Jump to content

Szeth's Squires


Nellac

Recommended Posts

So I was thinking about Szeth and if he would have Squires. I was thinking of possible candidates and it hit me. Ardents would make perfect Skybreakers. They already dedicate their life to the almighty and/or their brightlord. I think it would be very easy for an ardent to take their oath of devotion as their third ideal. I could easily see Szeth picking up some of Dalinar's ardents, especially the weapons masters, as his squires.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Szeth cannot take Squires yet.  The Skybreakers, specifically, are very regimented in their power and organization progression. They dont get the ability to take Squires until their 4th Ideal.  Szeth has to complete his Crusade to "Cleanse the Shin of their false leaders" before he'll be able to take any.  

As far as possible candidates, there may well be some among the ardents that would accept it, but dont fall into the trap of thinking Ardents are like RL priests.  Becoming an ardent doesnt necessarily equate to being particularly pious, let alone enjoying Rules.  Some do it for that, some because of more specific charitable endeavors, but many (Id even say Most, at least among the males) do it because it's the only way possible way to get a formal education without being a Lighteyed woman.  

Edited by Quantus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

Szeth cannot take Squires yet.  The Skybreakers, specifically, are very regimented in their power and organization progression. They dont get the ability to take Squires until their 4th Ideal.  Szeth has to complete his Crusade to "Cleanse the Shin of their false leaders" before he'll be able to take any.  

As far as possible candidates, there may well be some among the ardents that would accept it, but dont fall into the trap of thinking Ardents are like RL priests.  Becoming an ardent doesnt necessarily equate to being particularly pious, let alone enjoying Rules.  Some do it for that, some because of more specific charitable endeavors, but many (Id even say Most, at least among the males) do it because it's the only way possible way to get a formal education without being a Lighteyed woman.  

Even if they join for various reasons, the majority of the ardents are down to be very loyal, if not to the church than to their brightlord. The only one we ever here if doing anything against their brightlord is the one that speaks out against the queen. All the others are seen to be nearly perfect servants who do whatever their brightlord asks. Any person who can set aside their wants and follow either the their brightlord's wishes completely seems the perfect candidate for the Skybreakers. I could even see some leaving the ardentia and swearing an oath like szeth's to follow Dalinar's

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Quantus said:

Szeth cannot take Squires yet.  The Skybreakers, specifically, are very regimented in their power and organization progression. They dont get the ability to take Squires until their 4th Ideal

Where do we know that from?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/28/2020 at 1:49 PM, Nellac said:

So I was thinking about Szeth and if he would have Squires. I was thinking of possible candidates and it hit me. Ardents would make perfect Skybreakers. They already dedicate their life to the almighty and/or their brightlord. I think it would be very easy for an ardent to take their oath of devotion as their third ideal. I could easily see Szeth picking up some of Dalinar's ardents, especially the weapons masters, as his squires.

Does Dalinar still have ardents?  Is he allowed to have ardents as he's been excommunicated?

I have no idea of the answer to those questions.

I do agree that, as the Skybreakers are currently formulated, only masters (4th Ideal spoken) can have squires, who are not full Skybreakers until speaking the 3rd Ideal.  Is it mentioned in Oathbringer if masters can have more than one squire?  I don't recall (and it hasn't been mentioned so far in the reread of Oathbringer I'm doing now).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Nellac said:

Is that a rule of the spren or the order? 

It seems like both. These are highspren, so a rule of the order might as well be a rule of the spren, given to how much they like following rules. This is said at the same time it is said that one can only learn division after the 3rd ideal, which seems to be a rule of the spren/bond. All that said I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a rule of the order.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, OmniBident said:

It seems like both. These are highspren, so a rule of the order might as well be a rule of the spren, given to how much they like following rules. This is said at the same time it is said that one can only learn division after the 3rd ideal, which seems to be a rule of the spren/bond. All that said I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a rule of the order.

See, they like following rules, but they don't seem to care what the rules are. They simply push for some sort of rule system.

1 hour ago, dgreene196 said:

Does Dalinar still have ardents?  Is he allowed to have ardents as he's been excommunicated?

I have no idea of the answer to those questions.

I do agree that, as the Skybreakers are currently formulated, only masters (4th Ideal spoken) can have squires, who are not full Skybreakers until speaking the 3rd Ideal.  Is it mentioned in Oathbringer if masters can have more than one squire?  I don't recall (and it hasn't been mentioned so far in the reread of Oathbringer I'm doing now).

