Battar Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 Hi all, I'm wondering how the process of pupating works in relation to chasmfiends, and what the effect of hunting them has on their populations. Does the pupating process turn something like chulls or small chasmfiends into adult, massive greatshell chasmfiends? Does it turn them into something else entirely we don't know of, because we never let them finish pupating (shells are always cut into to get the gemheart)? How does this relate to the trapping of spren inside gemhearts? Do the Parshendi call chasmfiends their gods because they hold gemhearts that can facilitate the growth of voidspren, thereby recalling the old methods Venli uses to awaken Stormform? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarion Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 Does the pupating process turn something like chulls or small chasmfiends into adult, massive greatshell chasmfiends? Does it turn them into something else entirely we don't know of, because we never let them finish pupating (shells are always cut into to get the gemheart)? My theory is that Chasmfiends are some sort of combination of creatures, and they pupate as part of that merging. Like a (vastly less controlled) Kandra - They hunt chull, or whatever else, and then pupate in order to turn their mass into more Chasmfiend. This might explain the lots of eyes and the multiple voices, as well as the fact that they diverge significantly from most other Rosharan creatures in terms of numbers of legs. There's some connection to Skyeels, but I've got no idea what that might be. They apparently share the same spren. My first guess would be Gravityspren, which we know exist, but haven't seen yet. That would explain both the Skyeels floating, and how light on it's feet the Chasmfiend is, relative to its size. I think the connection with the Parshendi gods is purely a misdirect - The "civilized" Alethi come across a group of savages and assume that their religion is just superstition. So they assume that the scary gods they have and the scary monsters they live near are the same thing. When in actuality, their gods are something very real, and the Chasmfiends are just terrifying local fauna. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battar Posted November 5, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 There's some connection to Skyeels, but I've got no idea what that might be. They apparently share the same spren. My first guess would be Gravityspren, which we know exist, but haven't seen yet. That would explain both the Skyeels floating, and how light on it's feet the Chasmfiend is, relative to its size. Where is the connection to Skyeels? I think Chasmfiends being as large and strong as they are it makes sense that with 14 legs the weight is distributed plenty. In the first greatshell fight scene in WoK Adolin and Dalinar got the beast down to 6 (I think?) legs before it toppled, which to me doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. 6 legs is for sure more in line with most fauna or Roshar, and I think 6 legs could hold the chasmfiend tentatively, but it wouldn't be able to move around very well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoidhunter Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 OBSERVER What are the smoke-y spren that appear around a dead chasmfiend? BRANDON SANDERSON They are in a symbiotic relationship with the chasmfiend, and are part of what allow the creatures to grow to the size they do with an exoskeleton. (Along with a high-oxygen, lower-gravity world.) Well, we don't actually know what comes out of a chasmfiend pupa because, as you said, (in story) the ones we see are always killed before they finish pupating. It's been discussed that ALL greatshell organisms have some symbiotic relationship with spren...but we really don't know the specifics. We really get the most information about their lifecycle and biology when Shallan shows up on the plains and starts hanging out with Adolin. She postulates that they must live somewhere else and migrate to the plains specifically in order to pupate. I've often wondered if they end up moving on to the sea and becoming something like the walking isles... by the way...I can't believe no one has upvoted you yet (here's 2 for good measure)...welcome to the forum...have lots of fun postulating wildly and criticizing the opinions of your fellow Sanderson fans! Now I'm not super up on reading the most current Word of Brandon so there maybe something newer that I don't know about...but I'm pretty sure that this is the gist of things with chasmfiends. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corax Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 I was literally just about to begin composing a post on this exact topic! I was thinking that perhaps chasmfiends and other greatshells, heck, maybe even chulls, have a similar and strange life-cycle. Specifically, an alternation of generations, maybe like by-the-wind sailors or Portuguese man o'wars. I haven't really pressed into possible nitty gritty bits, but, well, what do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
