Kaladin’s SylBlade and SylSpear Abilities

[KaladinTheKingOfHeralds He/Him]

Kaladin’s Sylsword and Sylspear might just have more abilities than we thought. Think about it, Syl is a honorspren. She can bind things, and she is a living Shardblade so wouldn’t that mean that her Shardblade and Shardspear abilities might have something with her binding ability? Also, since Kaladin is a Herald, he gets increased physical prowess (superhuman strength, speed, and resilience) and potentially near-instantaneous healing. He also gets a honor-spear with replaces the normal honor-blade. So if he gets all those abilities as a herald, shouldn’t his bond with Syl give Syl those abilities when she is a Sylblade or a Sylspear?

[Deception He/Him]

Interesting... You mean that maybe Syl could stick to things as a weapon? That would be cool. What if Syl became a chain and stuck herself to whatever she hit, allowing Kaladin to pull them inward?

[KaladinTheKingOfHeralds He/Him]

On 5/7/2026 at 1:54 AM, Deception said:

Interesting... You mean that maybe Syl could stick to things as a weapon? That would be cool. What if Syl became a chain and stuck herself to whatever she hit, allowing Kaladin to pull them inward?

That’s what I’ve been thinking!!!!

[Grubfriend He/Him]

On 4/27/2026 at 12:39 PM, KaladinTheKingOfHeralds said:

Kaladin’s Sylsword and Sylspear might just have more abilities than we thought. Think about it, Syl is a honorspren. She can bind things, and she is a living Shardblade so wouldn’t that mean that her Shardblade and Shardspear abilities might have something with her binding ability? Also, since Kaladin is a Herald, he gets increased physical prowess (superhuman strength, speed, and resilience) and potentially near-instantaneous healing. He also gets a honor-spear with replaces the normal honor-blade. So if he gets all those abilities as a herald, shouldn’t his bond with Syl give Syl those abilities when she is a Sylblade or a Sylspear?

Probably not. One of the basic rules of the Cosmere is that Investiture resists Investiture. In RoW, Kaladin had to use a normal spear while fighting Leshwi because he wanted to Lash his weapon. Syl is pure Investiture and her essence resisted the Lashing. It may be different when she is the one using the Surge, so I guess this is a question for the back half.

[Verdance he/him]

4 minutes ago, Through The Living Grub said:

Probably not. One of the basic rules of the Cosmere is that Investiture resists Investiture. In RoW, Kaladin had to use a normal spear while fighting Leshwi because he wanted to Lash his weapon. Syl is pure Investiture and her essence resisted the Lashing. It may be different when she is the one using the Surge, so I guess this is a question for the back half.

In Way of Kings, Szeth doesn’t use Shardplate because as dead spren, it would resist his lashings. Vin is able to flare i believe iron to push on the highly Invested Bands of Mourning in TLR’s arms, which shows that invested objects do resist investiture based forces, but are not immune to them. I don’t know if spren will get access to Surges, as the entire point of the Nahel bond is to grant access of Surges to the Radiant, and to grant access to and increase the sentience of the spren in the Physical Realm. 

[Nitpicking]

10 hours ago, Verdance said:

In Way of Kings, Szeth doesn’t use Shardplate because as dead spren, it would resist his lashings. Vin is able to flare i believe iron to push on the highly Invested Bands of Mourning in TLR’s arms, which shows that invested objects do resist investiture based forces, but are not immune to them. I don’t know if spren will get access to Surges, as the entire point of the Nahel bond is to grant access of Surges to the Radiant, and to grant access to and increase the sentience of the spren in the Physical Realm. 

Iron is the Pulling metal, Steel is Pushing. (This is true in artifabrianism, too.)

Spren do have the surges. Even a non-sapient windspren can make things stick together, so they have the Lashings (or at least one of them). Presumably a far more Invested Honorspren could Lash better than a windspren, and an enormously powerful Radiant spren in the Physical Realm could do it better than a "regular" spren ... and Syl, who is now a megaspren like the Stormfather is a demigod figure. (Support: storms in her eyes, as seen by Kaladin.) It won't be obvious even to her until she returns to the Physical. 

Note that this makes Kaladin a Fifth Ideal Windrunner, the Herald of Kings, and also a Bondsmith. Resonances, anyone?

[Verdance he/him]

1 hour ago, Nitpicking said:

Iron is the Pulling metal, Steel is Pushing. (This is true in artifabrianism, too.)

Spren do have the surges. Even a non-sapient windspren can make things stick together, so they have the Lashings (or at least one of them). Presumably a far more Invested Honorspren could Lash better than a windspren, and an enormously powerful Radiant spren in the Physical Realm could do it better than a "regular" spren ... and Syl, who is now a megaspren like the Stormfather is a demigod figure. (Support: storms in her eyes, as seen by Kaladin.) It won't be obvious even to her until she returns to the Physical. 

Note that this makes Kaladin a Fifth Ideal Windrunner, the Herald of Kings, and also a Bondsmith. Resonances, anyone?

Yes i know that ive read the books for like half a decade 

i just havent read TLE in like fifteen months but im fairly sure Vin rips them out of TLR arms with Iron, could have been steel though

Wdym Bondsmith??? Are you saying Syl is now a Bondsmith spren??? 
crazy enough he gets promoted to Herald

devs please nerf Kaladin he is utterly dominating the meta

[Nitpicking]

15 hours ago, Verdance said:

Wdym Bondsmith??? Are you saying Syl is now a Bondsmith spren??? 
crazy enough he gets promoted to Herald

devs please nerf Kaladin he is utterly dominating the meta

There's a reason the Shardcasters call Kaladin "John Stormlight".

