Spanreed question?

[Xabben]

Do spanreeds work in shadesmar? I suppose that the answer is no, but I haven't found any explicit mention to this issue in the books...

[Euridrius he/him]

According to the Coppermind article, spanreeds are incapable of communication between the Physical and Cognitive Realms. I would guess they'd work just fine communicating between two points both within Shadesmar, if that's what you mean, just like they can communicate between two points within the Physical Realm - they just don't allow transfer of information between different Realms. 

[mordtirith]

1 hour ago, Euridrius said:

I would guess they'd work just fine communicating between two points both within Shadesmar,

Would they though? I can't believe this never crossed my mind but, I don't think we've ever seen a modern fabrial in Shadesmar in the entire story... What is it like? Is the spren forced to follow the fabrial around, like a Deadeye and their bonded human? Does the spren still have its bigger manifestation? If so, using a fabrial there might get a little weird, you wouldn't just move a pen, you'd need to move a much bigger beast right?

Wait we don't even know what flamespren look like in Shadesmar... Maybe they're like windspren so they'd still fit inside the gem even in Shadesmar? But if they're like painspren, I think there'd be issues

[Frustration]

48 minutes ago, mordtirith said:

Would they though? I can't believe this never crossed my mind but, I don't think we've ever seen a modern fabrial in Shadesmar in the entire story... What is it like? Is the spren forced to follow the fabrial around, like a Deadeye and their bonded human? Does the spren still have its bigger manifestation? If so, using a fabrial there might get a little weird, you wouldn't just move a pen, you'd need to move a much bigger beast right?

Wait we don't even know what flamespren look like in Shadesmar... Maybe they're like windspren so they'd still fit inside the gem even in Shadesmar? But if they're like painspren, I think there'd be issues

BAM was still stuck inside of a gemstone in the SR, I doubt the CR would be all that diffetent.

[Xabben]

13 hours ago, Euridrius said:

I would guess they'd work just fine communicating between two points both within Shadesmar, if that's what you mean, just like they can communicate between two points within the Physical Realm - they just don't allow transfer of information between different Realms. 

If that is the case, why not leave a spanreed near the Oathgates of Urithiru in the cognitive realm to communicate with Adolin, Shallan etc. during their trip to Lasting Integrity?

[mordtirith]

11 hours ago, Frustration said:

BAM was still stuck inside of a gemstone in the SR, I doubt the CR would be all that diffetent.

I don't doubt they'd be stuck to it, incapable of leaving the place where the gemstone is. I just wonder if, in the CR, the entire body of the spren would be locked inside the gemstone or if the rest of the spren would still manifest as usual. Locked in place by the gemstone, yes, but mostly growing around it.

I think it's more likely the entire body goes in the gem, that would lend some credence to the Sibling's horror because just imagine, someone locks your tongue on a rock that is more or less the size of it and your entire body is shoved in there, that would be horrifying beyond the concept of caging them.

[Returned he/him]

18 hours ago, Xabben said:

If that is the case, why not leave a spanreed near the Oathgates of Urithiru in the cognitive realm to communicate with Adolin, Shallan etc. during their trip to Lasting Integrity?

I'm not totally sure it would work in the CR. Paired gemstones seem to have strong physical character (based on Navani's experiments), and we know that distance eventually causes the connection between fabrials based on gemstone pairing to weaken or fail. Physical distance isn't consistent in Shadesmar, so I wonder if the paired properties of gemstones apply there in a way similar to how they behave in the physical realm. Maybe they'd work less well, or maybe better. It does seem like the embassy should have had a way to communicate with Urithiru if possible, so that they did not carry spanreeds suggests that they don't work properly in Shadesmar.

 

17 hours ago, mordtirith said:

I don't doubt they'd be stuck to it, incapable of leaving the place where the gemstone is. I just wonder if, in the CR, the entire body of the spren would be locked inside the gemstone or if the rest of the spren would still manifest as usual. Locked in place by the gemstone, yes, but mostly growing around it.

I think it's more likely the entire body goes in the gem, that would lend some credence to the Sibling's horror because just imagine, someone locks your tongue on a rock that is more or less the size of it and your entire body is shoved in there, that would be horrifying beyond the concept of caging them.

