Where have all the Shards gone?

[AquaRegia]

In RoW we learn that there were 2,000 Honorspren "killed" in the Recreance - these all became deadeye Shardblades.  Even if Windrunners were the most numerous of the orders, we can estimate the total number of resulting Shardblades should be at least 10,000.  In Dalinar's vision of the Recreance, I don't recall any Radiants being mentioned WITHOUT Radiant Armor, from which we might surmise a similar number of suits of Plate, although I grant it's likely significantly less.

WoR tells us that Alethkar and Jah Keved each have twenty or so Blades, and that this is more than any other nation; Thaylenah has five.  The sum total known (by Dalinar, anyway) on all of Roshar is on the order of one hundred.  Shardplate is, of course, even less common.

100/10,000 = 1%.  Apparently 99% of all Shardblades are currently unaccounted for.

Are we supposed to think that literally THOUSANDS of priceless magical artifacts - 99 out of every 100 - have been lost in the 4500 years since the Recreance?  This strains the credibility of human nature.  And lost WHERE?  Are they lying at the bottom of the ocean?  Or should we expect giant secret caches of Blades (and Plate) to be discovered in Book 5?  That might certainly come in handy for an army who is outgunned by magic-wielding opponents.  Maybe Adolin and Shallan will crack the BAM / deadeye problem, and all those 10,000 Radiant spren will become suddenly available to bond anew.  That would come in VERY handy indeed.

But none of that answers the question - WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

[Knight of Iron]

I like to think they're all at Shinovar, as after the Last Desolation they somehow took control of all the Honorblades, why not an army of Shardblades?

Plus, there are very little spren who go near Shinovar, quite possibly because in the CR its a spren graveyard.

[AquaRegia]

5 hours ago, Knight of Iron said:

I like to think they're all at Shinovar, as after the Last Desolation they somehow took control of all the Honorblades

Interesting, but I'm not sure how that would have worked.  How do you think they got there?  Did the Shin venture forth and scour the whole of Roshar to collect them?  Against the wishes of their now-well-armed owners?  Or did they offer to buy them?

Remember, there were only NINE Honorblades, and they were all conveniently left together in one place.  We're talking here about many THOUSANDS of Blades, widely scattered across the continent, and held by the most aggressive, violent and possessive of men... men for whom NOTHING is as valuable as a Shardblade.

Also, can you explain why Shinovar would be "a spren graveyard"?

[Knight of Iron]

50 minutes ago, AquaRegia said:

Interesting, but I'm not sure how that would have worked.  How do you think they got there?  Did the Shin venture forth and scour the whole of Roshar to collect them?  Against the wishes of their now-well-armed owners?  Or did they offer to buy them?

Remember, there were only NINE Honorblades, and they were all conveniently left together in one place.  We're talking here about many THOUSANDS of Blades, widely scattered across the continent, and held by the most aggressive, violent and possessive of men... men for whom NOTHING is as valuable as a Shardblade.

Also, can you explain why Shinovar would be "a spren graveyard"?

It's been mentioned a few times in Oathbringer that at some point in the past, Shinovar invaded the rest of Roshar. This... likely would have involved some kind of war. It's possible they have a stockpile of them to stop the world from using them, hence why Szeth was made Truthless—clearly they are afraid of that power rising again. It's probably why they keep all the honorblades.

It's a wide theory I'm not an expert on, if you want more information see this thread:

And as for why it would be a spren graveyard, what else would you call thousands and thousands and thousands of deadeye spren floating around. Hence, why there is barely any spren there.

[Frustration]

37 minutes ago, Knight of Iron said:

And as for why it would be a spren graveyard, what else would you call thousands and thousands and thousands of deadeye spren floating around. Hence, why there is barely any spren there.

They weren't unsettled by the deadeyes around Lasting Integrity.

[Chinkoln]

28 minutes ago, Frustration said:

They weren't unsettled by the deadeyes around Lasting Integrity.