[Grubfriend He/Him]

23 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Resonances, anyone?

Having many powers reduces resonances. I don’t know if he will lose his extra Windrunner surge, but I think he has too many for these to be very prevalent.

coppermind page on resonances:

Quote

An individual with many powers, such as a Mistborn or Full Feruchemist, may lose this added effect.^[6]

 

On 5/24/2026 at 10:54 AM, Verdance said:

In Way of Kings, Szeth doesn’t use Shardplate because as dead spren, it would resist his lashings. Vin is able to flare i believe iron to push on the highly Invested Bands of Mourning in TLR’s arms, which shows that invested objects do resist investiture based forces, but are not immune to them. I don’t know if spren will get access to Surges, as the entire point of the Nahel bond is to grant access of Surges to the Radiant, and to grant access to and increase the sentience of the spren in the Physical Realm. 

Syl is a pure godmetal, as compared to a metal mind. I doubt vin with the mists could get a line to them, it would probably require a lot more power than she could realistically muster.

23 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Spren do have the surges. Even a non-sapient windspren can make things stick together, so they have the Lashings (or at least one of them). Presumably a far more Invested Honorspren could Lash better than a windspren, and an enormously powerful Radiant spren in the Physical Realm could do it better than a "regular" spren ... and Syl, who is now a megaspren like the Stormfather is a demigod figure. (Support: storms in her eyes, as seen by Kaladin.) It won't be obvious even to her until she returns to the Physical. 

This is the only example of a spren using surges, and in a rather weak way. The bond grants them sapience, but they do not gain the Surges.
 

Also, do storms in eyes make Syl a Godspren? I don’t remember if she has taken the Stormfathers role, but I don’t think that is what supports it. She once manifested as a storm cloud in the early books, but was a regular honorspren then.

[Nitpicking]

I'm pretty sure of Syl-godspren, for a number of reasons. One more: Brandon loves foreshadowing. How hard did he hit "setting up an heir" waaaaay back?

[Cephandrious Maxtori Fae/Faer]

On 5/24/2026 at 5:54 PM, Verdance said:

In Way of Kings, Szeth doesn’t use Shardplate because as dead spren, it would resist his lashings. Vin is able to flare i believe iron to push on the highly Invested Bands of Mourning in TLR’s arms, which shows that invested objects do resist investiture based forces, but are not immune to them. I don’t know if spren will get access to Surges, as the entire point of the Nahel bond is to grant access of Surges to the Radiant, and to grant access to and increase the sentience of the spren in the Physical Realm. 

Spren can surgebind though, we've seen them do it, Syl uses Adhesion to stick Kal's shoes down in WoK, the Oathgates are Inkspren fabrials using Transportation, and so on.

[mordtirith]

On 5/26/2026 at 3:27 AM, Through The Living Grub said:

Syl is a pure godmetal, as compared to a metal mind. I doubt vin with the mists could get a line to them, it would probably require a lot more power than she could realistically muster.

Well the metalminds Vin pushes on are almost pure godmetal too, those were Rashek's Atium metalminds. The idea is only saved by the fact that "atium was never atium", real, pure atium was unknown to Scadrians and what they called atium was an atium electrum alloy, so maybe you can say she was pushing on that?

However, Brandon has already said that even Shardblades can be pushed and pulled with Allomancy, only that it'd be hard. IIRC the WoB goes over an exhaustive list of things that are metal but invested, and Shardblades were the second hardest thing to push/pull, but still possible. The hardest one was Nightblood which he said would be far harder to affect than a living shardblade.

[Frustration]

18 minutes ago, mordtirith said:

However, Brandon has already said that even Shardblades can be pushed and pulled with Allomancy, only that it'd be hard

Yeah, if you had the power of the Well of Ascension

Spoiler

Trae Cooper (paraphrased)

Why are Invested objects like metalminds and Hemalurgic spikes able to be Pushed and Pulled on, but Shardblades and Shardplate, which are also invested, are not susceptible to Pushing and Pulling?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

There were a few concepts that he outlined in answering this question.

1.) The ability to Push/Pull an Invested object is predicated to the amount/power of the Investiture.

2.) Further, Invested objects also gain resistance to pulling/pushing based on proximity to soul possibly via the soul. An example given is that a Hemalurgic spike touches the blood of the person, and from there is now part of both the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. This provides what Brandon termed a kind of "soul interference," based on its proximity to the soul.

This further explains why Vin required more than normal power to Push/Pull the metalminds from the Lord Ruler, because of their proximity to his soul, via the Spiritual Realm.

3.) The amount of Investiture is relatively low on Scadrial, whereas worlds like Sel and Roshar are pushing around "high power" according to Brandon. I interpreted this to mean that Hemalurgic spikes and metalminds have low amounts of Investiture compared to Shardplate and Shardblades.

Brandon said that theoretically you can Push/Pull Shardblades and Shardplates but you would need to wield an incredible amount of power. One example he gave that could so such as a thing is that if you were a Mistborn wielding the full power of the Well of Ascension, you could Push/Pull Shardblades/Plate.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/152/#e2801