Parshendi Shardblades *SPOILERS*

[SOM1else he/him]

Near the end of the book when Dalinar was abandoned by Sadeas and he's fighting for his life against the Parshendi there is that Parshendi in shardplate that comes to fight him after a bunch of time has passed. Dalinar wondered why it had waited so long and assumed it was leting the regular soliders a chance to get his blade and only came because he was running away. I had a different idea though. A Shardblade takes ten heartbeats to appear so if someone summoned their blade after running a mile it would be faster than summoning it after waking from a nap because their heart is beating faster. this made me wonder if instead of having the heart rate of a regular person do the Parshendi have extremelly low heart rates and if so do you think that there could be a way to use that against them?

[Ryan he/him]

I'm inclined to label this as quite unlikely. In our world, the heartbeat of a creature is roughly inversely proportional to its size. A quick google shows that large whales have a rest heart rate of around 10 BPM, and mice have a rest heart rate between 500 and 600 BPM. I seem to recall that this has something to do with body heat regulation, though I can't quickly find a source for that.

In fact, unless they somehow always are holding and are therefore sustained by stormlight, I'd say that this is impossible. The level of activity they're capable of requires more energy distribution than an extremely slow heart rate can deliver.

[happyman he/him]

I have to think that either (a) Dalinar is right about why they waited or ( it's something completely different, something cultural, not physiological, that had them waiting for him to leave.  Both are possible given how little we know, but the heart-rate idea seems unlikely.

[SOM1else he/him]

I'm inclined to label this as quite unlikely. In our world, the heartbeat of a creature is roughly inversely proportional to its size. A quick google shows that large whales have a rest heart rate of around 10 BPM, and mice have a rest heart rate between 500 and 600 BPM. I seem to recall that this has something to do with body heat regulation, though I can't quickly find a source for that.

In fact, unless they somehow always are holding and are therefore sustained by stormlight, I'd say that this is impossible. The level of activity they're capable of requires more energy distribution than an extremely slow heart rate can deliver.

Ok I'm going to be stuborn and defend my point even though I'm starting to think I am wrong but if Jasnah was right about the Parshmen/Parshendi being the voidbringers then they could in theory constantly be holding stormlight because Szeth says in the prolouge that the Human body is to pourus a container to hold StormLight for long but that the voidbringers were able to hold it perfectly.

[DariusJenai]

It's possible that the parshendi are holding stormlight, but I'm pretty sure that holding stormlight doesn't stop your heart from beating.  It only stops you from needing to breath.  Szeth summons his Blade multiple times while holding stormlight, and he never seems to have a slower heartbeat because of it.