Missing Shardblades With Vorin Church

[Obnoxiousspren]

After listening to the podcast a few weeks ago (the link is below), I thought of another possibility for the locations of the missing Shardblades. The Sons of Honor have already been mentioned I believe, but what if the Vorin Church itself is stockpiling old radiant blades?

OK, to clarify, the whole church probably wouldn't be in on it. But what if some very high members or specific devotaries kept a stash hidden away? We know there are groups that want to return the power of the Church (yes, the Sons of Honor are kinda dumb but it is their goal) and that the church once tried to take over the world during the Hierocracy. What would really help a group that wants world dominance? Yup, Shardblades.

Good supporting evidence for candidacy that I see:

• Big enough group that could potentially hide all these blades and keep them secret
• Influential enough to convince people to hand over Shardblades
• Has been around long enough to have plenty of time to accumulate blades
• Hierocracy supports idea that church would 1) have to at least have some blades to be a threat and 2) have a reason to gather as many blades as possible
• There is a lot we don't know about them, so plenty of room for surprise secrets

(This is additional evidence that I forgot about until a couple days later. It is part of another post a few lines down, but I'll include it here as well.) 

• We also know that Taln showed up to Kholinar with his Honorblade. By the time he got to the Shattered Plains it was switched with a normal blade. We can assume it wasn't switched on the way since Bordin would have noticed if it had been switched out. The most likely time to switch it out without being noticed would have been right after Taln arrives. Who would have had access to Taln right away? The ardents of the Vorin Church who take care of madmen. If they did switch it out they used a Shardblade that there was no record of, which supports the idea that they could have a stockpile.

Problems (and potential ways around them):

• If they had so many Shardblades during the Hierocracy, how were they defeated? (There may have been internal conflicts or they didn't have as many blades as they do currently)
• If there is a group in the Vorin Church that has Shardblades and wants power, they would probably be closely associated with the Sons of Honor. If this is the case, why wouldn't Amaram (a influential member) already have a Shardblade and instead need to murder a bunch of soldiers to get one? (Giving Amaram a Shardblade may have raised suspicions since the history of blades and plates is very closely tracked.)

So what do you think? Likely option? I'm not 100% sold on this at all because we really have no idea at all, but I think there is enough evidence for it to at least be an option.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by Obnoxiousspren
Adding evidence I had forgotten the first time.

[Glaedr Firnen]

I'll have to admit, that is possible, although I'm not very much onboard with that theory. I actually am not all that familiar with the Sons of Honor. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't they trying to bring about the desolations in hopes that the Radiants will also return?

My more likely theory is that all of those Blades just didn't exist. If you remember, when Kaladin "killed" Syl, he didn't make her into a blade first, causing a "deadblade". (Terms in quotations are terminology that I am unsure of.) It is very possible (and I think likely) that many of the Radiants "killed" their spren without forming blades. 

[Calderis]

@Glaedr Firnen that's not disputed. There would definitely have been Radiants that didn't produce blades. But the Feverstone keep vision had 200 Windrunners and 100 Stonewards, all who dropped plate and blades, which per Dalinar is more than double the Shards known in the world. And that was only two orders. 

There are many blades unaccounted for.

Edit: For reference. 

Quote

The scout outside backed his horse up. There looked to be a good two hundred Shardbearers out there. Alethkar owned some twenty Blades, Jah Keved a similar number. If one added up all the rest in the world, there might be enough total to equal the two powerful Vorin kingdoms. That meant, so far as he knew, there were less than hundred Blades in all of the world. And here he saw two hundred Shardbearers gathered in one army. It was mind-numbing.

And that's before another hundred Windrunners drop out of the sky. 

Edited September 20, 2018 by Calderis

[Obnoxiousspren]

@Glaedr Firnen that is a good point that wasn't considered on the Shardcast though, so good job bringing that up.

But yeah there is definitely a very large number unaccounted for.

[Quantus]

If there was a large-scale group behind it, I think Id first look toward the Shin.  As a nation they seem to have retained the most of the ancient knowledge, and were both keeping and training for the Honorblades.

[Stark]

I tend to agree with @Quantus on this subject.  I think if the church, or the Sons of Honor had that many blades, we would have seen something about it by now, as both seem to highly value military might.

 

Link below is a discussion I started on why I think the Shin have the missing blades.

 

Shin have the most Shardblades theory

 

As a further thought, I have been thinking on the shadesmar side-effect of a large concentration of deadeye-blades.  We saw that deadeyes make higher spren uncomfortable, for a variety of really good reasons.  But what if they also make emotion-spren and natural-phenomena-spren uncomfortable too?  Like a dead body would make non-predators wary of entering an area?  If I keep pulling that string of thought, it is conceivable that a massive stockpile of dead-blades and dead-plate would be massively uncomfortable to the spren, possibly leading them to avoid that area.  And we know that SHinovar seems to be devoid of spren from Rysn's interlude.

It would seem to be a valid connection, but I could well be wrong.

 

I would love to read more about your idea that one of Roshar's secret societies has them.  Maybe not the church, but a world spanning secret soceity could be a really good candidate.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Stark

[Quantus]

I think whomever has them, we can make some reasonable speculation on their motives.  The fact that they have not used them already means they either object to their use in general, seek to deprive others of them more to use them themselves in numbers, or they are hoarding them for some specific action at a later date.  On those criteria there are definitely several different factions that could fit.  We cant forget about Ishar, or the skybreakers; I could see motivations for either to try to remove blades from circulation, even before I start imagining Ishar in a subterranean laboratory (lit with creepy torches, of course) experimenting on spren corpses to make horrific FrankenSpirits or drain them of their raw investiture entirely or some such horrible things.   