I agree that it seems likely that the entire spren is inside of the gemstone. "Inside" seems like a physical property, and that's consistent with what we observed with Nergaoul in Oathbringer. Though, on the last point, do we have any indication that spren care about their physical size? The Sibling's concerns seem relevant, but in the physical realm they don't have bodies in the same sense that physical beings do. Syl doesn't seem to care if she's large or small. I'm drawing a blank on any examples of how that might work in the Cognitive Realm, though-- spren bodies don't seem very plastic there, so maybe there's a cognitive element that is important.

Edited Tuesday at 05:31 AM by Returned

[mordtirith]

6 hours ago, Returned said:

Though, on the last point, do we have any indication that spren care about their physical size? The Sibling's concerns seem relevant, but in the physical realm they don't have bodies in the same sense that physical beings do. Syl doesn't seem to care if she's large or small. I'm drawing a blank on any examples of how that might work in the Cognitive Realm, though-- spren bodies don't seem very plastic there, so maybe there's a cognitive element that is important.

That is the crux of the question right: what happens, with regards to the Cognitive "real form" of a spren, when they are in a gemstone?

We know some spren like Honorspren can change size freely in the physical realm, while others like Cryptics can't. An Honorspren inside a gemstone might be able to just happily fit themselves in there, they can make themselves small enough the gemstone prison is a whole world for them, but take a Cryptic, usually around the size of a handspan, if they can't get any smaller and you put them on a sphere the size of a little finger nail... What does that feel like? Does it feel like anything?

Navani's experiment in WaT might show that it doesn't, but as I said, we have never seen Flamespren in Shadesmar, for all we know they actually are just the size they show up in the PR, Windspren are even smaller in Shadesmar than they are in the PR.

I suppose my point is less about whether spren care about their manifested size on the PR, and more about: do they care about their actual size when put in a gemstone? Does the entire spren body go into the gemstone, or just the small part that manifests on the PR, and the rest of the spren stays glued to that location?

[Returned he/him]

4 hours ago, mordtirith said:

Does the entire spren body go into the gemstone, or just the small part that manifests on the PR, and the rest of the spren stays glued to that location?

It seems to me that the entire body goes in. Again, consider Nergaoul: "physically" huge in size and with a substantial effect when not contained, but wholly contained in a gemstone (in the physical realm) and no longer exerting its effects afterwards (the Thrill vanished). It's the latter part that makes me think there isn't any "overflow" from inside the gemstone to anywhere else. It seems to me that the gemstone trapping imposes enough physicality on a spren to fully contain it.

Whether or not a spren cares about that doesn't seem to me to be about physical space concerns (for example, when Syl was confined to a cabin on the Honorspren ship she wasn't in an oubliette, but she still didn't like being stuck in a room). I'm not sure that, in the physical realm, spren care about size or space constraints or can feel cramped, but maybe I'm forgetting some scene or descriptions about it. My impression is that spren size in the physical realm is more like an incidental expression than it is a real, inherent physical property. But that's just my impression. (Also, for the record Cryptics can change their size in the physical realm, we see Pattern do it when he picks locks and, more pedantically, when he changes from 3D to flat-- it's being invisible that they can't do. But I think there are spren who cannot change their size or shape, so the point is well taken).

Frustration's comment about Ba-Ado-Mishram being inside of a gemstone in the spiritual realm also seems like evidence in the "fully contained" direction, and although she did have some interaction with Renarin and Rlain I'd chalk that up to spiritual realm oddness instead of the gemstones being less confining.

Edited Tuesday at 04:01 PM by Returned

[Master_Moridin he/him]

On 6/1/2026 at 5:55 AM, Xabben said:

If that is the case, why not leave a spanreed near the Oathgates of Urithiru in the cognitive realm to communicate with Adolin, Shallan etc. during their trip to Lasting Integrity?

Gemstones leak Stormlight much faster in Shadesmar and they were already almost out by the time they reached Lasting Integrity. So they wouldn't have been able to keep a spanreed powered anyways.