Are the Thunderclasts spren or singer?

[Honorless he/him]

What are the Thunderclasts? From Dalinar's flashbacks we see a Corrupted spren dive into the stone under the Purelake and afterwards a Thunderclast rises from the lakebed. In Thaylen City, Venli describes the Thunderclast as twisted Singers. Which one is it, are they Voidspren or are they like the Fused, once Singers but then changed by Odium? 

[Pagerunner he/him]

39 minutes ago, R J said:

What are the Thunderclasts? From Dalinar's flashbacks we see a Corrupted spren dive into the stone under the Purelake and afterwards a Thunderclast rises from the lakebed. In Thaylen City, Venli describes the Thunderclast as twisted Singers. Which one is it, are they Voidspren or are they like the Fused, once Singers but then changed by Odium? 

There were two different spren in the flashback in question. First was Sja-Anat's spy, which was described as a face with red eyes or as a small red dot while it was moving. And second was its "escort," a shadowy humanoid figure, six feet tall, which is the one that dove into the ground and became a thunderclast.

[Karger he/him]

11 minutes ago, R J said:

What are the Thunderclasts? From Dalinar's flashbacks we see a Corrupted spren dive into the stone under the Purelake and afterwards a Thunderclast rises from the lakebed. In Thaylen City, Venli describes the Thunderclast as twisted Singers. Which one is it, are they Voidspren or are they like the Fused, once Singers but then changed by Odium? 

I think they are like fused.  We know from Adolin's and Dalinar's PoVs that they are intelligent and twisted singers(fused) are really a kind of spren by the rosharan lexicon. 

[Turos he/him]

Do we know what kind of spren/fused makes a thunderclast, by chance? Breaking down the name, 'clast' means a fragment of rock detritus, so a chunk of a larger piece of rock that broke off a larger pre-existing section of stone due to weathering and erosion. Then we can look at the word 'pyroclastic' which translates to 'broken by fire'. The term 'pyroclast' could be derived from the previous adjective to form a noun to describe one chunk of this 'fire-broken' stone.

Should we then infer that the name 'thunderclast', while a mix of language conventions, carries the same idea? Are they 'thunder-broken', as the spren are related to thunder directly by nature or appearance? Perhaps instead they are 'clasts' that act thunderously, towering over men and stomping around. The use of 'clast' is beyond normal lingo and falls into geological jargon. Do we go too far to assume that the name was at least devised by some geologist or scientist, and thus the former of the two origins is more likely? (I'm sure Brandon could have simply thought it sounded cool, but maybe there's more of a reason, and regardless if the origin is simply the author's preference for kicks and giggles, it still likely sheds light on the nature of the creature, and in turn the spren.

I think the spren must be related to a lightning surge somehow.

Edited April 21, 2020 by Turos
Typos...

[Eternal Khol he/him]

i think thunderclasts are Fused that have gone crazy.

like beyond crazy.

and now instead of inhabiting a Singer they use Stone

 

we know that some of the Fused are crazy and still use Singer bodies

but maybe once they pass a certain threshold of craziness, Odium twists them even further to be able to inhabit stone

Edited April 21, 2020 by Eternal Khol

[The Cardinal of Death]

its possible its both simply a thunderclast could just be a mass of sentient investiture wether that be a mind kept going threw absorbtion of power or the power that gained a mind on its own animating stone remember realmatically splinters and cognitive shadows are pretty close to one another being so if a shadow could do it a spren should be able to do something similer which assuming the vision are accurate  we have seen  they main thing is likely the source of the power both coming from odium because i kinda doubt a radiant spren could even begin to attempt something like that 

[Honorless he/him]

On 4/22/2020 at 3:25 AM, Eternal Khol said:

i think thunderclasts are Fused that have gone crazy.

like beyond crazy.

and now instead of inhabiting a Singer they use Stone

 

we know that some of the Fused are crazy and still use Singer bodies

but maybe once they pass a certain threshold of craziness, Odium twists them even further to be able to inhabit stone

But we see Odium interacting with two Thunderclasts during the Thaylen City battle, they seem more sane than the Fused

[Eternal Khol he/him]

3 hours ago, R J said:

But we see Odium interacting with two Thunderclasts during the Thaylen City battle, they seem more sane than the Fused

Maybe they’re not crazy. 
but I do think they’re twisted singers or fused

the way they become the Stone is described like a Spren getting trapped in a gemheart.

along with this quote

“Among the waiting spirits were two larger masses of energy—souls so warped, so mangled, they didn’t seem singer at all.”
 

