Honor, splinter, spren isn't a splinter of the shard, or?

[MalcolmR]

I see a lot of people talking about Honorspens in particular as if it's an accepted fact that they are what where left when Odium killed Honor. Is there very good explenation for this?

As I see it, spren cant be a slinter of honor beacuse they existed before Honor where killed, I agree with copermind that sprens are a merge of the powers of Honor and Conservation, in place of giving a part of there powers to humans as preservation and ruin did they gave there powers to the spren. so that all magic that humans can use is as a result of spren's giving them access to the shard magic.

If Honor spren where a splinter of Honor, then Honor where killed by Odium before the Hearalds gave up there blades. The reason is the Nohadon knew about spren and Honor spren if they where a splinter then Honor where dead, but he where killed somewhere between the  day of recreance and today.

Can someone explain what it is that I have missed her?

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Honorspren are splinters of Honor, it is Word of Brandon.  You are also operating under a bit of a flawed premise, that splinters can only exist after a Shard has been Splintered.  This is not so.  A Shard has the ability to voluntarily create splinters, as is the case with Endowment and the divine breaths.

[MalcolmR]

Hm, but then there are still 3 posibletyes as I see it.

1. Honor invested all his power in the spren so, he killed himself, and all Odium needed to do was kill the shard holder as the shard dint have any power left. If this is true then conservation is close to dead to. unless all spren are very honoreble
I can believe this to be true considering hove honorable honor is, he might be capable of giving up all his powers to protect the humans. Stupid but ok, but conservation doing the same to? Don't know much abaout that one so...

 

2. There are a lot more Honor spren now then earlier. So there are going to be a lot of Windruners.

 

3. There are another type of spliter that are newly created. So what is this splinter?

[Aether he/him]

You seem to again operate under a false premise: the splintering of Honour wouldn't necessarily just produce uniformly sized splinters. From what I understand, when Tanavast's Shard was destroyed, it was thoroughly smashed to pieces (presumably) to prevent anyone from picking it up again within the foreseeable future. I can't find the quote right now, but IIRC, WoB state that there are a lot more spren around now than before the splintering, so it seems that most of the variants we see now (Flamespren, Windspren, Luckspren, Passionspren, etc.) are a result of this. There might be more Honourspren around now then pre-splintering, of course, but I'd wager most of the pieces of his power are reduced to the small pockets of Investiture without much power or sentients that most spren seem to be.

 

Also, even if the splintering ended up creating more literal Splinters, they most likely aren't just "Honourspren" per se, but different types of "honourable Spren". We might very well end up with more members of particular KR Orders than others, but probably not just Windrunners.

[MalcolmR]

Sorry but I am using logic to magic, that's how I like to test the limits of the magic systems. It’s part of why I love Brandons magic.

As its noted in the link that Ookla posted, spren is a part of both conservation and Honor (Sanderson dint say so, but he did note its an possibility), so splintering Honor shod not create sprens that are partly Conservation, unless Conservation gives up more of his power. But the back question is still what happens to Honor's power, because as I understand it splintering it won’t make the power go up into noting, it only splinter's it up into smaller parts so that it can’t get back together again. In the same way as if all ruins power where turned into metal (yes, yes if it get burned he get it back splinters are esuriently a lot harder to put together again).

 

But if there are more of all types of sprens then its evidence that Conservation to are destroyed.

If it is more sprens only containing honors essence. Then what type of sprens are these and what can they possible do.  The wiki notes that the splinters don’t need to be of the same mindset as the shard it came from. But any spren containing any part of Conservation can’t be creating by splintering Honor.

So one could say I am leading up to the question who created the spen, where conservation a part of this, or is only the spheres and stormlight a part of Conservation? The interaction between the spren and the Highstorm points in the other direction (no Highstrom no spren). We know what magic system Ruin and Preservation created. But what part of Roshar’s magic comes from what shard, to me these questions are linked.

Ok if all his powers where splintered into so small pieces they are without affect then to me that who'd be boring. Yes it could be but I don’t believe it, and what is the fun in explaining away problems by making them not be a problem because of “magic”, that’s just well lacy.

[Aether he/him]

I didn't say the splintering of Honour wasn't problematic - far from it. I was merely suggesting that the Splintering didn't necessarily result in a huge boom in the Honourspren population, just Spren in general. Quite possibly it manifested in other unknown ways too, such as making the Highstorms stronger or something.

 

Also, we don't know that what we call Honourspren is the only form of Spren that are only of Honour. We don't even know if they are only of Honour in the first place. It could be safely assumed, sure, but apart from what the name suggests, we don't really know much about its composition.

 

And please refrain from name-calling. My arguments aren't "lazy", and even if they were, it is not your place to say so.

 

 

EDIT: Removed the last sentence, as per next post.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Ookla the Omniscient

[MalcolmR]

You misunderstood who I where calling lazy, I meant that if a writer explains away a problem in his book bay saying "magic" he is lacy. So in general I am just hoping that we get a good answer to the questions. And that Sanderson don’t just jump past it. In my experience of him, is far from a lazy writer so I expect that we are going to get the answer at some point. But where hoping someone has it today, and of curse what’s the point of a forum like this if one don’t ask questions.

English is far from my first language and I am terrible at writing my first language so I understand how hard it can be to understand me from time to time.