Many groups of people are not unsettled by things in small amounts. 
If I were to see a corpse or a couple corpses, I would feel bad but not necessarily unsettled. If I knew that there were thousands of corpses in an area, I would definitely be unsettled, especially if those are the corpses of beings that are supposed to not die.

[Draigwyrdd]

I think it's a case of "all of the possible options are correct to some degree". Some of the deadeye sprenblades probably ended up stuck in the rock and got covered in crem, some were taken up and used and passed along throughout the ages (only for some of those to get lost themselves), and I think it's probable that one or more groups of people (e.g. the Shin, the various secret societies and other groups like the Sleepless) have been stockpiling them for whatever reason (outside of the obvious "it's an overpowered magic sword").

I tend to think that the Shin are a lot more involved in various kinds of nonsense than everyone in-world assumes, so maybe they have thousands of them just hanging around.

[Chinkoln]

[AquaRegia]

Thanks for that link, I will definitely check out that topic.

1 hour ago, Knight of Iron said:

And as for why it would be a spren graveyard, what else would you call thousands and thousands and thousands of deadeye spren floating around. Hence, why there is barely any spren there.

38 minutes ago, Chinkoln said:

Many groups of people are not unsettled by things in small amounts. 
If I were to see a corpse or a couple corpses, I would feel bad but not necessarily unsettled. If I knew that there were thousands of corpses in an area, I would definitely be unsettled, especially if those are the corpses of beings that are supposed to not die.

OK, I may be fundamentally misunderstanding something here... have we not seen that a deadeye is EITHER 1) in the Physical Realm as a Blade or 2) in Shadesmar as a "person"?  When a Shardblade is summoned, the spren disappears from the Cognitive Realm, right?  And when a Shardholder dies (e.g., Torol Sadeas) the previously bonded Blade appears beside their body - in the Physical Realm - and can thus be taken by a new owner, yes?  The spren version of a deadeye ONLY manifests in Shadesmar when the Shardholder dismisses a bonded Blade... again, if I'm confused, please straighten me out.

If I'm right, then there are two possibilities: those ~10,000 Blades are either currently bonded to living humans, or they are not.  If they are, then their spren spend much of their time in Shadesmar as the deadeyes we've seen... but we're only seeing 1% of them somehow.  If they are not, then they exist only as Blades and CAN'T be in Shadesmar, which means no "spren graveyard".

14 minutes ago, Draigwyrdd said:

I think it's a case of "all of the possible options are correct to some degree". Some of the deadeye sprenblades probably ended up stuck in the rock and got covered in crem, some were taken up and used and passed along throughout the ages (only for some of those to get lost themselves), and I think it's probable that one or more groups of people (e.g. the Shin, the various secret societies and other groups like the Sleepless) have been stockpiling them for whatever reason (outside of the obvious "it's an overpowered magic sword").

I tend to think that the Shin are a lot more involved in various kinds of nonsense than everyone in-world assumes, so maybe they have thousands of them just hanging around.

This seems reasonable.  Certainly some of them are simply buried in crem somewhere.  It makes sense that shadowy groups - that most people don't know about - may have been collecting them for 2000 years.  But I can't shake the feeling that there are just WAY TOO MANY missing to explain away without something else big going on.

+1 for the meme LOL

 

 

[Draigwyrdd]

1 minute ago, AquaRegia said:

This seems reasonable.  Certainly some of them are simply buried in crem somewhere.  It makes sense that shadowy groups - that most people don't know about - may have been collecting them for 2000 years.  But I can't shake the feeling that there are just WAY TOO MANY missing to explain away without something else big going on.

 

I hesitate to suggest this because it seems like Brandon is generally quite on the ball with his thinking about things, but it's entirely possible he underestimated how many blades would be "left" and just didn't think about it. But something tells me that it's probably closer to what I suggested, with maybe something else completely unexpected being the case as well. There are some suggestions that Ash knows how to get a Shardblade relatively easily; maybe the Heralds collected them after the Recreance and stashed them somewhere? We know they've been involved in things over the last few thousand years, but we have almost no idea what.

