What form do parshendi start with?

[Jofwu he/him]

3 hours ago, Yata said:

I may understand your point....but actually where does the baby-Listener get the spren to be in dullform ?

I'm not sure if we know enough to really say.

Can they pick one up while in the womb? Maybe mothers go out in a storm while pregnant? My best guess is that they just get a "piece" of their mother's spren. (I see no reason to assume that simple spren can't just divide like a cell) Maybe there are other ways to gain one? Maybe there are ways to get a form that don't require spren? Some of those may be wrong, and I just don't know. But those are some first ideas that come to mind.

My opinion is more based on gut instinct and a sense of wrongness to the alternative than it is based on a logical compilation of facts. So I'll probably just assume this way until evidence strongly suggests otherwise. I dunno... The way Eshonai talked about slaveform... Her tone just doesn't quite fit to me. She talks about them as if they became something lesser than they should be- not as if they "reverted" to being babies/children, or something like that.

Hey, perhaps it's actually something in between... Neither dullform nor slaveform. Some kind of "childform" that you grow out of around the time you first go out into a highstorm... And if you don't go out into a storm before some point then you shift to slaveform.

[Krandacth]

3 minutes ago, jofwu said:

 

My best guess is that they just get a "piece" of their mother's spren.

This puts me in mind of the conversation between Kal, Hesina and Tien in WoK, talking about the fact that the longroot has a spren, and if you cut it in half then each piece has a spren. That would then make sense of a Parshbaby being bonded to the same type of spren as its mother.

Also, Mate form makes most sense to me for Parshchildren, as it is most like our own children: Playful and easily distracted. Also, their gender characteristics would presumably develop in a similar way to a human's in that form, so wouldn't be prominent by early-teen-equivalent (when I assume is their day of first transformation, from the way Eshonai's mother was talking).

[Sand Master]

15 minutes ago, Krandacth said:

This puts me in mind of the conversation between Kal, Hesina and Tien in WoK, talking about the fact that the longroot has a spren, and if you cut it in half then each piece has a spren. That would then make sense of a Parshbaby being bonded to the same type of spren as its mother.

Also, Mate form makes most sense to me for Parshchildren, as it is most like our own children: Playful and easily distracted. Also, their gender characteristics would presumably develop in a similar way to a human's in that form, so wouldn't be prominent by early-teen-equivalent (when I assume is their day of first transformation, from the way Eshonai's mother was talking).

I like this idea, but at the same time, it seems weird to think of all Listener children to be constantly in the form that encourages sexual urges until their form of puberty, at which point they can choose anything else. Whereas in humans, it's the opposite, and you will only get those urges after puberty starts.

[soulcastJam he/him]

On 8/3/2016 at 7:20 AM, hwiles said:

It does seem super weird that no Parshendi child ever shows up on screen.  That is, until you remember how few human children appeared on screen.  Considering that Eshonai has a mother, I agree that it's definitely a safe bet that Parshendi have some manner of children.  Whether they hatch from eggs, are born as infants, or sprout off of the back of an adult Parshendi partially grown is, while an interesting question, ultimately of little consequence.

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that maybe Parshendi can only give birth in a highstorm, which would solve the formless baby problem.  The Parshendi seemed pretty disturbed when they first met Parshmen, so I'm inclined to think that their babies don't plop out in Slave form.

I was also wondering what the reproductive cycle of the parshendi is. However, we should remember that their reproduction is compatible with humans as there are races with mixed human/parshendi blood. 

[Sand Master]

4 minutes ago, soulcastJam said:

I was also wondering what the reproductive cycle of the parshendi is. However, we should remember that their reproduction is compatible with humans as there are races with mixed human/parshendi blood. 

Whoa whoa whoa. Whaaaaaa?

[Argel he/him]

18 minutes ago, Sand Master said:

Whoa whoa whoa. Whaaaaaa?

Horneaters and Herdazians have mixed Listener/Human ancestry.

[Sand Master]

Just now, Argel said:

Horneaters and Herdazians have mixed Listener/Human ancestry.

 

[Krandacth]

6 hours ago, Sand Master said:

I like this idea, but at the same time, it seems weird to think of all Listener children to be constantly in the form that encourages sexual urges until their form of puberty, at which point they can choose anything else. Whereas in humans, it's the opposite, and you will only get those urges after puberty starts.

Firstly, Eshonai says in her... First POV? that she finds it strange that humans are essentially always in mateform. Also, mateform is known as such because it encourages sexual urges in adults, but I don't see that being the case for Parshchildren for the same reason that human children don't generally have sexual urges: Their biology doesn't support it. If you take away the sexual urges, what is left of mateform seems pretty childlike to me.