An evil 545lighteyes Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 My theory is that Chasmfiends are some sort of combination of creatures, and they pupate as part of that merging. Like a (vastly less controlled) Kandra - They hunt chull, or whatever else, and then pupate in order to turn their mass into more Chasmfiend. This might explain the lots of eyes and the multiple voices, as well as the fact that they diverge significantly from most other Rosharan creatures in terms of numbers of legs. There's some connection to Skyeels, but I've got no idea what that might be. They apparently share the same spren. My first guess would be Gravityspren, which we know exist, but haven't seen yet. That would explain both the Skyeels floating, and how light on it's feet the Chasmfiend is, relative to its size. I think the connection with the Parshendi gods is purely a misdirect - The "civilized" Alethi come across a group of savages and assume that their religion is just superstition. So they assume that the scary gods they have and the scary monsters they live near are the same thing. When in actuality, their gods are something very real, and the Chasmfiends are just terrifying local fauna. OBSERVER What are the smoke-y spren that appear around a dead chasmfiend?BRANDON SANDERSONThey are in a symbiotic relationship with the chasmfiend, and are part of what allow the creatures to grow to the size they do with an exoskeleton. (Along with a high-oxygen, lower-gravity world.) Well, we don't actually know what comes out of a chasmfiend pupa because, as you said, (in story) the ones we see are always killed before they finish pupating. It's been discussed that ALL greatshell organisms have some symbiotic relationship with spren...but we really don't know the specifics. We really get the most information about their lifecycle and biology when Shallan shows up on the plains and starts hanging out with Adolin. She postulates that they must live somewhere else and migrate to the plains specifically in order to pupate. I've often wondered if they end up moving on to the sea and becoming something like the walking isles... by the way...I can't believe no one has upvoted you yet (here's 2 for good measure)...welcome to the forum...have lots of fun postulating wildly and criticizing the opinions of your fellow Sanderson fans! Now I'm not super up on reading the most current Word of Brandon so there maybe something newer that I don't know about...but I'm pretty sure that this is the gist of things with chasmfiends. I believe that the spren is just something that allows these creatures to have a higher strength to weight ratio then they should. It actually explains the existence of gemhearts, which don't have any natural evolutionary advantage that i can think of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarion Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 Where is the connection to Skyeels? I think Chasmfiends being as large and strong as they are it makes sense that with 14 legs the weight is distributed plenty. In the first greatshell fight scene in WoK Adolin and Dalinar got the beast down to 6 (I think?) legs before it toppled, which to me doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. 6 legs is for sure more in line with most fauna or Roshar, and I think 6 legs could hold the chasmfiend tentatively, but it wouldn't be able to move around very well. They don't seem to consistently have 14 legs - The one Shallan draws has 18. Which is part of what makes me think their bodies are mutable - If they're adding more limbs and greater mass when they pupate, it would explain how they diverge. Because generally speaking, you don't find animals with variable amounts of legs, even within the cosmere. Shallan's drawings are the connection to Skyeels, by the way - She notices the same spren around them as around the Chasmfiend. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natc Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 I don't see how gemhearts even remotely relate to that beyond potential stormlight storage to fuel spren (if it is even necessary). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreamEternal Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 (edited) I don't see how gemhearts even remotely relate to that beyond potential stormlight storage to fuel spren (if it is even necessary). Uh, spren seem very closely connected to stormlight. It is the entire point of fabrials. EDIT: You were talking about the variable number of legs, wasn't you? My bad. Edited November 5, 2015 by CognitivePulsePattern Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slaybalj Posted November 5, 2015 Report Share Posted November 5, 2015 (edited) First time poster... I believe I read a comment Brandon made somewhere (WoB..... Words of brandon?) where someone asked how many chasmfiends have successfully pupated in the past 6 years and he said there was massive unexplored environmental effects due to the harvesting of gemhearts and compared it to whaling. Shallan does discuss this with adolin in WoR and if i recall Jasnah comments ( in galivar's biography?) that other creatures known for large gemhearts have been hunted to extinction. Also of note... I think one of shallan's sketches in WoK indicates that a chull will pupate into a large treelike thing if left to its own devices. I have assumed that in their chull stage they are incapable of breeding. Edit: looking this up, the chull life cycle diagram is in WoR and appears to be part of a different in-world book about caring for chulls? The tree thing is the final stage of chull before natural death (?) and may be irrelevant for breeding. Finally.... I am curious if santhids actually have gemhearts, given their size and the fact that so little is known of them. Edited November 5, 2015 by Slaybalj 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.png.d41b1ca865930ccf5f63b08a839f908e.png){kind=logo}
Recommended Posts