Ripheus23 Posted January 25, 2025 Posted January 25, 2025 (edited) From the scenes in Herdaz we've seen (weren't there two?), and the listener/chasmfiend team-up, and since I just rewatched Nausicaä, I'm predicting a less specific version of something I earlier tried to forecast: a huge swarm of greatshells acting in concert at some point. One of the things about the ohmu in Miyazaki's story was that Spoiler they were genetically engineered to have a life cycle that should result in a chrysalis state, but the genes for the full transition were suppressed in their design. I think it was like, they'd have been something "butterfly-like" as a result. EDIT: although I believe that I read this years ago in a transcript of an interview with Miyazaki, I just double-checked and have not found confirmation of this claim. IIRC, we've been told that chasmfiends have such a life cycle, but we're told that their transformation is still a mystery otherwise. But what if the greater form they take could be relevant to, say, a battle on the Shattered Plains down the road? Or at least somewhere, that is. Bonus subtheory: the Ten Deaths of yore were ten phenomena associated somehow with greatshell activity of varying kinds. Or, at least, some of the Ten Deaths were constituted by now-extinct or -mythologized samples of these creatures. At any rate, if there are ultimately ten Dawncities keyed one-by-one with the Heralds (e.g. if Sesemalex Dar was correlated with Jezrien and is now correlated with Kaladin), maybe there's a "tonal symbiosis" between various Dawncities and various greatshell types, including such as are involved in the opaque legends of the Ten Deaths. (This would seem to mean that Midnight Essence on Roshar is entangled with greatshells as a category of organic phenomenon, a contention of which I have no evidence in memory.) So, if the Heralds come back in proximity to their respective Dawncities, and have to make use of the keying of that city, the city's tone, with their own tones, to pursue some kind of inter-city Connection process of eventual relevance, maybe part of this involves resonating with specific varieties of greatshell (per city context). A bonus subplot problem could then be: most of the relevant species are extinct, so only some Heralds can invoke this particular aspect of their power. Super-random guess: so like, if we got a scene in Sesemalex Dar, where a greatshell has shown up, from near or far or wherever, and Kaladin has to calm it down... Like a process of turning the Ten Deaths into the "Ten Lifes"? With a possible Lifebrother cameo involved, somehow. Edited January 26, 2025 by Ripheus23 1
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