I don't know if he's still allowed ardents, but after everything that's happened some might leave the ardentia to follow him. Nahel says that several of the Skybreakers have sworn to him so I think they could have multiple squires.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

*Nale*

They are sworn to him, just as Szeth is to Dalinar, is Szeth Dalinar's squire?

Good point. I'm not sure if there is any evidence either way than. I would assume they could take multiple squires, but there is, as of yet, no actual evidence for or against this thought

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 28.9.2020 at 7:59 PM, Quantus said:

As far as possible candidates, there may well be some among the ardents that would accept it, but dont fall into the trap of thinking Ardents are like RL priests.  Becoming an ardent doesnt necessarily equate to being particularly pious, let alone enjoying Rules.

You don't have to enjoy the rules. Szeth loathed them. You have to be willing to keep them, no matter what.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

You don't have to enjoy the rules. Szeth loathed them. You have to be willing to keep them, no matter what.

I see your point and it's entirely fair. So even though Im about to nitpick most pieces of of it, I do see what you are saying and acknowledge your point.  

Szeth, though, I would argue loathed what the Rules made him Do, not the Concept of Rules or Law itself.  To be honest that part seems so ingrained into his perspective and outloook that I still dont think he's really questioned it directly, Oathstone epiphany notwithstanding.  I dont think he hates Rules themselves, rather he's still looking for a good set of Rules to follow (and is currently seeing if Dalinar can help him with that quest).

But to get back to the original topic, my real point was us that in Vorin Roshar there are a huge variety of personalities and social pressures that might drive somebody to join the Ardentia, and only some of them would align with a Skybreaker's outlook.  Just considering a known example: a former soldier that quit when he became disenfranchised with the actions and choices of his Commanding Officer is arguably the exact opposite of a Skybreaker; another is a fugitive worldhopper just looking for a good meal (and he's considered highly successful in his ardent field) .  Beyond that, joining the Ardentia is the only way for a man to learn to read and one of the very few ways for a man to gain any sort of education; the known alternative is being a baker by day and pretending to be a woman on spanreeds, or else learning glyph-codes for an relatively educated trade like surgeon or Stormwarden.  And then some go to it because it's a cushier version of slavery where you just have to do what you're told and your basic needs are met. That's not to say there wont be Skybreakers coming from the Ardentia ranks, but I dont think they will lean heavily toward Skybreaker specifically over any of the other Orders.  I mean, the Soldier Lifestyle is theoretically just as rules-oriented as the Ardentia, but a) we've seen how universal that actually is among it's members in practice, and b.) how diverse the roles and personalities truly are within the Rosharan militaries.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4.10.2020 at 10:46 PM, dgreene196 said:

Does Dalinar still have ardents?  Is he allowed to have ardents as he's been excommunicated?

Yes, he had a conversation about it with Kadash in OB, where he offered to reassign his ardents to somebody conventionally devout and Kadash explained to him that his people still needed the ardentia. And, of course, many of Navani's engineers and scribes are ardents. Ditto Jasnah's in OB.

 

Quote

I do agree that, as the Skybreakers are currently formulated, only masters (4th Ideal spoken) can have squires, who are not full Skybreakers until speaking the 3rd Ideal.

I think that it isn't just the case with the Skybreakers, but with all Orders except for the Windrunners. Vathah also only became Shallan's squire after she had reached her 4th Ideal (sworn her 3rd Truth + the Immortal Words). There is a WoB that she was one Ideal ahead of Kaladin in OB to confirm this. Windrunner Resonance is "the strength of the squires", so it would be logical if not only were their squires more numerous and "stronger" (i.e. able to use the surges better), but also that they could be empowered earlier - i.e. immediately after their knight swears the third Ideal.

Edited by Isilel
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Isilel said:

Yes, he had a conversation about it with Kadash in OB, where he offered to reassign his ardents to somebody conventionally devout and Kadash explained to him that his people still need the ardentia. And, of course, many of Navani's engineers and scribes are ardents. Ditto Jasnah's in OB.

I had forgotten that conversation and read it last night.

