dsplaisted Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 From the back cover of Words of Radiance: It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves. They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures. One would think that Shallan's broken soul would be the result of killing her mother (and then later father). However, Shallan was already surgebinding- it's why her mother tried to kill her in the first place. Is a broken soul a prerequisite for spren bonding/surgebinding? Was Shallan's soul was already broken when her mother tried to kill her? I think the picture she paints in chapter 45 in her discussion with Wit is interesting here. In that picture Shallan and her family definitely aren't broken. It is beautiful because it could have been. It should have been. Why didn't it happen that way? In her description: Mother still lives The people my mother knew . . . Dreder . . . never came to our home. Mother loves me. It seems like her mother didn't love her in the first place (kind of obvious I guess if she was willing to kill her), and that's what caused Shallan's initial psychological trauma which allowed her to originally gain her powers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seloun Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 I believe there's several other points that imply that a broken soul is necessary for the bond. One I can think of top of my head is what Syl says (in her semi-coherent state) in 'Bridges' (occurs right before the chasm chapters); Kaladin says he's broken, unlike the heroes of old, and Syl basically tells him that actually they all were broken. This leads to an interesting theory...what if the Recreance was caused by spren _exploiting_ this requirement? What if they were intentionally causing people to 'break' to allow for more bonds? This is based on zero direct evidence, but it's hard to think of something so terrible that you could get every single Windrunner to break their oaths and (assuming the visions are reliable) apparently not even feel bad about it. There is a comment in one of the Diagram epigraphs which implies one of the orders wouldn't have left, because their bond was somehow different, and that the order is hiding out amongst the Shin. This may mean the Stone Shaman are actually full surgebinders (this would certainly explain why Szeth is confident about their ability to retrieve his honorblade). If the Recreance was due to something the spren did, then maybe the difference is what they're bonded to - Stone Shaman sound a lot like Stonewards, who would be Taln's group...and possibly bonded to him? Maybe this is the subterfuge by the 10th order? What if it's not actually the honorblades the spren bonds are replicating, but a bond between humans and Heralds? The Stone Shaman in this case don't trust any other (spren-based) surgebinding since they're not 'pure' bonds; what Szeth might have done is demonstrate proto-Skybreaker surgebinding (assuming that's what he'll be). If the honorblade somehow interrupt spren-based bonds (either priority or something; Kaladin does hold Szeth's honorblade, but it's the one that's aligned with his abilities in the first place) maybe that explains why they kick out Truthless with an Honorblade - which he's not allowed to give up, since doing so might allow him to progress in along his Nahel bond. He's not allowed to kill himself because dying releases his spren (this involves yet another hypothesis, that a surgebinder that dies releases his spren rather than killing his spren - otherwise there should be a huge number of shards floating around). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aleksiel Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 Shallan's soul had to be broken before she was able to bond with Pattern and I am really disappointed we didn't learn how this happened. Also, what powerful truths did she say to her spren to get to the third Words that apparently allow sprens to become Shardblades? I find the way her story was handled to be unsatisfying because too many important parts were missing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
learhpa Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 Shallan's soul had to be broken before she was able to bond with Pattern and I am really disappointed we didn't learn how this happened. Also, what powerful truths did she say to her spren to get to the third Words that apparently allow sprens to become Shardblades? I find the way her story was handled to be unsatisfying because too many important parts were missing. Yeah, I was really, really puzzled by this. I feel like everything that happened after her mother's death is explained, but I'm baffled as to why she was *already* bonded to Pattern at that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
junior Posted March 6, 2014 Report Share Posted March 6, 2014 Yeah, I was really, really puzzled by this. I feel like everything that happened after her mother's death is explained, but I'm baffled as to why she was *already* bonded to Pattern at that time. I suspect that there are still plenty of *additional* truths that Shallan needs to own up to before she comes fully into her powers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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