Assassination via Spanreed?

[Trusk'our he/him]

In OB we see Queen Fen write to Dalinar’s offer for an alliance personally. Wouldn’t this be a risk to her safety though, as someone on the Alethi side of the spanreed could attempt to stab her with her own spanreed by connecting it to their own? I honestly hadn’t considered this before, but wouldn’t spanreeds be potentially dangerous, since you could probably impale someone hundreds of miles away with it?

[Spren of Kindness she/her]

My first thought would be the material the spanreed is made of.  Assuming spanreeds use actual reeds, and Rosharan reeds have about the same sturdiness ours might, that might not be tough enough.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

In OB we see Queen Fen write to Dalinar’s offer for an alliance personally. Wouldn’t this be a risk to her safety though, as someone on the Alethi side of the spanreed could attempt to stab her with her own spanreed by connecting it to their own? I honestly hadn’t considered this before, but wouldn’t spanreeds be potentially dangerous, since you could probably impale someone hundreds of miles away with it?

They can turn the spanreed off, and also it still requires the force to stab someone

[AquaRegia he/him]

My impression of how spanreeds work: they only move by themselves when placed with the tip in contact with paper.  I don't recall ever seeing a spanreed float out of a case and position itself over a desk; I think a person needs to put it in place over the desk before it "connects" to its mate.

By no means do I consider myself an artifabrian, though, I could be wrong.

[Anomander Rake he/him]

2 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

My impression of how spanreeds work: they only move by themselves when placed with the tip in contact with paper.  I don't recall ever seeing a spanreed float out of a case and position itself over a desk; I think a person needs to put it in place over the desk before it "connects" to its mate.

By no means do I consider myself an artifabrian, though, I could be wrong.

True, I dont think we ever see an activated spanreed outside of writing.  My equally ignorant understanding of spanreeds, though, is that they work only under mutual understanding and cooperation, and are no different from any other conjoined gemstone fabrial without that bit of culture.  The boards seem like a uniform thing, and it seems like there is a set of instructions/steps that everyone knows and follows for sending messages (setting the reed, turning the knob thingy, etc, in rote routine, so that the writing is mimicked correctly.

I feel like it should be possible!  A radiant could mime waiting for a message by correctly placing and activating the reed, then, when their pen pal begins writing, since the reed is in the same spot relative to both people, stab themselves in the neck/heart, causing a floating pen to do the same somewhere else.  The other person who already has their hand on the reed can obviously resist and push back, but hey, it could still happen.  This also sees to be a great way to do arm wrestling contests without cheating XD

Edited January 4, 2022 by Anomander Rake
added a sentence for clarifcation

[Trusk'our he/him]

8 hours ago, Anomander Rake said:

I feel like it should be possible!  A radiant could mime waiting for a message by correctly placing and activating the reed, then, when their pen pal begins writing, since the reed is in the same spot relative to both people, stab themselves in the neck/heart, causing a floating pen to do the same somewhere else.

I don't think that they'd even need to stab themselves, they'd just need to sit or stand in such a position that they could hold the reed where it would normally be for spanreed communication, then quickly stab in the direction of the seat they'd normally be sitting in to get the other person. 

8 hours ago, Anomander Rake said:

The other person who already has their hand on the reed can obviously resist and push back, but hey, it could still happen.  This also sees to be a great way to do arm wrestling contests without cheating XD

Also, you could have someone with great arm strength stab with the reed...or just use shardplate  

[Olmund]

On 1/4/2022 at 8:26 PM, Trusk'our said:

I don't think that they'd even need to stab themselves, they'd just need to sit or stand in such a position that they could hold the reed where it would normally be for spanreed communication, then quickly stab in the direction of the seat they'd normally be sitting in to get the other person. 

Also, you could have someone with great arm strength stab with the reed...or just use shardplate  

I agree that stabbing oneself is unnecessary and counterproductive (since you'd need enough force to penetrate both yourself and the intended victim). In any case, it would be an imprecise assassination method -- not guaranteed to kill if the reed misses vital organs. Ideally, you'd have someone "on the inside" who could fill the inkwell with poisonous ink first -- though if you could manage that, there are countless more efficient methods of assassination. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

2 hours ago, Olmund said:

I agree that stabbing oneself is unnecessary and counterproductive (since you'd need enough force to penetrate both yourself and the intended victim). In any case, it would be an imprecise assassination method -- not guaranteed to kill if the reed misses vital organs. Ideally, you'd have someone "on the inside" who could fill the inkwell with poisonous ink first -- though if you could manage that, there are countless more efficient methods of assassination. 

True. There are probably easier methods of assasination, but it just struck me as so...well...stupid of queen Fen to personally write via spanreed to the Alethi if she was truly so worried about them being hostile. 

There are probably other factors I'm not considering here, but I'm not sure what they are yet.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

On 6.01.2022 at 10:41 PM, Trusk'our said:

True. There are probably easier methods of assasination, but it just struck me as so...well...stupid of queen Fen to personally write via spanreed to the Alethi if she was truly so worried about them being hostile. 

There are probably other factors I'm not considering here, but I'm not sure what they are yet.

The most important factor is if spanreed is, well, reed, it will br simply to fragile to being dangerous. Spanreed cant be heavy, because its need to be easy to use for very long time. And it has weight of gemstone and the other spanreed. So need to be as light as possible.

[KnightsOfHonor]

I always assumed that the connection through these “entangled fabrial” was quite weak. And that if they encountered much resistance the “entangling” would fail (probably resulting in the gemstone cracking) and that reeds were the heaviest thing they really got to work. So, if you grabbed ahold of one reed while someone else was writing there would be a slight resistance (like you might feel from a weak magnet) and then the gemstone would crack, causing the spanreeds to no longer work. This is why getting the technology to work on bigger, heavier, things was such a breakthrough. Before, things that heavy could not be moved this way. I’m not sure why I always assumed that. But that is why I think it would not work. The amount of force generated by the spanreed fabrial is just too little to hurt someone. (maybe poke an eye out) 

[Anomander Rake he/him]

1 hour ago, KnightsOfHonor said:

I always assumed that the connection through these “entangled fabrial” was quite weak. And that if they encountered much resistance the “entangling” would fail (probably resulting in the gemstone cracking) and that reeds were the heaviest thing they really got to work. So, if you grabbed ahold of one reed while someone else was writing there would be a slight resistance (like you might feel from a weak magnet) and then the gemstone would crack, causing the spanreeds to no longer work. This is why getting the technology to work on bigger, heavier, things was such a breakthrough. Before, things that heavy could not be moved this way. I’m not sure why I always assumed that. But that is why I think it would not work. The amount of force generated by the spanreed fabrial is just too little to hurt someone. (maybe poke an eye out) 

it's certainly got something to do with the size of the gemstones.

idk if they ever expressly mention the size of the gemstones on the fourth bridge, but they could have been polished down from full gemhearts to move something of that size, while the gemstone on a reed would certainly be no larger than a fingernail.  bigger gem = more room for resistance before cracking and failure