Venli’s train of thought seems like “These poor things have been twisted so much they don’t even look like us anymore”

Edited May 1, 2020 by Eternal Khol

[+Harrycrapper]

Pulled from the Coppermind:

Quote

Thunderclasts are enormous stone beasts, easily five or six times larger than a person, with their hands alone being six feet long.^[1][2] They take a skeletal, humanoid form, with long limbs that end with spiky, clawed fingers. On their chests, they have rib-like protrusions, and there are ridges running along their backs.^[4] Their heads are narrow and arrow-like, with glowing red eyes.^[4][5]

The thunderclast proper, however, is a singer soul. The potential thunderclasts are far more powerful than their Fused kinsmen, and much more twisted, to the point where they barely resemble their species. When they desire to take on a physical form, they sink into the stone and animate it, ripping themselves out in the humanoid form.^[3] As such, they retain some qualities of the material they take on, like the color or a covering of moss or fungus.^[4]

It's possible that there are other types of Cognitive entities that can create thunderclasts, as a spren is also seen at one point plunging into the ground right before a thunderclast rips itself out.^[4]

As to why they're more powerful, maybe the more a Fused gives their passion to Odium, the more twisted they become but also more powerful? And maybe Odium gets more direct control over them similar to Ruin and the amount of spikes someone has in them?

[+robardin he/him]

1 hour ago, Harrycrapper said:

Pulled from the Coppermind:

As to why they're more powerful, maybe the more a Fused gives their passion to Odium, the more twisted they become but also more powerful? And maybe Odium gets more direct control over them similar to Ruin and the amount of spikes someone has in them?

I think they're Odium's equivalent to the Heralds: limited in number, perhaps even fixed by the Oathpact, or whatever made it so that there were ten Heralds and not more. Like the Heralds, they are especially powerful lieutenants who were originally mortal (peering into the Cognitive Realm, Venli sees their enormous spirits are "barely recognizable as singers" - which means they are still recognizable as singers, but heavily modified), and who can be destroyed physically but then can later resume physical form again. Odium referred to two of them by name at Thaylen Fields.

One of them was killed by Szeth with Nightblood, short-circuiting the cycle of its returning to the CR and being able to form again later, which shocks Team Odium.

Perhaps this factors into how Moash was given that golden-white dagger to kill Jezrien? The obvious question has always been, if Odium could procure such a weapon that could short-circuit a Herald's rebirth cycle for a "final death", why only then when there have been so many Desolations before? Perhaps it was only possible with the removal of a Thunderclast spirit from the board. And requiring a human to do it (instead of a singer) could also be part of the "fine print" of the Oathpact, i.e., the Fused all have voidspren in them and as such, are not allowed to do something that would fully destroy a Herald (just as the Heralds and Radiants could not truly destroy the Thunderclasts in the past).

[+Harrycrapper]

7 hours ago, robardin said:

I think they're Odium's equivalent to the Heralds: limited in number, perhaps even fixed by the Oathpact, or whatever made it so that there were ten Heralds and not more. Like the Heralds, they are especially powerful lieutenants who were originally mortal (peering into the Cognitive Realm, Venli sees their enormous spirits are "barely recognizable as singers" - which means they are still recognizable as singers, but heavily modified), and who can be destroyed physically but then can later resume physical form again. Odium referred to two of them by name at Thaylen Fields.

One of them was killed by Szeth with Nightblood, short-circuiting the cycle of its returning to the CR and being able to form again later, which shocks Team Odium.

Perhaps this factors into how Moash was given that golden-white dagger to kill Jezrien? The obvious question has always been, if Odium could procure such a weapon that could short-circuit a Herald's rebirth cycle for a "final death", why only then when there have been so many Desolations before? Perhaps it was only possible with the removal of a Thunderclast spirit from the board. And requiring a human to do it (instead of a singer) could also be part of the "fine print" of the Oathpact, i.e., the Fused all have voidspren in them and as such, are not allowed to do something that would fully destroy a Herald (just as the Heralds and Radiants could not truly destroy the Thunderclasts in the past).

If anything, I'd think the Unmade are Odium's equivalent to Heralds, not Thunderclasts. The Fused preceded the Oathpact, so I don't think it would have any impact on the amount of Fused there are. That's likely limited to willing Singer Cognitive Shadows and how much power Odium is willing to relinquish; if he gives up too much Honor and Cultivation could overpower him more easily. That balance may have shifted since Honor is dead, we could very well see new Fused before the series is concluded. Also, there's a bit of a difference between what Nightblood does to anything it "destroys" compared to what Moash did to Jezrien. Nightblood destroys things on all three realms, whereas what Moash did was more akin to capturing a Spren in a gemstone. Jezrien is likely to not be entirely dead, he's trapped like Dalinar trapped Nergaoul. As for the dagger that did it, I think that it's composed of Odium's Godmetal and he wasn't invested in the system enough for it to form before Aharietiam, that's just speculation though.