Secondly,

6 hours ago, Sand Master said:

 

6 hours ago, Argel said:
Horneaters and Herdazians have mixed Listener/Human ancestry.
 

Seconded

[If.you.die.I.go.stupid]

I'll have to get out the ebook when I get home and search,  but I'm pretty sure I remember one of the listener songs saying the only forms known to them after escaping their gods were dull and mate form. Later they rediscover worker form. I think that would indicate they are born in either dull or mate.

I also remember when the parshindi meet the Alethi they are surprised by the parshmen and ask "where is their music?" They don't ask why are they acting like children. The parshmen seem to have had the ability to listen removed. Their form isn't one of the five,  or six if you count storm form. The parshindi don't seem to think of them as fully Listeners. 

 

[Sand Master]

3 minutes ago, If.you.die.I.go.stupid said:

I'll have to get out the ebook when I get home and search,  but I'm pretty sure I remember one of the listener songs saying the only forms known to them after escaping their gods were dull and mate form. Later they rediscover worker form. I think that would indicate they are born in either dull or mate.

I also remember when the parshindi meet the Alethi they are surprised by the parshmen and ask "where is their music?" They don't ask why are they acting like children. The parshmen seem to have had the ability to listen removed. Their form isn't one of the five,  or six if you count storm form. The parshindi don't seem to think of them as fully Listeners. 

 

It's true, the Parshendi did ask where the parshmen's music was. However, it is clearly stated from Eshonai's POV that slaveform —  a known form to the Parshendi —  is the same thing as the parshmen. So it is a known form to the Listeners, but is considered a lack of any form, rather than a specialization like the other forms.

[If.you.die.I.go.stupid]

Quote

“Most of the forms relate to them in some way,” Venli said. “Can we really trust the accuracy of words first sung so long ago? When those words were first memorized, our people were mostly dullform.”

It was a form of low intelligence, low capacity. They used it now to spy on the humans. Once,  it and mateform has been the only forms her people had known.  

Found the quote I was thinking of. It's not from the song but from her discussion with her sister about if they should try for stormform.  If slaveform is a formless form I guess you could say that the quote doesn't rule out that they knew slaveform too,  back when they only knew of dullform and mateform.  I think that's a stretch though. It reads to me as if there was a time when all parshindi were either mate or dull 

[Jofwu he/him]

6 hours ago, Sand Master said:

It's true, the Parshendi did ask where the parshmen's music was. However, it is clearly stated from Eshonai's POV that slaveform —  a known form to the Parshendi —  is the same thing as the parshmen. So it is a known form to the Listeners, but is considered a lack of any form, rather than a specialization like the other forms.

Actually, this is really interesting and I think it reinforces my point above. Does anyone have a quote for the bold part?

Yes, Eshonai has knowledge of slaveform during her POV... Because we're hearing from her many years after they've discovered the parshmen. My interpretation of this is that they didn't know about slaveform until the Alethi came along with their parshmen.

The fact that they didn't understand how a Parshendi could "have no music" suggests to me that there's no way that their children have no music. I think children are born with that in them. Heck, they're called the listeners for a reason. They've got to be born with it.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

I feel like if a Parshendi is birthed outside of a highstorm there's not really any reasonable way it could have a form other than slave form (the lack of a form).  The Parshendi's shock upon seeing Parshmen would then originate from the fact that they were seeing a group of racial relatives who had effectively been denied puberty and disallowed from growing up into proper adults.  It would be like seeing docile 6ft tall children, complete with smooth cheeks, distorted features, and shy downcast eyes; absolutely freaking haunting.

No highstorm = no spren to bond = slave form

If they are born in a highstorm then they could plop out in dull or mate form, even odds.  It sounds like a Parshendi always bonds something when they go out into a storm.  Since it took them so long to find warform, I imagine that the odds of attracting the right spren by accident is exceptionally low.

Spren are splinters, and made of investiture which cannot be created or destroyed.  If a Parshendi can rip a silver into existence by giving birth, then they could shatter Shards simply by breeding, which would seem kinda weird to me.  Not absolutely impossible, but kinda weird.

Edited September 16, 2016 by hwiles

[Jondesu he/him]

@hwiles, I liked the theory mentioned before that they simply somehow divide their current spren, which is quoted in-world as a possibility by Hesina (Kal's mother), though she's not exactly portrayed as an expert.  If you can split an object in half and each one ends up with a spren, though, that's a perfect analogy for how a Listener child would get a (very small) spren.  They're not creating anything, just reorganizing it.

jW

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

Okay, I just had a flash of an idea. We don't know the spren involved in making most of the forms, as far as I know (other than stormform and that they think creationspren give artform). But we know there would need to be spren around for the newborns to bond to if they were going to be anything other than slaveform. Here's a question for you that I will shortly answer in the form of a theory. Are there spren that would be attracted to something being born, making it easy for the newborn to find one to bind? I think it's reasonable to suggest that this would be true of lifespren. So here's the theory:

Listeners transform into either dullform or mateform by bonding with a lifespren. Lifespren are always present at a birth, so newborn Listeners bond them and begin life in that form. I think dullform is more likely, personally, but I can't think of a good reason for that at the moment. I also believe that the transformations require Investiture (e.g. Stormlight), which is why they transform out in a highstorm. We can't be sure without a WoB or a scene, but I theorize that Listeners give birth during highstorms or around infused gemstones to provide the necessary Investiture for the baby to bond a lifespren. Parshmen would not have access to these sources of Investiture and thus would have babies in slaveform.

Thoughts?

Also @hwiles I think you mean spren are Splinters, not Slivers

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

@BeskarKomrk yep, you're right, just edited.  I like your theory with lifespren.  If you're right, it would technically even be feasible for the infant Parshendi to achieve dullform in utero, since all something apparently has to do to attract lifespren is grow and thrive.  That said, I like the "born in a highstorm," theory better, it just sounds cooler and would give the Parshendi some much needed flavor.

[If.you.die.I.go.stupid]

2 hours ago, jofwu said:

Actually, this is really interesting and I think it reinforces my point above. Does anyone have a quote for the bold part?

Yes, Eshonai has knowledge of slaveform during her POV... Because we're hearing from her many years after they've discovered the parshmen. My interpretation of this is that they didn't know about slaveform until the Alethi came along with their parshmen.

The fact that they didn't understand how a Parshendi could "have no music" suggests to me that there's no way that their children have no music. I think children are born with that in them. Heck, they're called the listeners for a reason. They've got to be born with it.

As for Eshonai knowing of slaveform,

Quote

“The old songs spoke of hundreds of forms. Now they knew of only five. Well, six if one counted slaveform, the form with no spren, no soul, and no song. The form the humans were accustomed to, the ones they called parshmen. It wasn’t really a form at all, however, but a lack of any form.”

I agree with you that the parshindi may only know of slaveform because of parshman. I think Jasnah is right, humans didn't defeat them. They changed them into something docile and useful, They took away their ability to listen. The above quote doesn't really support this. It is just the overall impression I get. Maybe Eshonia doesn't count slaveform because it's not one of the five they know, or maybe she doesn't count it because it is really a lack of form. I think it could be read either way and can't find a passage that clarifies.  I did note that Zuln, the council of fives dullform member,

Quote

"wore the smock of a parshman, and had indicated that she considered it her duty to represent them—those with no songs—along with any dullforms among them.”

It would seem to imply that parshamn are the only ones without song, but there is no direct mention of children here. I haven't found a reference to children that clarifies anything.

 

As for the quote about music:

Quote

“The Parshendi have seen our servants, and are confused by them. “Where is their music?” Klade will often ask me. I do not know what he means. But our servants do not react to the Parshendi at all, showing no interest in emulating them. This is reassuring.
The question about music may have to do with the humming and chanting the Parshendi often do. They have an uncanny ability to make music together. I swear that I have left one Parshendi singing to himself, then soon passed another out of earshot of the first, yet singing the very same song—eerily near to the other in tempo, tune, and lyric.”

Excerpt From: Brandon Sanderson. “The Way of Kings.” 45 Shadsmare

Again, this is a matter of interpretation. I think they seem confused to have found listeners who cannot listen. If they were confused to have found adults acting like children I'd expect one to ask "why are they acting like children?" That said, maybe they want to hide what their children are like from the humans. There is much about themselves that they hid.

 

 

[Jofwu he/him]

3 minutes ago, If.you.die.I.go.stupid said:

“The Parshendi have seen our servants, and are confused by them. “Where is their music?” Klade will often ask me."

Ah! That's what I was looking for!

The way I read this, it doesn't make sense for the children to be slaveform. Klade comes across as totally perplexed. If their kids were the same way, they'd have said things like, "Oh, why are they like that? They should have grown up and taken a form by now. Why haven't they done this?" Instead it seems that they are totally baffled by this "form that is not a form".

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

@Krandacth It looks like one of your tags didn't go through.  A hilarious catch; but one most of us have been guilty of at one time or another