It could also be true that there's a massive cache of blades hidden somewhere that the Recreants put there "just in case" that's waiting to be found. Surely some of them would have felt bad about their spren being stuck as a blade, right?

[Chinkoln]

12 minutes ago, AquaRegia said:

 

If I'm right, then there are two possibilities: those ~10,000 Blades are either currently bonded to living humans, or they are not.  If they are, then their spren spend much of their time in Shadesmar as the deadeyes we've seen... but we're only seeing 1% of them somehow.  If they are not, then they exist only as Blades and CAN'T be in Shadesmar, which means no "spren graveyard".

Spren can still sense the “wrongness” of the deadeyes, especially if the living spren are manifesting in the Physical Realm. Syl didn’t like Shardblades when they were in sword form.

[+En-priestess]

If the Radiants didn’t summon their spren as a blade when they broke their bond, could that mean that most of the deadeyes are simply that? Deadeyes who wander around Shadsmar and aren’t a blade at all? Perhaps others exist as other objects that people are unaware are like shardblades, since we know that radiant spren can manifest as many things - shardfork, shardspear, shard medical tools, etc...? 

[Bejarden]

Maybes there are a bunch of Shard Thimbles laying around

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

 

[AquaRegia]

After reading through this topic from 2018, I'm much more willing to accept the possibility that someone from Shinovar, either during or shortly after the Recreance, executed a brief "conquering" of much of Roshar with the sole purpose of removing thousands of dangerous Shards from circulation.  It's also possible that this same kind of thing has happened multiple times, including relatively recently (in the past few hundred years).  My thanks to @Knight of Iron for the link.

13 hours ago, Chinkoln said:

Spren can still sense the “wrongness” of the deadeyes, especially if the living spren are manifesting in the Physical Realm. Syl didn’t like Shardblades when they were in sword form.

That's a valid point, thanks.

I will be unsurprised when Szeth and Kaladin come across a hoard of Blades and Plate in Shinovar somewhere.  I also really like the idea of Adolin and Shallan freeing BAM, which results in all those thousands of deadeyes suddenly waking up, ready to bond new Radiants.

Thanks to everybody who helped me work through my "where them Shards at" issues!

[Ashbringer]

I thought this topic was asking where the Epigraph Four ended up...

[Hoid's Brother]

7 hours ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Maybes there are a bunch of Shard Thimbles laying around

  Reveal hidden contents

  Hide contents

 

 

They need to go through everyone's silverware drawer checking for shard forks.

[AquaRegia]

"Are Your Metal Utensils Far Too Sharp?  You neighbors don't want to hear about it... but WE do!  If your jam knife cuts through the jam, the bread, the plate, and the table, we're here to help.  728 Highprince Way, Merchant's District, Kharbranth.  Ask for K. or N.  Bring the overly sharp item."

[Draigwyrdd]

1 hour ago, AquaRegia said:

"Are Your Metal Utensils Far Too Sharp?  You neighbors don't want to hear about it... but WE do!  If your jam knife cuts through the jam, the bread, the plate, and the table, we're here to help.  728 Highprince Way, Merchant's District, Kharbranth.  Ask for K. or N.  Bring the overly sharp item."

This reminds me of that broadsheet snippet from one of the Era 2 books talking about "talking tools"!

[Weltall]

I think that was the point.

On the main topic, we know that different Orders have different numbers of members and the spren and Radiant pair have to reach a certain depth of their bond before breaking the oaths results in a dead Shardblade. It's possible some number of spren 'killed' by the broken oaths were like Syl in Words of Radiance and didn't leave a corpse behind in the Physical Realm. Between the total number of Radiants possibly being comfortably under ten thousand (remember that Windrunners also have more squires than other Radiants) and the total number of Shards lying around out there probably isn't quite so large.

That said, I am on board with the idea that one or more groups on Roshar has a hidden stockpile of dead Shardblades, as well as some number of them simply being lost over the years.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Weltall

[+Child of Hodor]

On 2/22/2021 at 4:12 PM, Weltall said:

I think that was the point.

