[OB] The three bondsmith spren

[Passion]

In front of chapter 116 we get a fragment of the Eula stele. “Their betrayal extended even to our gods,to Spren,stone and wind.” This clearly expresses that which we already learnt in words of radiance from eshonai chapters that the spren used to be on the side of the parshendi and changed sides. It seems obvious to me that wind refers to the stormfather and it directly follows that this passage is referencing the 3 bondsmith spren. I think the first one spren is a reference to nightwatcher (think of her description in the chapters Dalinar visits her). This then reveals stone as the 3rd bondsmith spren. 

all of a sudden I have to wonder whether there might be something to the shin stone shamanism and their insistence in not walking on stone. (Even if it is still likely the shin tradition is as misguided as the Alethi one).

also I obviously would have to take seriously the theories about urithiru

(as an aside I noticed the stormfather specifically told dalinar the third bondsmith is not hiding just slumbering and also that he refered to him as them in plural)

hope u guys like my observations and I’m not accidently repeating stuff everyone already knows

Edited July 15, 2018 by Passion
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[SzethIsBadAsHell]

Please look at this thread 

might have some expansive ideas for u , good  catch with the Ehli stele .

[Tesh]

And the third Bondsmith down is the Sibling. I don't know much about it.

[SzethIsBadAsHell]

4 hours ago, Tesh said:

And the third Bondsmith down is the Sibling. I don't know much about it.

That’s how it is referred to but I believe the Stone Spen is the sibling . And the Stone spren name is Aboshi 

[Bigmikey357]

Through these conversations about the nature of Mega Spren makes me believe that the Bondsmiths of old either had more options than what we have been told so far or the Sibling is actually multiple entities. We know Stormfather and Nightwatcher are 2 of the Spren that Bondsmiths get and that neither seem broken in such a way that a Radient breaking an oath would leave them. We know the Sibling was withdrawing before the Recreance occurred. We know that Melishi was the only Bondsmith at the time of the Recreance, yet none of the Bondsmith spren that have been identified fit what we've been shown of a spren with a broken oath. I may be off base; maybe SF was the one bonded and merging with Honor's essence prevented him from becoming the Mega Spren equivalent of a Deadeye. But until we find out more I will believe that Bondsmiths had more than 3 options.

[Passion]

Doesn’t it say outright there were never more than three?

i do like ur point about whether the third one was bonded at time of recreance and broke because of that. Never thought about that before. Calls attention to the implication from stormfather that the third sibling suffered enough

[Bigmikey357]

The quote was that there were only only 3 at any one time and that they did not seek to increase their numbers for it would have been seen as seditious. To me this implies that there could be more than 3, that only cultural mores prevent them from expanding. That tells me that the Big 3 aren't the only Mega Spren a Bondsmith can make a Nahel Bond with. I keep coming back to Cusicesh and whatever is going on with it. The WOB says it's a step below the Big 3 and a step above the sapient spren of other orders. It looks to me like what would happen if you broke a Mega Spren. And if none of the Big 3 were bonded to Melishi at the Recreance then that's the being I would nominate. 

[Calderis]

31 minutes ago, Bigmikey357 said:

The quote was that there were only only 3 at any one time and that they did not seek to increase their numbers for it would have been seen as seditious. To me this implies that there could be more than 3, that only cultural mores prevent them from expanding. That tells me that the Big 3 aren't the only Mega Spren a Bondsmith can make a Nahel Bond with. I keep coming back to Cusicesh and whatever is going on with it. The WOB says it's a step below the Big 3 and a step above the sapient spren of other orders. It looks to me like what would happen if you broke a Mega Spren. And if none of the Big 3 were bonded to Melishi at the Recreance then that's the being I would nominate. 

Seditious implies betrayal. 

I think more than three is possible, but that for spren of the proper magnitude it would have required binding the Unmade. Hence "seditious." 

[Bigmikey357]

Sedition is defined as rebellion against a lawful authority. That's not quite the same as betrayal. It sounds to me like either Honor or Ishar were against such a powerful Order, with surges with the ability to bind Gods (at least fractional ones), having more than 3 members at a time. Looking at Dalinar clapping his hands and merging 3 Realms, I would tend to agree with them. The Unmade are not the only option besides the Big 3 that keep at least limited sapience in the Physical Realm without a Nahel Bond. Because the question I keep coming back to is who was Melishi bonded to? It wasn't the Sib, they were already withdrawing before the Recreance. It wasn't Nightwatcher; she's as normal as an avatar of Cultivation can be. It could have been the Stormfather, healed by merging with a large splinter of Honor after Tavanast died, but he seems to not had a break with consciousness at any time. He watched the Recreance as it unfolded and was pretty pissed about it. So if Melishi wasn't bonded to one of the Big 3 and could not have bonded an Unmade and remained a Knight Radient then other options must have existed.  