[Obnoxiousspren]

@Stark I do also agree that the Shin could have a lot of the Blades as well. And I kinda like that connection with the spren not being common there. Of course an oddity with that idea (which also applies to the Vorin Church) is that there was a period of time known as the Shin invasions when they tried to take over the world. Like with the Vorin Church this could be explained fairly simply as either they didn't have as many as they do currrently or the invasion itself was a means of stockpiling. Also (based off Dalinar's vision) we can reasonably assume that the Shin had the Honorblades as far back as the Last Desolation and therefor would have had them during the Shin Invasions. Since the Shin probably had them, they apparently didn't use them for some reason since we don't hear any stories about that.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if the Shin had the Honorblades during their efforts of world domination and didn't use them, then it is also conceivable that they could have a ton of Shardblades and not use them either.

@Quantus I also agree that both of those are likely options for our guilty parties. My argument is not that the Vorin Church is the most likely candidate, just that they are an additional one that hasn't received as much consideration as all the others. If I had to bet on the most likely party, I would probably choose the Skybreakers. They've been around long enough, have the power to accumulate blades and also have a very good reason to possess but not use a bunch of dead Shardblades. My only issue is that if the Skybreakers were collecting blades I think we'd hear stories about Shardbearers being mysteriously murdered and missing Shards.

 

Additional potential evidence I forgot to mention: We know that Taln showed up to Kholinar with his Honorblade. By the time he got to the Shattered Plains it was switched with a normal blade. We can assume it wasn't switched on the way since Bordin would have noticed if it had been switched out. The most likely time to switch it out without being noticed would have been right after Taln arrives. Who would have had access to Taln right away? The ardents of the Vorin Church who take care of madmen. If they did switch it out they used a Shardblade that there was no record of, which supports the idea that they could have a stockpile.

 

[Stark]

55 minutes ago, Obnoxiousspren said:

there was a period of time known as the Shin invasions when they tried to take over the world.

Nice catch!  Part of my theory that I linked is that the Shin invasion was not for the purpose of taking land, as they are notoriously isolationist.  Instead, (And the timeline is not confirmed, so I could be wrong) I think the Shin Invasions were a post-Recreance event the Shin used to capture and remove most of the Shardblades and plates from circulation, as self appointed caretakers of the abandoned weapons.  I think they withdrew after they had captured and shipped as many blades back to Shinovar as possible, ending the invasion into lands they did not even want.

 

Other contributors to my theory have pointed out that Alethkar, the historical land of the Knights, is on the opposite side of the world from Shinovar, so not easily accessible for conquest.  Which may be part of the reason why the greatest known concentration of blades is with the Alethi.

 

As for Taln's blade, I worry that Odium's forces, or one of the Secret Societies have it.

[Solarserpent]

I think Shinovar is neutral ground for the shards. Something agreed to when Men and Odium showed up.

Do we know if the EverStorm can actually penetrate into Shinovar? was it stated in Oathbringer?

[Quantus]

3 hours ago, Solarserpent said:

I think Shinovar is neutral ground for the shards. Something agreed to when Men and Odium showed up.

 

Im not sure that would fit, when they first showed up it was the place given to them (or crafted for them) with their native ecosystem, as a new home.  That's something that would have had to happen at the Shardic level, and at the time Odium and the Humans werent actually aligned (despite how the Singers interpreted it later on). 

 

@Obnoxiousspren Sorry, I wasnt trying to criticize the Vorin Chuch option; this is the first time Ive actually considered the topic and was mostly just thinking my way through the possibilities.  I take it from your comment that my ideas were not all that new to the conversation

Edited September 20, 2018 by Quantus

[Obnoxiousspren]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

Im not sure that would fit, when they first showed up it was the place given to them (or crafted for them) with their native ecosystem, as a new home.  That's something that would have had to happen at the Shardic level, and at the time Odium and the Humans werent actually aligned (despite how the Singers interpreted it later on). 

 

@Obnoxiousspren Sorry, I wasnt trying to criticize the Vorin Chuch option; this is the first time Ive actually considered the topic and was mostly just thinking my way through the possibilities.  I take it from your comment that my ideas were not all that new to the conversation

You're good! The problem with typing is it is so hard to express mood or tone, I wasn't frustrated at all by your comment  The ideas you mentioned were in the podcast I mentioned earlier (the link is in the first post) and so my purpose here is discuss another option that wasn't mentioned at all in that discussion. The possibilities you mentioned are good ones though, although I think if Ishar had the Shardblades he'd be doing a lot more with them in the 'pseudo-holy-war' he's waging. Of course, he is insane, so he's already acting unreasonably and unpredictably...

Going along with your first comment, you are probably on the right track with your reasoning (although we don't know everything about that period). However, there is another big reason why Shinovar wouldn't be a neutral ground for shards. Shinovar wouldn't be neutral ground for Shardblades or Shardplate because those weren't even a thing when it was first settled  

[Quantus]

You whippersnappers and your newfangled "podcasts".  Ill see about listening to one of those as soon as I can get them on my gramophone

 

5 minutes ago, Obnoxiousspren said:

Going along with your first comment, you are probably on the right track with your reasoning (although we don't know everything about that period). However, there is another big reason why Shinovar wouldn't be a neutral ground for shards. Shinovar wouldn't be neutral ground for Shardblades or Shardplate because those weren't even a thing when it was first settled  

I read it as @Solarserpent saying they thought Shinovar was neutral ground for Shards as in the Hexadieties, not shards as in Shardblades & Plate. My mistake.