Gilphon Posted November 19, 2019 Report Share Posted November 19, 2019 I'm basing that on Arclo's line in his little speech to Lift: Quote "You see, child, I can grow what I need. Is my mind becoming full? I can breed new hordelings specialized in holding memories." I.E., he uses hordelings to store memories, and implies that his mental capacity is finite but can be increased by making new Hordelings. Surely it stands to reason that if he lost the specialized hordelings he's referring to, he'd lose the mental capacity that they granted him. Which leads me to suspect that 'how many hordelings need to die to end the Sleepless as an entity' is more of a philosophical question than a mechanical one. It's a question that quickly gets into Ship of Theseus stuff. I'm sure that if you asked Arclo, he'd say something along of 'how many humans needs to be killed in order for a city to die'? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciridae Posted November 19, 2019 Report Share Posted November 19, 2019 If I were a sleepless I’d leave my memory cremlings somewhere underground where nobody could find or get to them and only use other types to make up a fake body, or spy on people, or gather food for the memory cremlings. Makes me think of an ant colony with the queen at its heart and specialized workers and soldiers taking care of everything. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Honorless Posted November 19, 2019 Report Share Posted November 19, 2019 We don't actually know if what Lift encountered were all of Arclo's hordelings... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Config2 Posted November 19, 2019 Report Share Posted November 19, 2019 (edited) The big thing we have to know is whether the Sleepless are finite. Arclo seems to imply that he can breed new hordelings to store memory, and to me that implies he can breed more to supply mental capability. If those are both true, they can grow infinitely. If that happens, then killing them in a conventional sense is impossible for sure. They would have to be very stupid or suicidal to put all of their hordelings into the same location. That doesn't rule out something that attacks their soul or mind. Both of those are weapons that a shard has access to. If you killed the mind of a Sleepless, their cremlings might die all at once, or become normal insects (with high degrees of specialization, causing them to die in nature relatively quickly). Severing their soul would kill them as well, as we see with Shardblades (Shardblades wouldn't do anything except just cut off individual cremlings from the horde, but a more powerful item like Nightblood might hit the greater hidden soul) As for how they get into piles, the other sleepless would probably do that for a fallen comrade. I'm pretty certain that the sleepless are native to the system at least, and probably the planet. The type of crustacean/insectoid life that we have seen on Roshar has yet to be seen on any other visited world. The Saih, on the other hand, could very well be from Ashen or Braize or another system entirely. I would call out that Arclo does claim to Lift that he is "just another refugee." As he is talking to Lift, who isn't a refugee in the smaller sense of refugees from the local war, it probably refers to something else. That could be him stating he a refugee from Aimia, or more broadly a refugee of the planet Roshar (which is what Lift is technically). Edited November 20, 2019 by Config2 sp 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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