4 Shard, a cool concept that's probably impossible

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

This might be the wrong place for this but I'll probably just move it if it is.

First some context. Like any nerd would do, I took the knights radiant test to see which order I would get. The results showed that I matched edgedancer the most, which surprised me so I looked at the percentages to see what was the runner up when I came across another surprise. I managed to get 67% in edgedancer, windrunner, elsecaller, and truthwatcher, which I didn't know was possible. This got me thinking about a character who had sworn all 4 of those oaths at once and this is when the name 4 shard popped into my head. I did some research to see if this was possible, and apparently it's theoretically possible, but highly improbable. The idea of a heavily invested but greatly bound knight was very interesting to me and I wanted to share this sort of character concept with the rest of the forum to see what people had to say about it, so I did that. So if you have anything to say or add that would be greatly appreciated.

[Stormlit Shard he/him]

This is an interesting topic but the main problem is each order's motivation. Somewhat like singers, they each have different passions and objectives like windrunners is all about honor and protection, skybreakers is all about the law, lightweavers are all about persomal truths. A lot of these may contradict each other. Going back to skybreakers and windrunners, what if something is honorable but breaks the law? Do you have any ideas for a "4 shard" where all the orders would not contradict each other and some situations where that could be put to use?

[Jozomby he/him]

My read on knights in multiple orders has been that it's mechanically possible - meaning that there's nothing in the Nahel bond that disqualifies someone who already has a bond.  But it's unlikely to happen because forming a Nahel bond requires that a sapient entity (the spren) choose to bond you.  And the spren are generally going to not consider someone that already has a bond.  That's been my understanding at least.  So in order for this to happen you'd likely need some sort of agreement between the spren peoples - like they saw a need for "4 shard" to exist, so they all agreed to send someone to bond the same person.

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

1 hour ago, Stormlit Shard said:

This is an interesting topic but the main problem is each order's motivation. Somewhat like singers, they each have different passions and objectives like windrunners is all about honor and protection, skybreakers is all about the law, lightweavers are all about persomal truths. A lot of these may contradict each other. Going back to skybreakers and windrunners, what if something is honorable but breaks the law? Do you have any ideas for a "4 shard" where all the orders would not contradict each other and some situations where that could be put to use?

I was thinking the 4 orders that I got from the test would work well together. Specifically I think edgedancer and windrunner have complimentary oaths, but despite the fact that those 4 orders don't contradict, the relations between those spren are not guaranteed to be positive. Inkspren and Honorspren specifically hate each other, and we don't know a lot about Mistspren relations, and I'm thinking that may be the main roadblock to making this actually happen.

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

1 hour ago, Jozomby said:

My read on knights in multiple orders has been that it's mechanically possible - meaning that there's nothing in the Nahel bond that disqualifies someone who already has a bond.  But it's unlikely to happen because forming a Nahel bond requires that a sapient entity (the spren) choose to bond you.  And the spren are generally going to not consider someone that already has a bond.  That's been my understanding at least.  So in order for this to happen you'd likely need some sort of agreement between the spren peoples - like they saw a need for "4 shard" to exist, so they all agreed to send someone to bond the same person.

I didn't really mention it, but that's why I said that 4 shard was theoretically possible. Brandon said that multiple spren could bond a single person, but that it was highly unlikely. Once you take into account that political relations between the radiant spren are not always favorable, and that bonded spren seem to be particularly possessive of their radiant, it becomes practically impossible barring some sort of agreement like you mentioned. If I ever make a full character out of this I might have to steal that idea you had; I hadn't considered that before.

[alder24]

6 minutes ago, AvonZapper said:

I was thinking the 4 orders that I got from the test would work well together. Specifically I think edgedancer and windrunner have complimentary oaths

Windrunner and Edgedancer's oaths would work together quite well, Elsecaller and Truthwatcher's oaths should work well as well (both orders have more scholarly focus) but Windrunner and Elsecaller's oaths would most likely work not so well - just look at Kaladin and Jasnah clash in OB when discussing what to do with Heralds and Singers. That's the problem with bonding multiple spren of different orders (aside from actually finding willing spren to share you), you need to embrace both ideals and some orders, like Windrunners and Skybreakers, would have a really hard time combining them together. But this is highly dependent on the individual, you definitely could find a person who would have no troubles at combining Ideals of even the most conflicted orders.

Please, avoid double posting, it's against the forum's rules. You can answer multiple people in a single post by simply pressing "quote" option on the bottom of post, or use the multi-quote tool, which is "+" button. Tips for you:

Spoiler

At the bottom left of a post you will see a "+" icon, a "Quote" link, and (your posts only) and Edit link. On the bottom right you will see an up arrow.

