultivation? I'm almost positive this is not the case. A more likely possibility is that Parshendi, and all the other native Rosharan wildlife (which all happen to be crustacean) were there with the spren before Cultivation and Honor arrived bringing Earth-like life like humans, rats, horses, chickens, etc. After all, the place most heavily associated with Cultivation is Shinovar, what with the farmer upper class and all, and Shinovar is also home to all the earth-like, obviously nonnative, life.

[Kadrok]

With the revelation from Eshonai's sequence that the Parshendi reproduce by entering "mateform", a question arrises: how do the parshmen, who can't enter any form, reproduce? Even if parshmen don't age naturally (an assertion I find immensely improbable), they must occasionally get killed, so new ones must come from somewhere or all the parshmen would have died a long time ago. If we imagine that parshmen are limited to slaveform and mateform, that begs the question of why nobody notices the parshmen in mateform. Are the parshmen being manufactured somewhere?

 

Thoughts? Speculations? Words Of God?

Well my theory was that Parshemen without a form have an indefinite lifespan. Other thoughts on this can be found here. (Fair enough that you didn't see it, it has moved down to page 5 of the WoR discussion).

[Bremen]

I would not be surprised if Parshmen reproduce by laying eggs, which is how they maintain a stable population with so few mating pairs (before the war)

Zomg!

Void Martians!

Except we're on Roshar...

I didn't get the sense their population was stable either.

[Cromptj]

I meant that the population was stable before the war.

[The Rooster]

Mateform meek *

[Bremen]

I meant that the population was stable before the war.

I am enlightened, thank you.

That makes a lot of sense.

[AerionBFII]

Mateform sounds intriguing Giggity*

 

It sounded like in the old days they had a form for every occasion is this a counter to Surgebinding?

 

I think these transformations are a form of Voidbinding.

Edited February 27, 2014 by WEZ313

[Cayden]

Why are you assuming spren arrived after Honor and Cultivation? I'm almost positive this is not the case. A more likely possibility is that Parshendi, and all the other native Rosharan wildlife (which all happen to be crustacean) were there with the spren before Cultivation and Honor arrived bringing Earth-like life like humans, rats, horses, chickens, etc. After all, the place most heavily associated with Cultivation is Shinovar, what with the farmer upper class and all, and Shinovar is also home to all the earth-like, obviously nonnative, life.

Some pre-date them, But I suspect that the spren which can bond with mankind are the same as those that can bond with Parshendi. Makes sense in a way that the Parshendi couldnt get new forms because those spren were not interacting with the occupants on Roshar, until a very brief time ago. 

 

as for why it would have been remarked upon... we have Jasnah doing research into them, Kaladin and co talking about them and you dont think one of them mention that they are immortal barring injury or accident? sorry but that just doesnt fit to me, but then again thats just my opinion but until we see even some semblance of a fact to state that they do not die in a reasonable lifespan then ill go on assuming that its within a range similar to that of the humans.

 

 

As for the native life, I thought that the truly native life has Violet blood. I.e chasmfiends, chulls, axe-hounds and that it was the non native species (or re-engineered species) which have red(human) or orange(Parsh)

[PorridgeBrick]

Aren't there hundreds of forms though? There's only ten Nahel Spren.

I agree with you on the immortality bit.

I don't know too much on blood color. AFAIK, the only ones we've had violet blood are chulls, but that could be wrong. However, there is quite a bit of difference in Earth life's blood colors, so I expect the same would hold for Roshar.