Spren are cognitive entity given form, created by anthropomorphosizing the basic forces of creation. When sentient beings think about something it becomes manifest. The bigger the concept, the more complex the thought, the more people think about a certain thing, the bigger the Spren. The Highstorm of Roshar is the most pervasive aspect of living there, of course there's going to be a spren that represents that concept. If the Sib is the Spren of Stone then likewise for it, judging from how the landscape is described. So where's the Spren of the Ocean? The Spren of the Moons? Or the Desert? On Roshar everything has a representation in the Cognitive Realm but concepts like these seem to be absent. They can't all have been unmade, can they?

[Calderis]

Eh. I'm personally of the opinion that Melishi was bonded to the Stormfather. Pattern says that he "survived" the events, which implies to me that he was wounded. And yes I think Tanavast helped in that, but I also think he's a Spren of a large enough presence in the Physical realm not to have suffered what we see of typical deadeyes. 

In my opinion, the death happens because of the way the Spren have been pulled more and more into the Physical Realm. When they first come seeking a Radiant, they transition to the Physical and are not able to think properly. As the bond progresses they seem to piggyback on the Physical Connection of the Radiant, regaining their mind and get pulled further into the Physical, being able to manifest fully in the form of a Shardblade. 

When the bond is severed, that physical form is enforced, only without the Connection of the Radiant to hold their mind together so they are basically used up, without enough of themselves left Cognitively to be what they were. Even while dismissed, they have been fundamentally changed to function differently. 

The Stormfather though can function fully in the Physical Realm without a bond, so a broken oath to him is damaging... But not fatal. And as we've seen multiple times from the Stormfather, he's not healthy. He he was willing to upend the weather and rush a storm in order to wash away the corpses on the Shattered Plains. 

Edited July 15, 2018 by Calderis

[RShara]

38 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Eh. I'm personally of the opinion that Melishi was bonded to the Stormfather. Pattern says that he "survived" the events, which implies to me that he was wounded. And yes I think Tanavast helped in that, but I also think he's a Spren of a large enough presence in the Physical realm not to have suffered what we see of typical deadeyes. 

In my opinion, the death happens because of the way the Spren have been pulled more and more into the Physical Realm. When they first come seeking a Radiant, they transition to the Physical and are not able to think properly. As the bond progresses they seem to piggyback on the Physical Connection of the Radiant, regaining their mind and get pulled further into the Physical, being able to manifest fully in the form of a Shardblade. 

When the bond is severed, that physical form is enforced, only without the Connection of the Radiant to hold their mind together so they are basically used up, without enough of themselves left Cognitively to be what they were. Even while dismissed, they have been fundamentally changed to function differently. 

The Stormfather though can function fully in the Physical Realm without a bond, so a broken oath to him is damaging... But not fatal. And as we've seen multiple times from the Stormfather, he's not healthy. He he was willing to upend the weather and rush a storm in order to wash away the corpses on the Shattered Plains. 

I always wondered. Tanavast knew he was dying. Maybe when Melishi broke his oath and injured the SF, Tanavast sacrificed himself so that he could save the SF, by becoming a Cognitive Shadow and merging with him?

[Bigmikey357]

Calderis, I believe that we're probably going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I will say that there's merit to your theory however.  It's all a matter of where Honor's power went when Tanavast died. Obviously a large portion went into Stormfather or else the KR could no longer work and Honor could not have left his interactive voice messages. With Shardic intervention, healing a broken Stormfather would be relatively easy. But here's where my interpretation differs from yours. The instances where SF appears unwell to you, I attribute that to him being a non-human entity incapable of rapid change without a bond. He doesn't truly understand humanity and without a bond he cannot. He's also governed by rules we have yet to understand fully, rules that by his nature he cannot violate. The problem I have with Shardic intervention healing SF of the damage incurred by a broken Nahel bond is that if you are right then SF should not be damaged at all. The amount of investiture that is available with even a shattered shard should be able to heal anything. That doesn't bother me as I think he's fine. 