• The Up Arrow is how you thank people or "like" a post
• The "Quote" link is exactly that, when you click it the quote will be added to the reply at the bottom of the thread wherever the cursor is
  • So, if you have already started to reply before you decide to quote you can then add the quote before or after your text depending on the cursor location when you click "Quote"
• The + icon is multi-quote. As you read a thread, if you want to quote multiple items you click that for each post
  • As you click +, you should see a toaster pop-up on the bottom right of the browser window showing how many quotes you will have
  • They are added in the order you click the + icon, not in the original post order, so you can set the order of quotes for your reply
  • When you are ready to reply, click on the toaster pop-up and it will take you directly to the reply section and add the quotes automatically
• Finally, you can also highlight a small section of a post and, when hovering over the highlit portion, click the "Quote" button that pops up.
• Also note that you can move quotes after they have been added to your reply.
  • For example, you add a quote and realize there are no empty lines below it for you to type - so you can hit "enter" before the quote to make an empty line then when you hover over a quote you will see a 4-way arrow at the top-left that you can use to drag the quote up (or down)  and move the quote to before the empty line. . .
• Use the Edit link to make changes to a completed post or add information to your post if it is the most recent (to avoid double posting)
  • Quote buttons will still send a quote to "Reply" if you have a post open for edit, but it is easy to cut/paste the quote to the Edit box
  • Editing allows you to add a reason for the edit (Spelling and grammar (SPAG), formatting, clarification, new information, etc.), but it is not required.
• Next to Edit you will also find an "options" dropbox, you can use this to hide your post if you want to remove it after posting
• At the top of a post you will find "Report Post"
  • Use this if you do accidentally double-post (sometimes it's the browser or a slow link that causes a double post) - just leave a message that it was an accidental double post and the Mods can fix it. If it was the first post of a new thread that doubled, they usually can merge the threads if they both have answers, so all of the content is retained.

Hope that helps.

 

[Shadow of Electrum he/him]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

Please, avoid double posting, it's against the forum's rules. You can answer multiple people in a single post by simply pressing "quote" option on the bottom of post, or use the multi-quote tool, which is "+" button. Tips for you:

  Reveal hidden contents

At the bottom left of a post you will see a "+" icon, a "Quote" link, and (your posts only) and Edit link. On the bottom right you will see an up arrow.

• The Up Arrow is how you thank people or "like" a post
• The "Quote" link is exactly that, when you click it the quote will be added to the reply at the bottom of the thread wherever the cursor is
  • So, if you have already started to reply before you decide to quote you can then add the quote before or after your text depending on the cursor location when you click "Quote"
• The + icon is multi-quote. As you read a thread, if you want to quote multiple items you click that for each post
  • As you click +, you should see a toaster pop-up on the bottom right of the browser window showing how many quotes you will have
  • They are added in the order you click the + icon, not in the original post order, so you can set the order of quotes for your reply
  • When you are ready to reply, click on the toaster pop-up and it will take you directly to the reply section and add the quotes automatically
• Finally, you can also highlight a small section of a post and, when hovering over the highlit portion, click the "Quote" button that pops up.
• Also note that you can move quotes after they have been added to your reply.
  • For example, you add a quote and realize there are no empty lines below it for you to type - so you can hit "enter" before the quote to make an empty line then when you hover over a quote you will see a 4-way arrow at the top-left that you can use to drag the quote up (or down)  and move the quote to before the empty line. . .
• Use the Edit link to make changes to a completed post or add information to your post if it is the most recent (to avoid double posting)
  • Quote buttons will still send a quote to "Reply" if you have a post open for edit, but it is easy to cut/paste the quote to the Edit box
  • Editing allows you to add a reason for the edit (Spelling and grammar (SPAG), formatting, clarification, new information, etc.), but it is not required.
• Next to Edit you will also find an "options" dropbox, you can use this to hide your post if you want to remove it after posting
• At the top of a post you will find "Report Post"
  • Use this if you do accidentally double-post (sometimes it's the browser or a slow link that causes a double post) - just leave a message that it was an accidental double post and the Mods can fix it. If it was the first post of a new thread that doubled, they usually can merge the threads if they both have answers, so all of the content is retained.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the advice!

[The Sibling she/her]

On 2023-09-29 at 6:20 PM, alder24 said:

That's the problem with bonding multiple spren of different orders (aside from actually finding willing spren to share you), you need to embrace both ideals and some orders, like Windrunners and Skybreakers, would have a really hard time combining them together. But this is highly dependent on the individual, you definitely could find a person who would have no troubles at combining Ideals of even the most conflicted orders.

It would be so interesting to have a character who had bonded two spren and they kept arguing about what the person should do. Because I think that there are lots of ways to interpret the oaths so even if it seemed like it would work out when the spren bonded the person, now they keep fighting over how the oaths should be interpreted. It would be like the thing in movies where there's a devil whispering in one ear and an angel in the other, except they're both spren.

[ProfessorMLyon he/him]

I have a personal pet theory that Adolin is heading down this route. I feel his developing relationships with Maya, Notum, and Blended are pointing that way. No evidence other than I think it would be a very Adolin thing to do.