Greatshells of EVIL

[Heir of the Void]

So, my theory goes something like this. The Everstorm is said to distribue Odiumspren, and it has been established that the Greatshells bond with spren. Therefore, when the Everstorm comes around again, it will forcefully bond odiumspren to creatures such as Chasmfiends, creating the creatures that resembled Chasmfieds that were seen fighting alongside the Voidbringers.

 

Heck, maybe the possessed greatshells are voidbringers, and the Stormform Parshendi are just the harbingers of the Everstorm and their infantry escorts.

 

If any of this is true, possessed Greatshells (and thunderclasts) are probably what Shardblades are/were made to fight.

[RShara]

Are you thinking of the thunderclasts?  They're made out of voidspren and rock itself.  I'm not sure how the mechanics work, but the voidspren literally animates stone, which pulls out of the ground and starts attacking.  See Dalinar's vision at the beginning of WoR.  I'm not sure what affect the Everstorm will have on greatshells, but I suspect not very much, otherwise they'd have been attacking the civilians while they traveled to Urithiru after the Everstorm passed.

[hoser]

In the prelude to tWoK, it says "Blood mixed. Red. Orange. Violet."  The violet blood would seem likely to be from greatshells and would correlate to the picture that Jasnah had Shallan send to Dalinar. 

The Santhid and Reshi Islands seem intelligent and kindly disposed toward humans.  The Chasmfiends might be intelligent, but I can imagine them being affected by Odiumspren to fight against the humans. 

[RShara]

Wouldn't it be awesome if the greatshells were made to be the counter to the thunderclasts, and people have been hunting and killing some of their most powerful allies for millennia?

[Seloun]

So, my theory goes something like this. The Everstorm is said to distribue Odiumspren, and it has been established that the Greatshells bond with spren. Therefore, when the Everstorm comes around again, it will forcefully bond odiumspren to creatures such as Chasmfiends, creating the creatures that resembled Chasmfieds that were seen fighting alongside the Voidbringers.

 

Heck, maybe the possessed greatshells are voidbringers, and the Stormform Parshendi are just the harbingers of the Everstorm and their infantry escorts.

 

If any of this is true, possessed Greatshells (and thunderclasts) are probably what Shardblades are/were made to fight.

 

I think this is practically confirmed in the books. In the chasm scene ("Selfish Reasons", ch 72), after killing the chasmfiend:

 

 

She froze as she heard something. The chasmfiend’s head lay nearby, massive eyes cloudy. Spren started to rise from it, like trails of smoke. The same ones as before, only . . . leaving? She held her light closer.

 

and earlier ("From A Nightmare", ch 70):

 

 

It was also wrong. Wrong in a way difficult to describe. Big creatures were supposed to be slow and docile, like chulls. Yet this enormous beast moved with ease, its legs up on the sides of the chasm, holding it so that its body barely touched the ground. It ate the corpse of a fallen soldier, grasping the body in smaller claws by its mouth, then ripping it in half with a gruesome bite.

 

That face was like something from a nightmare. Evil, powerful , almost intelligent.

 

“Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those . . .” They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools , though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air.

 

This looks just like what happens with the stormform Parshendi:

 

 

Though these Parshendi soldiers were sleeker and more ferocious-looking than the ones he’d previously fought, their eyes burned just as easily. Then they dropped dead and something wiggled out of their chests— small red spren, like tiny lightning , that zipped into the air and vanished.

The only difference is it's a different spren - smokespren perhaps instead of stormspren. The 'hunting' chasmfiend seems to be different than the regular chasmfiends.

 

It's also worth noting that the Thrill also appears to be gone by the time Alethi engage the Parshendi. Maybe that's related...

[Satsuoni]

Thrill is of the Unmade... Somehow.

Anyway, binding spren seems to be common among native Roshar fauna. All Greatshells seem to have one, Skyeels have some spren helping them, etc. That is probably common symbiosis. And larger Greatshells do seem to be intelligent, or close to it. They have been like that for a while. The Chasmfiend spren, for example, seem to support his mass, allowing it the speed and size that it reaches. Perhaps they can be "infected" by voidspren while they pupate or something, but I don't think they are inherently evil, per se, no more than any large, hungry predators are.