Szeth, the Stone Shamans, and Taln's Honorblade

[WhiteLeeopard she/her]

I just think his original spren was his current highspren. It could be there was no great conspiracy with the Shamans to name Szeth Truthless, they just wanted to protect themselves. Its even possible no-one knew he was a potential Surgebinder, and just assumed his abilities came from the Honorblade. His spren was obviously hurt on the intervening years, but bounced back once he swore the right Oaths. We've seen Syl revive unharmed once Kaladn spoke the next Oaths. Of course its been years with Szeth's spren comatose, so it may be why s/he is so shy and hasn't appeared to him yet.

Of course, its just as likely that Szeth bonded a new spren who is just terrified of manifesting, as a spren really needs to be brave to even bond a guy already bonded to an investiture eating/spren killing/always hungry sword.

Still...the idea of a third spren around Szeth seems too much, as we could easily be talking of 4-6 surges. Only thing I know is I'm sorry Szeth's book won't be next, as there are so many mysteries surrounding him. 

Edited February 17, 2018 by WhiteLeeopard

[Isilel]

23 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

 Chanas madness might be related to her obedient nature, and thus she might not want to go back on deals, so I´d give you that.

I suspect that all of the Heralds feel generally compelled to honor their deals, as it would be part of their nature as beings highly invested by Honor. Even after their great betrayal they do cling to certain vestiges of who they used to be. And I still think that Liss is Vedel.

BTW, concerning her body shape - I don't think that Heralds can actually change their appearance by gaining weight, etc. IMHO, they are pretty much fixed. They can let their personal grooming and bearing go, like Jezrien did, but I bet that if somebody made the effort to clean him up, etc., that he would have looked pretty much the same.

23 hours ago, Toaster Retribution said:

But Ishar and Kalak both seems to be in on the "killing Gavilar idea" and as such, one of them could do the deed. Kalak is kind of useless, but I do think that he is able to give Szeth a simple command/pay another assassin. Ishar could defenitely do it. 

As far as we have seen, Ishar trusted Nale and the Skybreakers to deal with such issues. We have no idea what Kalak was or wasn't prepared to do, and if there was a secondary goal to prevent exchange of information and curtail interaction between humans and Parshendi, then just killing Gavilar wouldn't have been enough. Maybe, Nale even hoped that Parshendi would be wiped out for good in a resultant conflict, as they were an obvious risk in the eyes of somebody who thought that he could prevent another Desolation forever.

 

22 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

I think we should be careful of assuming spren all behave the same way because they are from one group. The way I see it each spren type has some characteristics, and tend to have similar views, but thats not a rule, as at the end of the day they are individuals with their own ideas. Syl was obviously a rebel,

True, but the highspren are supposed to be particularly conformist and spren in general are more circumscribed by their natures than humans.

 

17 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

I just think his original spren was his current highspren. <snip>His spren was obviously hurt on the intervening years, but bounced back once he swore the right Oaths. We've seen Syl revive unharmed once Kaladn spoke the next Oaths. Of course its been years with Szeth's spren comatose, so it may be why s/he is so shy and hasn't appeared to him yet.

You say it yourself - we have already seen that. We have seen it with Shallan and in a somewhat different way with Kaladin and now, what? We'll see the very same thing with Szeth for the third time? That would be repetitive and boring. OTOH, we have been told that Nale can somehow disrupt/destroy nascent bonds of the surge-binders from the other Orders and bind them to highspren instead. Why not show us _this_ for a change, eh?

17 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

Of course, its just as likely that Szeth bonded a new spren who is just terrified of manifesting, as a spren really needs to be brave to even bond a guy already bonded to an investiture eating/spren killing/always hungry sword.

Personally, I can't wait to see a ménage à trois between Szeth, Nightblood and his highspren. That should be  hilarious. Indeed, the highspren must be very brave and I kinda hope that she(?) will be entertainingly supercilious as well.

