[OB] New Shardblade Appearance

[dashardie]

I haven't seen this posted anywhere else, yet, so if it has been, please let me know. So I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and I'm not sure if I've stumbled across something incredibly mundane, or perhaps game-changing when it comes to Roshar, Shardblades, Spren, and the Cosmere at large. I am, of course, speaking about Glys. More specifically his form as a shardblade. When Renarin shows Adolin his Glysblade for the first time, it is described as having a rippled look to the metal, and it's shape is similar to that of a katana. "He took a deep breath, then stretched his hand to the side and summoned a long glowing Shardblade. Thin, with almost no crossguard, it had waving folds to the metal, like it had been forged."  In real life, those ripples come from the forging process of folding and re-folding the metal multiple times. I'm wondering if Glys's nature as being Sja-Anat's "son", the fact that he is a corrupted Truthwatcher Spren, is why his blade looks like it was forged, instead of the typical smooth look most Shardblades have. I could be on to nothing with this, but it seems to me that Glys would be considered "co-opted investiture", and that perhaps in metallic form, corrupted investiture would appear like two different metals forged into one, i.e. the ripple effect. 

ETA - Quote from the book

Edited April 6, 2018 by dashardie

[Willow]

I haven't seen it on this site yet, but it was discussed in the Oathbringer reread on TOR a few weeks ago, during chapters 8 and 9. It's very interesting foreshadowing that there's something different about Renarin and Glys.

[Calderis he/him]

@dashardie I don't remember if it's been brought up on the site but I know I'm not the only one who's brought it up in discord.

I believe the ripples are layers of the two different types of investiture that composes Glys. Essentially a second metal interwoven with the first to create a look like damascus steel. 

[dashardie]

@Willowah yes, that's right! I couldn't remember what jogged my noggin about it, but that was probably it! Definitely some excellent foreshadowing there

@Calderis glad I'm not the only one thinking along those lines, then! It will be interesting to see what ramifications there are/will be throughout the rest of the Cosmere if that's true

 

[Guest Procrastinationspren]

Really interesting catch. Could this be a point in favor of the belief of voidblade existence?

[dashardie]

Thanks @Procrastinationspren! I don't know necessarily about voidblades, since we don't actually know if Voidspren would willingly initiate a bond with a Human... Remember, for the Parsh to change forms, the spren enter their gemheart to form a symbiotic relationship, so as far as we know they can't be summoned to blade form. Also, based on the couple of voidspren we HAVE seen, they don't need the bond to attain sapience which is hella-weird.... That being said, I do have to wonder if the Fused could use the Voidspren in that way... We see with Eshonai that Listeners can use Shardblades (albeit the dead blades, but there's still some kind of bond there....) and later with Venli she essentially has two spren in her gemheart and we don't know yet what she can do with it other than suppress one as needed. 

 

[Lord Meeker he/him]

48 minutes ago, dashardie said:

since we don't actually know if Voidspren would willingly initiate a bond with a Human

Maybe not anymore. They did at one point when they first came to Roshar. They came with surges, spren and brought the void. So they possibly could have at the First Desolation. 

[dashardie]

4 minutes ago, Mraize said:

They came with surges, spren and brought the void

Very true, I agree they did bond with spren of some kind when they first arrived, although whether or not it was voidspren is up for interpretation since spren did exist on Roshar well before humans arrived. I wonder, would the Parsh consider an honorspren (or any other type of "new" spren) a Voidspren since they would only have 2 genders instead of the original 4?

[StrikerEZ he/him]

On 4/7/2018 at 9:47 AM, Mraize said:

Maybe not anymore. They did at one point when they first came to Roshar. They came with surges, spren and brought the void. So they possibly could have at the First Desolation. 

A bit nit-picky, but the humans from Ashyn did not have spren. They used a similar magic that was based on the surges, but only Roshar has spren. But I do agree, it's interesting to think about how they originally used magic before the spren mimicked the Honorblades.

[MountainKing]

1 hour ago, StrikerEZ said:

A bit nit-picky, but the humans from Ashyn did not have spren. They used a similar magic that was based on the surges, but only Roshar has spren. But I do agree, it's interesting to think about how they originally used magic before the spren mimicked the Honorblades.

Every non living thing had a spren counterpart, they're just usually not as intelligent as Rosharan spren.

[Jace21 he/him]

3 hours ago, MountainKing said:

Every non living thing had a spren counterpart, they're just usually not as intelligent as Rosharan spren.

That very much depends how you define spren.

Personally I would say that "spren" as a term only applies to the sentient investiture we have seen on Roshar.

Rosharan people may call other things spren as it is the closest approximation, even when it is something else.

An example would be when Shallan transforms the boat in WoR. It has a cognitive aspect that she communicates with via Pattern but I think saying that cognitive aspect is a "spren" is making the term far more general than it was intended to be.

But since Roshar are just rediscovering their magic system they dont have all the terminology yet.

Edited April 9, 2018 by Jace21

[Leyrann]

On 7-4-2018 at 4:47 PM, Mraize said:

Maybe not anymore. They did at one point when they first came to Roshar. They came with surges, spren and brought the void. So they possibly could have at the First Desolation. 

