[OB] Night Watcher Behavior

[Islipperyharp]

Maybe I should pit this on the theories area but I'm not especially confident, so here it goes... Is it possible that the Night Watcher takes something from one person and gives it to another? For example: a guy named George wants to learn to farm buts is a great warrior. The Night Watcher takes his ability so skillfully swing a sword, and gives him the ability to farm. Then Bill comes along and wants to be a great warrior, but has no skill. The Night Watcher offers George's curse, not able to swing a sword, and gives it to Bill (meaning Bill now has Georges ability to swing a sword). Then takes a skill/part of Bills and gives it to someone else. Its a continual pattern and could explain why Cultivation herself had to give Dalinar his specific Curse and Boon as the Night Watcher simply didn't have the ability... Could this be how it works or am I just off?

[digitalbusker]

I'm not sure how we fit the guy who got some cloth to sell and had his vision inverted (from the Baxil interlude) into this framework.

I could see her using her experiences with supplicants as a source of ideas, but I think it's unlikely she is just swapping things out.

For one thing, what are the odds that every single person who seeks the old magic is able to give up something that happens to fit what the next person is going to ask for?

[Islipperyharp]

2 things:

First, The Night Watcher has an insane amount of of these abilities so she can offer almost anything...

Second, it may be possible that physical items or maybe even a business can be the curse. So the cloth could have come from a previous person who, I guess, could have had a living dealing with cloth which may have been taken away... Also it could be that she just has simple material things at her disposal.

[digitalbusker]

On 1/6/2018 at 3:02 PM, Islipperyharp said:

First, The Night Watcher has an insane amount of of these abilities so she can offer almost anything...

In your model, is she making a copy of stuff so she can hand a particular thing out more than once?

[Kered]

From what Cultivation says to the Nightwatcher in OB, I think the simplest explanation is best. 

Cultivation tells Dalinar that she let's the Nightwatcher hold court here so she can better understand human nature. I think the boon/curse thing is just the Nightwatcher's attempt to understand and navigate human nature and desire. And sometimes she just get's it totally wrong, which would happen if she's not well versed in it. This is also evidenced when Dalinar asks for forgiveness and the Nightwatcher has trouble understanding the concept, instead she tries to offer him tangible gifts like shards, gems, and Nightblood. 

So sometimes the Nightwatcher gives these crazy curses to people(the inverted sight), and thinks in her own twisted way that it somehow correlates with the gift. As seen in the text, people think that creature that can literally grant boons and curses must have wisdom. That humans understanding can't comprehend the actions of such a being. When in actuality the Nighwatcher is really just trying to match curses with bones with what she little she knows of humans.

You also have to consider that the sample of people the Nightwatcher see's probably isn't a good representation for the society of Roshar as a whole.  

 

Edited January 17, 2018 by Kered

[Weltall]

Adding to the implausibility of the Nightwatcher's boons and curses being some sort of storehouse from past visits is Lift. How precisely does 'the ability to convert food directly into Investiture' come about under your idea? There's also the question of what happened to the first person to visit the Nightwatcher: If she doesn't have anything 'stored up' from previous transactions then how is she supposed to give a boon?

You're trying to explain what happened with Dalinar but you're making this more complex than it needs to be. The Nightwatcher is a spren and consequently doesn't understand certain aspects of the human condition. Dalinar wants something she doesn't understand and so doesn't know where to even begin in the boon-granting department, so Cultivation steps in because she used to be human and does understand.This is in fact pretty much what she explains to Dalinar and there's no reason to assume she's misleading him there. That stepping in directly gave her a brilliant opportunity to engage in some Shardic Chessmastery with Odium was a nice side benefit.

[red032]

4 hours ago, Weltall said:

Adding to the implausibility of the Nightwatcher's boons and curses being some sort of storehouse from past visits is Lift. How precisely does 'the ability to convert food directly into Investiture' come about under your idea?

I think Lift was the result of another prunning from Cultivation. She is too much a wildcard for the Nightwatcher to create.
 

 

[Isilel]

13 hours ago, Kered said:

You also have to consider that the sample of people the Nightwatcher see's probably isn't a good representation for the society of Roshar as a whole. 

Apparently, visiting the Nightwatcher is pretty widespread among the Emuli. In the "Baxil" interlude in WoK, his cousin, who is the other dude working for Shalash, says that his whole family has done it and Baxil himself thinks about it as something that is commonly done. So, her sample is rather representative for Emuli society and gets less so with geographical distance.