17 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

Still...the idea of a third spren around Szeth seems too much, as we could easily be talking of 4-6 surges.

Why should his former spren be "around"? I am sure that the Skybreakers who have been poached from the other Orders by Nale don't have their initial spren either - that's the whole point of bonding them to the highspren instead!

[platnumkid]

I think the SkyBreakers swapped out Taln's honour blade, i outlined my reasoning in this other

I had discounted the Stone Shaman because I thought it would be too hard for them to infiltrate the guard and make the switch.  I had forgot about the transportation blades which @Calderis correctly pointed out was a flaw in my theory.  However after some thought I stand by my original theory.  If transportation worked as easy as we might imagine the Shamen would have retrieved Jezrien's blade long ago (I dont agree that they have been sent into a state of panic after WoR and haven't bothered to get it, they've been around for over 4000 years.  If one thing can be that central to their philosophy after so much time as to shatter them completely, it would be that they are the guardians of the honour blades, not that the voidbringers are gone for good)

Regarding the more recent posts in this thread:  If Nale wanted Gavilar dead he would just kill him himself, Gavilar clearly was a usurper to the Kholin princedom and I'm sure committed many crimes along the way.  If being paid to deliver a bottle of poison wine while being told it wont actually kill the target constitutes murder in Nale's mind, I'm sure he could think of something for a guy that sleezed his way to the top and plans to return the voidbringers and start a desolation. 

 

[Subvisual Haze]

On 2/17/2018 at 2:34 PM, WhiteLeeopard said:

I just think his original spren was his current highspren. It could be there was no great conspiracy with the Shamans to name Szeth Truthless, they just wanted to protect themselves. Its even possible no-one knew he was a potential Surgebinder, and just assumed his abilities came from the Honorblade. His spren was obviously hurt on the intervening years, but bounced back once he swore the right Oaths. We've seen Syl revive unharmed once Kaladn spoke the next Oaths. Of course its been years with Szeth's spren comatose, so it may be why s/he is so shy and hasn't appeared to him yet.

Of course, its just as likely that Szeth bonded a new spren who is just terrified of manifesting, as a spren really needs to be brave to even bond a guy already bonded to an investiture eating/spren killing/always hungry sword.

Still...the idea of a third spren around Szeth seems too much, as we could easily be talking of 4-6 surges. Only thing I know is I'm sorry Szeth's book won't be next, as there are so many mysteries surrounding him. 

Yeah, now I'm back to leaning towards Szeth's current spren being the same Highspren that he bonded before being declared Truthless.

We may be making the mistake of assuming the Highspren to be perfectly united behind Nale's will.  Sentient spren do have a degree of individuality even within their particular types (Sylphrena for example seems highly unique in her carefree nature relative to other Honorspren).  I suspect Szeth may have originally attracted and bonded a particularly individualistic Highspren that was forming a bond independent of Nale's wishes.

[Isilel]

On 15. September 2018 at 5:50 PM, platnumkid said:

I think the SkyBreakers swapped out Taln's honour blade, 

If so, Nale couldn't have known about it in Edgedancer - even he couldn't have rationalized Taln's return away.

 

On 15. September 2018 at 5:50 PM, platnumkid said:

 

Regarding the more recent posts in this thread:  If Nale wanted Gavilar dead he would just kill him himself, Gavilar clearly was a usurper to the Kholin princedom and I'm sure committed many crimes along the way. 

Nale did speak about "the right of conquest" to Szeth, which would apply here and make it impossible for him to personally kill Gavilar and Jasnah. After all - who could furnish him with proper warrants of execution for them? And as I pointed out earlier in the thread, he also may have thought that interaction between humans and Parshendi could be dangerous and wanted to prevent any further rapprochement.

[+Child of Hodor]

This recent thread got me thinking that it's plausible Taln still has his blade, he merely dismissed it and Hoid gave him a dead blade for the Alethi to steal, so they wouldn't get his Honorblade.