The spren have created the Nahel bond with the Honorblades as example. The Honorblades are from after the First Desolation (humans turned to Honor after that), so the Nahel bond couldn't possibly exist yet, let alone Shardblades.

[dashardie]

1 hour ago, Leyrann said:

The spren have created the Nahel bond with the Honorblades as example. The Honorblades are from after the First Desolation (humans turned to Honor after that), so the Nahel bond couldn't possibly exist yet, let alone Shardblades.

Well, we know that humans from Ashyn were using some form of Surgebinding, and that has something to do with the First Desolation...what we don't know is how Ashyn surgebinding manifested itself, or how it might look on Roshar...maybe they DID have Shardblades (Dawnshards, anyone?) but perhaps not spren-blades at that point.

[MountainKing]

2 minutes ago, dashardie said:

Well, we know that humans from Ashyn were using some form of Surgebinding, and that has something to do with the First Desolation...what we don't know is how Ashyn surgebinding manifested itself, or how it might look on Roshar...maybe they DID have Shardblades (Dawnshards, anyone?) but perhaps not spren-blades at that point.

On Ashyn they had a disease base magic system.

[Leyrann]

5 minutes ago, dashardie said:

Well, we know that humans from Ashyn were using some form of Surgebinding, and that has something to do with the First Desolation...what we don't know is how Ashyn surgebinding manifested itself, or how it might look on Roshar...maybe they DID have Shardblades (Dawnshards, anyone?) but perhaps not spren-blades at that point.

Shardblades are inspired on the Honorblades.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/216-jordancon-2014/#e6446

Quote

Questioner

What was the reason for choosing the base form of Shardblades as blades, why not another form? Was it because of the spren?

Brandon Sanderson

Why was the base form of Shardblades chosen to as blades, as swords? It is because the Shardblades were devised... They were devised as imitations of the Honorblades, which were created and given to the Heralds. And so since the original pattern was the Honorblades, they were built to feel like the Honorblades.

 

2 minutes ago, MountainKing said:

On Ashyn they had a disease base magic system.

They have a disease based magic system. We have no reason to assume the same was true 10000 years ago. Brandon has said, however, that the viruses and the like that cause the diseases have evolved in-line with the investiture.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/62-firefight-seattle-public-library-signing/#e3086

Quote

Questioner

So I was reading that one of the worlds, I think it was Yolen, is going to be a disease oriented magic?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not Yolen, it's Ashyn...

Questioner

How does that work?

Brandon Sanderson

Viruses and bacteria, various strains of them, have evolved in-line with the investiture on the planet to grant you a magical ability when you catch the disease, because they want you to stay alive long enough to--

Questioner

To transmit it.

Brandon Sanderson

--o transmit it. So it becomes part of the transmission vector. So you have superpowers or whatever-- You can fly as long as you have the common cold, but when you get over it, you can't anymore.

I would personally assume that this will come down to another way to gain access to Surgebinding, possibly with different limits and possibilities than the Surgebinding we know, and I expect both to be toned down versions of the Surgebinding that caused the Cataclysm.

[dashardie]

My guess is that Ashynite surgebinding would result in a different type of manipulation of the same surges. We know that the surges are a natural expression of the laws of nature in the Cosmere, so the possibilities are certainly intriguing. How this ties back to Renarin's Glysblade, though, is beyond me now lol

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On the subject of Ashyn and Surgebinding:

On 2/21/2018 at 7:53 PM, The One Who Connects said:

Just gonna toss myself into the mix here.

Quote

"Using powers that we have been forbidden to touch. Dangerous powers, of Spren and Surges."

Regarding the point that you were trying to prove, this passage from the Eila Stele means nothing.

1. All it says is that they were binding Surges, and that the Singers knew that Spren could grant those powers. It doesn't imply anything about how the humans were accessing the powers, only that the powers they had looked similar.
2. In that same vein, the Singers knew about the Nahel Bond, and the powers it granted. In the face of that, the first assumption when seeing people using those powers would be to assume that they had a Nahel Bond. The Parshendi do just this in WoK Kaladin does the "draw arrows to shield" moment, but had that been Szeth instead of Kaladin, they would've made the same assumption, and been wrong.
3. See "Surges" below.

Quote

Okay, let's forget about the spren, what about the Surges mentioned then?

The "Surges" as we currently know them are simply a way to tap into the fundamental forces: gravity, the electromagnetic spectrum, the weak/strong force, etc... and they are far from the only way to do that.

• The Oathgates probably operate on the Surge of Transportation, and teleport people to elsewhere. Aon Tia does exactly the same thing, and teleports people elsewhere. The Elantrians even had metal plates to take you to predetermined locations, like an Oathgate.
• There's a Yolish Lightweaving as well as the Rosharan version using the Surge of Illumination.
• Renarin heals almost instantly from being crushed with the Surge of Progression, while Miles heals his legs as they break with Feruchemical Gold.
• We have an Aon whose definition includes the word "illumination," another with "cohesion," and yet a third with "transportation." Would it be too far to assume that these could probably do similar things to the Surges they share names with?

To an outsider, these would probably look like the same powers(Elantrians even glow, like Surgebinders ). And they probably are manipulating the same underlying fundamental force, but with entirely different magic systems.