2 hours ago, Isilel said:

I think that it isn't just the case with the Skybreakers, but with all Orders except for the Windrunners. Vathah also only became Shallan's squire after she had reached her 4th Ideal (sworn her 3rd Truth + the Immortal Words). There is a WoB that she was one Ideal ahead of Kaladin in OB to confirm this. Windrunner Resonance is "the strenght of the squires", so it would be logical if not only were their squires more numerous and "stronger" (i.e. able to use the surges better), but also that they could be empowered earlier - i.e. immediately after their knight swears the third Ideal.

I guess, for now, we don't know how squirehood works in detail.  The details that came from Brandon's Knights Radiant quiz noted that even Bondsmiths could have squires, which I certainly hadn't expected.   Perhaps Rhythm of War will teach us more about squires, at least for some of the Orders.    I do think it would be somewhat disappointing for Shallan to have only one squire. Her espionage team would be more effective with more than one squire using Stormlight independently - though maybe the range at which Stormlight works away from the Radiant could also be different?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/28/2020 at 11:07 PM, OmniBident said:

Chapter 90 of oathbringer, it mentions the 4th ideal is when you become a master, and only masters can take on squires.

Do we know what Nale's Ideal of Crusade is? If not(help here?) wouldn't it probably be something like "I will keep the True Desolation from coming by removing potential Radiants, so long as Ishar agrees"?

Nale failed...

But he's still able to take squires. He's got a bunch. 

Can someone explain this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Falkir said:

Do we know what Nale's Ideal of Crusade is? If not(help here?) wouldn't it probably be something like "I will keep the True Desolation from coming by removing potential Radiants, so long as Ishar agrees"?

Nale failed...

But he's still able to take squires. He's got a bunch. 

Can someone explain this?

then you're probably mistaken about his Ideal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/4/2020 at 8:42 PM, Nellac said:

Good point. I'm not sure if there is any evidence either way than. I would assume they could take multiple squires, but there is, as of yet, no actual evidence for or against this thought

I think that Squires operate differently than that. We've heard that almost every order is able to make/take Squires, but I'm pretty sure that the Skybreakers' oaths are a bit different than other Orders'. Their first is the generic, their second is an oath to "seek and administer justice", and the third is to follow someone(or something) utterly. A distinction is made between Squires and Skybreakers of the third oath. 

On the wiki, it says "Also called the Ideal of Justice, this is a specific oath to seek and administer justice. Once a master chooses to accept someone as a Squire, they may swear this Ideal. This Ideal gives the Squire the ability to breathe in Stormlight and use the Surge of Gravitation". This is saying that to swear the Second Ideal, a Skybreaker must become a Squire. The Third Ideal is later and different from this.

On 10/4/2020 at 6:32 PM, Frustration said:

*Nale*

They are sworn to him, just as Szeth is to Dalinar, is Szeth Dalinar's squire?

So in summation, I really don't think that Szeth is Dalinar's squire. He's definitely a Squire, or was for a time, but he is sworn to Dalinar(Third Oath) without being his squire(Second Oath).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/22/2020 at 10:35 PM, Falkir said:

Do we know what Nale's Ideal of Crusade is? If not(help here?) wouldn't it probably be something like "I will keep the True Desolation from coming by removing potential Radiants, so long as Ishar agrees"?

Nale failed...

But he's still able to take squires. He's got a bunch. 

Can someone explain this?

For someone to swear the 4th ideal they must complete their crusade to the satisfaction of their spren, this why Sveth is still only a 3rd ideal radiant as he has said what his crusade is, but not yet completed it. Nale will have had some previous crusade that he must have completed some time ago, as he is a 5th ideal skybreaker, so his ideal couldn't have been to prevent the desolations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/23/2020 at 1:35 AM, Falkir said:

Do we know what Nale's Ideal of Crusade is? If not(help here?) wouldn't it probably be something like "I will keep the True Desolation from coming by removing potential Radiants, so long as Ishar agrees"?

Nale failed...

But he's still able to take squires. He's got a bunch. 

Can someone explain this?

As @Halyo_Alex said, that probably wasn't his Fourth Ideal. After all, to be "completed to the satisfaction of one's spren" would require a goal with a verifiable end, and an eternally ongoing type of "mission to prevent" can never be deemed over except in failure.

Though it does raise a few interesting questions...

Starting with the Nalan-specific ones: he says he is the only Herald to have "eventually joined their own Order", and Ki the Master Skybreaker said during Szeth's induction that no Skybreaker "in centuries" has reached the Fifth Ideal to become the Embodiment of Law. But Nale later demonstrated that he had. Which means he "joined his own Order" at least centuries ago. While his progress was probably extremely rapid (even faster than Szeth's was), at a minimum he reached the Fourth Ideal at about that time, if not significantly longer ago.