Edited November 28, 2013 by MalcolmR

[Shardlet he/him]

Basically, what needs to be recognized is that there are, apparently, spren which have the capacity to bond with other entities and spren which so far don't seem to have that capacity.  It is largely understood that all spren that have the capacity to bond are found within a spectrum of fully of Honor (assumed to be honorspren), various mixtures of Cultivation (not Conservation) and Honor, and fully Cultivation.  These spren (particularly the mixed ones) are very likely voluntarily created splinters of Honor and Cultivation.  Both of which continued to live after the creation of such spren.  Among these spren are the spren which bond with people to give the people surgebinding ability.  The spren in turn gets a stronger foothold in the physical realm and as the bond progresses, gains full awareness of their cognitive personality.  When Honor was killed and the shard splintered, apparently, the more mundane non-bonding spren were formed.  Since these spren resulted from the splintering of Honor, they would be 100% of Honor.  The nature of these spren are not well understood and we will be getting a greater understanding of the spren in WoR in March. 

 

Note: various theories may conflict with the above, but I think it provides much of the information that will make things clearer for you, Malcolm.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Ookla the Occulus

[MalcolmR]

Occulus you got a point WOK do not say anything about any sprens other then Honorspren in the past. Got to take a look in the book to be sure, going say if I find anything of note, but you can be right, its possible that the normal spren is the result of Honor being splinted while the 10 bonding sprens where "always" there and where created by Honor and Conservation in the "beginning of time". Then again, the suden appearance of spren who'd be noted in their religion. To me it's seems like an event that the people whod have to assign to the almighty. Possible not noted by any of the characters because it just is so why think about it.

[Satsuoni he/him]

Ah yes. Let's see if I can add anything.

1. Splinters of the Shard can be created voluntarily or by force. The amount of splinters that can be created is rather large.

2. There are other ways for the power of Shard to manifest. The Atium mine, for example, was a chunk of Ruin's power, cut off from the main shard, which was *not* a Splinter, since it didn't have self-awareness (not sentience, mind you).

3. The only other world we know with splintered Shards is Sel. There, only a relatively small fraction of the power went into creation of Splinters (Seons' and Skaze cores). Most of the power became loose (and presumably formed Dor, but that is speculation). This loose power does not do "nothing" - it made Shadesmar on Sel very dangerous, and still fuels the magic system.

4. Likewise, on Roshar, the bonding spren existed before shattering, and possibly some other nature spren as well (at least some were corrupted to make Thunderclasts, though those might have been of bonding variety as well, so probably there were some nature spren to begin with)

5. After splintering, the amount of spren increased, but if the splintering followed the same pattern as on Sel, most of the Honor's body became raw energy that was then "vented" (or cycled, I am not sure) by existing and new spren that acted as release valve, negating some of the side effects.

6. It is possible that Cultivation gave some bit of herself to balance some of new spren - we don't know. Since most of the honor's power became loose, however, she only had to balance a small portion, if any. That might have weakened her. But that is just conjecture without much evidence.

7. Loose power does *something* - it might increase the storm severity, make Shadesmar more dangerous, feed spren so they become more visible in Physical realm, etc.

Also, while spren presumably became more common after splintering, there are two things to consider: it was a while ago, so they might have written it into their mythology and ignore it now, and two, it might have been a gradual process. Splintering a shard is hard, and the spren might have been increasing in population, say, over a hundred years, which is much less noticeable.

[Shardlet he/him]

 Got to take a look in the book to be sure, going say if I find anything of note, but you can be right, its possible that the normal spren is the result of Honor being splinted while the 10 bonding sprens where "always" there and where created by Honor and Conservation in the "beginning of time".

 

It is important to note that it is likely that there are spren other than the 10 (presumed) types that grant surgebinding abilty.  We know that greatshells are able to reach their large size due to the lower gravity on Roshar (0.7 G) and a bond with a spren.  It would be reasonable to assume that there are other types of bonding spren as well.

[Aether he/him]

Not to mention all the Spren the Parshendi bond with to change forms.

 

EDIT: added spoiler tags.

Edited November 30, 2013 by Ookla the Omniscient

[Oudeis he/him]

Hey, Omniscient? That stuff is spoilers for WoR readings. Would you kindly either throw it behind a Spoiler tag or save those comments for the WoR forum? I realize that, being omniscient, you know all this stuff already, but there are people out there staying willfully ignorant.

[Aether he/him]

I was under the impression that spoilertags wasn't needed for the Cosmere-theories sub-forum. The

Eshonai

chapter is publicly available.

Edited November 30, 2013 by Ookla the Omniscient

[Oudeis he/him]

I realize it says "not required," and I understand that they are publicly available. A lot of people prefer not to read spoiler chapters, and relish the anticipation waiting for the full book. You are under no obligation to post spoiler tags or warnings, especially here in the Cosmere forum. I've just found that it's a simple enough effort to make. I'm sorry if I came across as trying to issue some kind of command.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

I was under the impression that spoilertags wasn't needed for the Cosmere-theories sub-forum. The

Eshonai

chapter is publicly available.

 

In general yes, spoiler tags aren't necessary in the Cosmere Theories sub-forum, however there is a caveat there.  They are not required for books that have been released for longer than six months.  (Six months is the length of time the spoiler-sub-forum remains in existence)  Outside of the Words of Radiance Spoiler Forum, Words of Radiance spoilers should be in spoiler tags.  While yes it is publicly availiable, there are many who refrain from reading spoiler material and we should respect their wishes in not being spoiled.

[Aether he/him]

I realize it says "not required," and I understand that they are publicly available. A lot of people prefer not to read spoiler chapters, and relish the anticipation waiting for the full book. You are under no obligation to post spoiler tags or warnings, especially here in the Cosmere forum. I've just found that it's a simple enough effort to make. I'm sorry if I came across as trying to issue some kind of command.

Relax, I was just surprised that it was pointed out in the first place. But you make a good point. I shall aspire to use spoiler tags for such things in the future.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Aether