We can agree that Mega Spren like SF/NW/SIB would not become Deadeyes with a broken bond, although damage would occur. To me Cusicesh displays the type of damage I would expect a Mega Spren would display were it were to suffer an abandoned bond by way of the Recreance.  If Cusicesh sustained its damage by other means and instead SF was Melishi's bondmate then I would expect similar behavior from him before Tanavast dies and charges him with tasks. But there's no evidence in the historical record that says the Highstorm went wonky for a time after the Recreance. On Roshar that would be a huge deal, an extinction level event considering the ecological import of the Highstorm to flora and fauna. Honor would have had to step in immediately to prevent widespread environmental damage. Are we sure that Tanavast had the presence of mind in his final days to accomplish this? I for one do not believe it to be so. I could be wrong.

[Calderis]

@Bigmikey357 I don't want to derail the thread further so I'm just going to make a couple of points.

Firstly, I don't think any power had to go into the Radiants. The Shard is splintered, but all of the power, including Nahel Spren and Stormlight, exists. Honor's death should have had little effect on them. 

Second, Honor was raving and incoherent while he was dying. I believe that the merger was done by Tanavast after he did and regained lucidity, and that the Visions were created using the Stormfather power, not the Shards. 

[ScavellTane]

Well, I don't think that the Bondsmiths are limited to 3 spren.

Quote

 

“The art on the walls was more enigmatic. A solitary figure hovering above the ground before a large blue disc, arms stretched to the side as if to embrace it. Depictions of the Almighty in his traditional form as a cloud bursting with energy and light. A woman in the shape of a tree, hands spreading toward the sky and becoming branches. Who would have thought to find pagan symbols in the home of the Knights Radiant?

Other murals depicted shapes that reminded her of Pattern, windspren…ten kinds of spren. One for each order?

 

Quote

"But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them; nor did they seek to increase this by great bounds, for during the times of Madasa, only one of their order was in continual accompaniment of Urithiru and its thrones. Their spren was understood to be specific, and to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious."

Their spren may have been specific, but it may not be specific to three.

[Calderis]

I believe the three limit specifically because the Stormfather says as much. 

Quote

Yes, you’ve said. The Nightwatcher is like you. Are there others, though? Spren like you, or the Nightwatcher? Spren that are shadows of gods?”
There is … a third sibling. They are not with us.

 

[ScavellTane]

That's because we are led to believe that the bondsmiths have always bonded god-spren. I don't think they did. Before the death of Honor, I don't think there were any god-spren.

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, ScavellTane said:

That's because we are led to believe that the bondsmiths have always bonded god-spren. I don't think they did. Before the death of Honor, I don't think there were any god-spren.

I completely disagree. 

[ScavellTane]

In the past, Honor and/or Cultivation would not have needed the Bondsmiths to facilitate the confrontation with Odium. The function of the Bondsmiths within the Order have always been, as their Second Oath, to bind men together.

Honors merging with the spren of the HighStorm and his bid for the it to deliver his visions would have provided future Bondsmiths the 'power/ability/authority' to deal with Odium.

Edited July 20, 2018 by ScavellTane

[Calderis]

The Stormfather has indeed been changed. The others have not. Cultivation still lives, and I doubt her relationship with the Nightwatcher is anything different than what it has been for as long as the Knights have existed. 

The Sibling is referred to as one of the three, by the only one to have been altered. 

The Stormfathers role in the ecology of Roshar... I doubt his alteration amounts to much. He did not gain anything from the Shard of Honor, only the Cognitive Shadow of the Human Vessel.

Edit: to clarify, this is all my opinion. 

Edited July 15, 2018 by Calderis

[Scion of the Mists]

23 hours ago, ScavellTane said:

Well, I don't think that the Bondsmiths are limited to 3 spren.

Their spren may have been specific, but it may not be specific to three.

 

This WoB specifies three Bondsmith spren.  

Quote

Ghodicu

The pocket companion states that there are three spren that can bond a person to make them into a bondsmith, the Stormfather being one of them. As far as I recall the books implied that the number was low, and implied heavily that it was around that number in an epigraph, but didn't actually have a straight confirmation. So, should I take that as canon?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you can take that as canon. They came to me for that information.

yahasgaruna

Sweet. I guess it hasn't been canonized which three spren these are? I seem to recall that the prevailing theory on 17th Shard was that Nightwatcher was one of them, and the third was that weird spren with too many faces that Axies the Collector looked at in the tWoK interlude.