So, when did that happen, his bonding a highspren to "join his own order"? His abandoned Honorblade disappeared from Shin "a long time ago"; I would imagine that could be linked to his becoming a Skybreaker himself, because abandoning the Oathpact at Ahrietiam seems like something his highspren might well have "died" over, had he joined the Skybreakers before then. And why else would he "go back" to take up his Honorblade, if not because in some sense he felt he'd renewed an Oath with respect to it (and it being the Skybreaker Honorblade)?

By his own account, he worked for "thousands of years to prevent another Desolation" after Ishar warned him of the danger of other Radiants "upsetting the balance now that Honor is dead". (This is at the end of OB Ch. 121.) That implies he took up his mandate to eliminate non-Skybreaker Surgebinders only after the Splintering of Honor. Did he have a hand in engineering the Recreance, while holding the Skybreakers back from it? That would have been a masterstroke. Perhaps that was his Fourth Ideal!

And more generally for the Skybreakers: what if the the Crusade objective later proves to be incorrect in basis, is discovered to have been incompletely achieved, or even undone (whether or not the Skybreaker might have prevented its undoing)? Does the highspren "die" as with an oath violated, or does the Skybreaker have to do a patch job? Is the Nahel bond regressed to the Third ideal?

Edited by robardin
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, robardin said:

And more generally for the Skybreakers: what if the the Crusade objective later proves to be incorrect in basis, is discovered to have been incompletely achieved, or even undone (whether or not the Skybreaker might have prevented its undoing)? Does the highspren "die" as with an oath violated, or does the Skybreaker have to do a patch job? Is the Nahel bond regressed to the Third ideal?

I would propose that the crusade oath could behave similarly to the other "weird" oaths we've seen, the lightweavers, where they can regress on oaths and can generally bounce around a bit (or it is at least theorized to work this way for lightweavers). It would make sense if an undone crusade would cause the skybreaker to jump back down to the 3rd oath and need to recomplete the 4th.

Also, most skybreakers stop at 3, so it could that they lose their 4th ideal and have to recomplete of satisfy their same crusade, and it just makes it impossible to progress. If the crusade turned out to be unlawful, they might just choose for the sake of their other oaths never to complete the crusade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, OmniBident said:

I would propose that the crusade oath could behave similarly to the other "weird" oaths we've seen, the lightweavers, where they can regress on oaths and can generally bounce around a bit (or it is at least theorized to work this way for lightweavers). It would make sense if an undone crusade would cause the skybreaker to jump back down to the 3rd oath and need to recomplete the 4th.

Also, most skybreakers stop at 3, so it could that they lose their 4th ideal and have to recomplete of satisfy their same crusade, and it just makes it impossible to progress. If the crusade turned out to be unlawful, they might just choose for the sake of their other oaths never to complete the crusade.

Indeed, and when Shallan "regressed", so did the Nahel bond (and Pattern all but "died").

And as has often been the case with these bonds, the Ideals are in part expressions of how the particular Radiant views either the world or themself, as we see with the variants on the Third Ideal of the Windrunners. So perhaps it depends on how the Skybreaker in question views the Crusade's original purpose and relative completion.

We see that Skybreakers become Masters only at the Fourth Ideal (which from what we see in Skybreaker training is the level at which they can take on squires), but we've only seen one Fourth Ideal actually declared: Szeth's Crusade: "I will cleanse the Shin of their false leaders".

This could be interpreted in different ways: physical elimination of the "false" leaders who had (knowingly) proclaimed the Desolations ended, Nahel bonds a thing of the past, and condemned him to being Truthless for saying otherwise; or, exposing and casting down their leaders as misled (perhaps by Nale himself!). Or yet other ways.

So it'll be interesting to see how Szeth goes about completing this "to the satisfaction of his highspren". They seem to allow technicalities, so it doesn't have to be something as extreme as "kill them all!" as a superset solution, if it turns out Szeth discovers that there was one particular person or subgroup genuinely misleading all the others. (Like what if it was ultimately something Taravangian engineered, who knows the Shin language, by somehow corresponding or otherwise manipulating them in order to "maketouseaTruthlessCanwecraftaweapon" as Floorboard 17 paragraph 2 of the Diagram conceived of?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...