On the main topic, we know that different Orders have different numbers of members and the spren and Radiant pair have to reach a certain depth of their bond before breaking the oaths results in a dead Shardblade. It's possible some number of spren 'killed' by the broken oaths were like Syl in Words of Radiance and didn't leave a corpse behind in the Physical Realm. Between the total number of Radiants possibly being comfortably under ten thousand (remember that Windrunners also have more squires than other Radiants) and the total number of Shards lying around out there probably isn't quite so large.

That said, I am on board with the idea that one or more groups on Roshar has a hidden stockpile of dead Shardblades, as well as some number of them simply being lost over the years.

Yeah, a combo of "lost" and at least one group hoarding them.

Maybe some radiant orders, aware of the chaos caused at Feverstone Keep, decided not to drop their shards in front of a bunch of soldiers. Instead they stored some away in a cave or abandoned them, sticking the blades in the ground, in a barren area far from civilization and they've since been covered in crem. 

As to who is hoarding, I think at the very least the Skybreakers collected a bunch. My guess is Nale and other Skybreakers took a bunch of them and he has them in a trove to give out to proto-surgebinders he recruits. Kalak was present at the strike against BAM, Kalak and Nale are still buddies of a sort and hang out once in a while at least, Nale could have been there. He may have helped influence the Skybreakers to secretly not break their oaths and had them grab as many shards as they could for safekeeping. They can fly, so it wouldn't be as hard to go around scooping them up as it would for other orders. That said, I don't think they anywhere near all the missing shards. 

Nale gave plate and blade to Helaran Davar according to both Helaran (he says tells his father he is a member of the Skybreakers) and the Ghostbloods (who lie, but this seems true). Nale seems in the habit of giving magic swords to new recruits i.e. Szeth and Nightblood. 

The Honorspren have been caring for as many deadeyes as they could at Lasting Integrity. But in RoW Adolin observes a ton of deadeye standing near the coast outside the fortress and the guard he's talking to is shocked by how many new ones showed up more recently. So many that they've out of room to take anymore in.

Quote

 "Though we don't have more space left for more. We never expected ..." ... this wasn't a gathering of Shardbearers in the Physical Realm.  Row Ch. 75

These are blades no one has bonded. This could be that they are drawn there because of the Recreance "trial" that hadn't started yet. Somehow they sensed it, I dunno. That seems the implication because they are watching the fortress.  

Alternatively, or perhaps, in concert with this idea, it has been pointed out that Lasting Integrity's location and the Emuli battle front in the physical realm are close to each other. So we've got both Nale and Ishar's forces somewhat near. If one or both has a bunch of blades that they are keeping near their armies the spren would have followed their blade to near Lasting Integrity and then somehow sensed the recreance trial and went there to stare at the fortress. 

I don't know if it makes a ton of sense for Nale to have a bunch of blades he hasn't given out, yet he keeps them in like a stormwagon he takes with his army so he can keep an eye on them. Maybe he keeps them close by in case he finds someone "blade worthy" to recruit, but he can fly and so can his minions. Nale could send someone to get a blade from a secret trove if he wanted. Heralds be crazy, but it's kind of odd to go to war, take a bunch of magic swords with you, but don't arm your allies with them. Maybe he and his Skybreakers need to stay at the battle front and can't go back for them, yet he still wanted a bunch close by in case he finds new proto-surgebinders so he took them on the road. 

Ishar could also have a bunch. Ishar may have been at the strike of BAM or otherwise known the recreance was happening and collected a bunch of blades. Again you'd think he'd give them out in war. Especially considering how warlike he has become. He is different from Nale, I don't think he'd have the same hang ups about who gets one. 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Child of Hodor

[Retrac]

On 2/22/2021 at 2:55 PM, Draigwyrdd said:

This reminds me of that broadsheet snippet from one of the Era 2 books talking about "talking tools"!

You know.... Nightblood is a tool....