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

source

 

23 hours ago, ScavellTane said:

That's because we are led to believe that the bondsmiths have always bonded god-spren. I don't think they did. Before the death of Honor, I don't think there were any god-spren.

Well, the Stormfather must have predated the death of Honor - how else could he have merged with Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow?  

Edited July 16, 2018 by Scion of the Mists

[ScavellTane]

The Storm would have predated the death, but his role as the Stormfather, to create Honorspren, came after the merging.

My theory is that, before the death of Honor, Bondsmiths traditionally bonded the Dawnshards.

Quote

“My powers,” Dalinar said, rising. “Can I use them?” Binding things? the Stormfather said. How would that open a door? You are a Bondsmith; you bring things together, you do not divide them.

Quote

 

Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.

In the current Era though, they bond the God-sprens to treat with Odium.

Quote

Odium turned to him so sharply that Dalinar jumped. “Is that,” Odium said quietly, “an offer to release me from my bonds, coming from the man holding the remnants of Honor’s name and power?”

This line implies to me that the storm became the Stormfather because of the merging. 

The face in the sky is actually of Honor, not the spren of the storm, as that is whats depicted in the mural along side Cultivation and Adonalsium(?).

I don't think the three pictures are the depictions of the traditional Bondsmith spren.

Quote

“The art on the walls was more enigmatic. A solitary figure hovering above the ground before a large blue disc, arms stretched to the side as if to embrace it. Depictions of the Almighty in his traditional form as a cloud bursting with energy and light. A woman in the shape of a tree, hands spreading toward the sky and becoming branches. Who would have thought to find pagan symbols in the home of the Knights Radiant?

Other murals depicted shapes that reminded her of Pattern, windspren…ten kinds of spren. One for each order?

 

Another observation regarding the 'Storm'. If my theory is correct, that the current Stormfather was formerly of the Dawnshards aka the Storm.

1: Urithiru is powered by spren

2: Urithiru has strata.

3: Kholinar has strata.

4. Dawncities have strata?

5: Dawncities powered by spren?

6: Was Stormseat the Dawncity associated to the HighStorm spren?

7: Was the Shattered Plains a consequence of the merging of the spren with Honor?

Edited July 20, 2018 by ScavellTane

[Calderis]

@ScavellTane We know the Stormfather was bonded before. 

From himself at Dalinar and Navani's wedding. 

Quote

OATHS, the Stormfather rumbled, ARE THE SOUL OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. IF YOU ARE TO SURVIVE THE COMING TEMPEST, OATHS MUST GUIDE YOU.
“I am comfortable with oaths, Stormfather,” Dalinar called up to him. “As you know.”
YES. THE FIRST IN MILLENNIA TO BIND ME.

And from Odium. 

Quote

“You have been placed in a difficult position, my son,” Odium said. “You are the first to bond the Stormfather in his current state. Did you know that? You are deeply connected to the remnants of a god.”

And the in world Words of Radiance reference to three Bondsmiths and there specific spren would have been all pre-recreance. 

[ScavellTane]

Quote

But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them; nor did they seek to increase this by great bounds, for during the times of Madasa, only one of their order was in continual accompaniment of Urithiru and its thrones. Their spren was understood to be specific, and to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious.

This paragraph clearly indicates the Bondsmiths can be more than three. If there are only three specific spren for the Bondsmiths how would they have grown?

I have no doubt that there are currently three god-spren. My belief is that there were more than three great-spren for the Bondsmiths and that they were the Dawnshards.

Edited July 21, 2018 by ScavellTane

[Calderis]

50 minutes ago, ScavellTane said:

This paragraph clearly indicates the Bondsmiths can be more than three. If there are only three specific spren for the Bondsmiths how would they have grown?

My thoughts on this, which are complete speculation based on the use of the word "seditious," are that the Unmade are of the proper magnitude to produce Bondsmith. 

It makes sense that bonding a spren of Odium would be seen as seditious. 

[ScavellTane]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

My thoughts on this, which are complete speculation based on the use of the word "seditious," are that the Unmade are of the proper magnitude to produce Bondsmith. 

It makes sense that bonding a spren of Odium would be seen as seditious. 

I perceive the growth itself as seditious.

Quote

 to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious.