Food For Thought- The Mysteries Behind Syl

[Tesh Any pronouns]

In Words of Radiance, Kaladin jumps off a cliff. Nothing weird about that. But the thing is, why did his connection with Syl break? The Stormfather had also told Kaladin later that he had killed her, yet, she comes back. She does say something about her only being partially dead or something. When Kaladin (Or Shallan) touch shardblades that aren't their own, they hear the screaming of their spren. I'd say it's almost like the shardblade is severing their connection with their spren. In WoK and WoR, Syl also mentions her memory getting better when she was around Kaladin. If you have anything I could add or any explanations, I would love them. Not that I don't have a few myself.

[Yata he/him]

Radiant Spren require a bond ti keep thier sapience in the physical.

This is the reason for the Syl (or Pattern) Initial dumbness. They crossed the Realm and this mess hardly with their Mind. A bond allows them to recover themself....in the same way if the Bond deteriorates (like we saw directly with Syl and indirectly with Pattern) he Spren starts to lose his sapience.

 

Much more if a Radiants broke his Oaths the Spren could "die". This probably happen because the Spren become part of the Radiants's soul and the Oathbreak is something like rip a part of the Spren...trapped into Radiant's soul.

The Dead Spren is Indeed not really dead (for our Biological standard) but Simply mainly mindbroken. Struck in a cycle of endless pain.

Syl "dies" because Kaladin's actions deeply deteriorate the Bond and in an extreme weak state. She probably manage to allow Kal to use his Powers to survive the fall in the chasm....probably It was too much.

 

Regard the Blade's Scream. A Radiant heards the Blade's scream touching a Deadblade. He could touch another Radiants's Blade (or an Honorblade) without problems.

[Caevita he/him]

20 minutes ago, Yata said:

Radiant Spren require a bond ti keep thier sapience in the physical.

This is the reason for the Syl (or Pattern) Initial dumbness. They crossed the Realm and this mess hardly with their Mind. A bond allows them to recover themself....in the same way if the Bond deteriorates (like we saw directly with Syl and indirectly with Pattern) he Spren starts to lose his sapience.

 

Much more if a Radiants broke his Oaths the Spren could "die". This probably happen because the Spren become part of the Radiants's soul and the Oathbreak is something like rip a part of the Spren...trapped into Radiant's soul.

The Dead Spren is Indeed not really dead (for our Biological standard) but Simply mainly mindbroken. Struck in a cycle of endless pain.

Syl "dies" because Kaladin's actions deeply deteriorate the Bond and in an extreme weak state. She probably manage to allow Kal to use his Powers to survive the fall in the chasm....probably It was too much.

 

Regard the Blade's Scream. A Radiant heards the Blade's scream touching a Deadblade. He could touch another Radiants's Blade (or an Honorblade) without problems.

This.  Also, please note Syl's line about "Break a rock, and it's still there.  Break a spren, and she's still there.  Sort of."  Spren are concepts, so when she says that she "was only as dead as (Kaladin's) oaths," she means that very directly.  She was dead, by the "conventional" sense.  But when the event which caused her death was reversed, so was her death.

Also, the one correction I would have for you, Yata, is that Deadblades (nice term btw) are well and truly dead.  Syl explains that the ten heartbeats it takes before a Deadblade materializes are the Shardbearer linking the dead spren to his/her own heartbeat, bringing them back to a very painful life.  They do not, so far as I can tell, experience this pain while dematerialized.  At least, we have no evidence to suggest they do.

[Calderis he/him]

21 minutes ago, Caevita said:

Also, the one correction I would have for you, Yata, is that Deadblades (nice term btw) are well and truly dead.  Syl explains that the ten heartbeats it takes before a Deadblade materializes are the Shardbearer linking the dead spren to his/her own heartbeat, bringing them back to a very painful life.  They do not, so far as I can tell, experience this pain while dematerialized.  At least, we have no evidence to suggest they do.

They are no more "dead" than Syl was. If Kaladin had been progressed far enough for her to have manifested as a blade, she would have been trapped as a Shardblade.

It is possible to revive a Shardblade. The problem for the Shards in general is that with the Knights who broke their Oaths dead and gone, restoring their bond is exceptionally difficult.

[Caevita he/him]

3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

They are no more "dead" than Syl was. If Kaladin had been progressed far enough for her to have manifested as a blade, she would have been trapped as a Shardblade.

It is possible to revive a Shardblade. The problem for the Shards in general is that with the Knights who broke their Oaths dead and gone, restoring their bond is exceptionally difficult.

I agree, and I think I may not have explained myself well if this correction was necessary.  They are exactly as dead as Syl was.  And Syl was as dead as a spren can get.  Kaladin fixed himself back up, and quite literally brought her back to life.

It is possible to revive a Shardblade, because spren don't die in the same way as humans do.  They do not have cognitive shadows that move on to... wherever cognitive shadows go.  The Tranquiline Halls, I guess.  They are native to the cognitive realm in the first place, and it is only the Nahel bond which renders them "mortal" at all.

I guess I just don't see how "Dead.  Then they live again a little when someone summons them, syncing a heartbeat to their essence." can be interpreted to mean "mindbroken and stuck in an endless cycle of pain."  Dead is dead.  Spren corpses just aren't the hardest things to revive, that's all.