Szeth and his "cleansing" of the Shin

[WasingtheWhy]

We know that Szeth wants to "cleanse" the Shin leaders, who falsely named him Truthless. (What a weird group of words) That's his Skybreaker quest. I guess my thoughts immediately go to, how many of the Honorblades do they still have? We know that they don't have Jezrien's, Nale's, or Ishar's for sure. Taln's could literally be anywhere. There are still a few Heralds unaccounted for. So if we assume that the Shin still have 6 Honorblades, Szeth might be in for a lot of trouble if he goes in there like a tempest. Granted, Nightblood gives him a huge advantage, and he will possibly have Kaladin with him, since Dalinar wants Kal to go meet with Ishar in Shinovar, but that could still mean a lot of trouble for our troubled heroes.

Also, the Shin stone shamans are apparently hard cases of the highest order. Szeth mentioned that if he died wielding Jezrien's Honorblade, that the stone shamans would take it back. He seemed pretty confident about that. So we are talking, theoretically, that there is an entire order of people as martially capable as Szeth, trained in Surges (even if they don't have any, which they might), that are competent enough to possibly take on Radiants toe-to-toe. That is a very interesting concept.

Am I alone in being suddenly very interested in Shinovar and what is going on with the Shin people?

[Leuthie]

I've been interested in Shin for a while. It's the designed safe haven for Ashyn humans, protected from the Highstorms with similar flora and fauna to Ashyn. It's where the Heralds, or someone else, decided to hide the Honorblades. It's a culture that doesn't step on stone. It's a culture that punishes someone who claims the Knights Radiant are returning by giving him an "oathstone" and an Honorblade to be a full slave to whoever holds the stone.

Really. Szeth made me want to know what kind of kooks run the place.

[yulyulk]

I've been fascinated by Shinovar since the Szeth prologue. Nothing about it makes sense. Somehow they were training with honorblades while the rest of Roshar was like "lol what is a knight radiant? Is the stormfather a herald?"...warriors are supposed to be the lowest of the low in Shin society yet they've made multiple attempts in the past to conquer Roshar...and why do they revere stone?!

[+robardin]

52 minutes ago, yulyulk said:

I've been fascinated by Shinovar since the Szeth prologue. Nothing about it makes sense. Somehow they were training with honorblades while the rest of Roshar was like "lol what is a knight radiant? Is the stormfather a herald?"...warriors are supposed to be the lowest of the low in Shin society yet they've made multiple attempts in the past to conquer Roshar...and why do they revere stone?!

Not only that, and not only had Szeth trained with all the Honorblades that they had (thus, "all ten Surges"), but it was somehow a penalty levied on his entire family.

Watching Gavinor play with Dalinar,

Quote

...Szeth was reminded again of his own childhood spent playing with the sheep. A simple time, before his family had been given to the Honorblades. Before his gentle father had been taught to kill. To subtract.

His father was still alive, in Shinovar. Bearer of a different sword, a different burden. Szeth’s entire family was there. His sister, his mother. It had been long since he’d considered them. He let himself do so now because he’d decided he wasn’t Truthless. Before, he hadn’t wanted to sully their images with his mind.

How large was Szeth's family? Were all eight of the Honorblades remaining to them assigned to someone in Szeth's family?

And if so, was that an honor (ha), or some kind of penalty?

If it was a penalty, as Szeth doesn't seem to consider it as a good thing that happened, it doesn't appear to be the case that that burden being laid on his family was related to Szeth's being named Truthless, per a WoB:

Quote

Questioner

Are all Truthless given Honorblades when they're cast out, or is Szeth a special case?

Brandon Sanderson

Szeth is a special case.

Salt Lake City ComicCon 2017 (Sept. 21, 2017)

So if an individual being named Truthless did not endow them with an Honorblade (much less training in "all ten Surges" with all eight Blades, as Szeth had done), what did? Apparently, Szeth's family were designated Honorblade guardians, who then trained to use all of them while being the specific guardian of one of them, and that burden was retained by Szeth even after being named Truthless. Meaning, he was already the bearer of Jezrien's Blade when he "raised the alarm" about the Voidbringers and the oncoming (True) Desolation and was deemed to have been wrong.

Later in RoW, Szeth goes (even more) off the mentals rails when he sees that Ishar has possession of the Bondsmith Honorblade, who then taunts him with the story (true or not) that his father had yielded up the Blade willingly to him whille "thanking me for letting him die". Quite possibly a complete lie, as the Shin's keeping of the Honorblades did NOT include "surrendering" them back  to the Heralds on demand:

Quote

“My people,” Szeth shouted, “were not going to return your weapons to you. We kept your secrets, but you lie if you say my father gave you that Blade!”

All right; but that also then raises the question of how/when did Nale get his back, and from who?

[Frustration]

8 minutes ago, robardin said:

All right; but that also then raises the question of how/when did Nale get his back, and from who?

Szeth talkks of one being stolen, probably Nales.

[+robardin]

22 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Szeth talkks of one being stolen, probably Nales.

Right, but until that scene with Ishar and Szeth, I'd been thinking that Nalan went back and "reclaimed" his Blade as a Herald's right to do so. Or that the Blades were left unattended or unbonded somewhere in Shin, perhaps stuck in the ground where the Heralds had originally abandoned them, until one of them was given to a Truthless who had been Especially Bad for some reason, and Nale just kind of popped in and snatched it (since as a Skybreaker himself of the Fifth Ideal, he could fly in even without his old Honorblade, which they probably wouldn't be expecting).

In those few passages, it now seems that Szeth and his whole family had been Honorblade guardians, and that Szeth had been the bearer of the Windrunner Blade before being made Truthless rather than as a consequence of it. And that they were specifically charged not to yield up their Blade to the Herald who once wielded it.

So when Szeth recalls "one of them" (Nalan's) being "stolen" (or was it "gone missing"), how did that happen? Did he have to kill or force the previous bearer to yield it up, or did it happen long enough ago that the Shin practice of "giving a family to the Honorblades" only began after Nale took his Blade back?

 

[WasingtheWhy]

Hard to say whether Nale would straight up commit murder to get his blade back, considering his whole Judge Dredd thing of "I am the law!". But it does make one wonder whether he would sneak in and steal it either.

And it's been alluded to (I can't recall where, but I SWEAR I remember reading it somewhere) that the Honorblades have a lot more power than people think. So it's also possible that Nale was just able to summon it back to himself because it was gifted to him by Honor.

The Shin also had Radiants in the past. But again, it's hard to say whether those were anomalies in the Shin culture. They could have bonded with spren against the wishes of their elders, or whoever, and then left. If it was okay to bond spren, though, then there might be Radiants in Shinovar already. Which will make it tougher on Szeth if he plans on going in there in a nerd rage.

Which brings me to the stone shamans. How awesome must this group be? They've gotta be like trained from the get-go to be like if Jackie Chan and John Wick had a baby that was trained by Yoda on the edge of a volcano or something. Szeth, I am sure, is aware of their capabilities, but anyone he might bring with him won't be. As capable as Kaladin is, he will straight up underestimate the Shin, and get his tail handed to him.

It should make for an interesting section of the book, to say the least. 

[Infinity Sliver]

I mean,the entire reason he sided with the Singers was cause he decided they were the original owners of the land. So he could use that reasoning,him been to original owner of his Honorblade,to reclaim it,regardless of if he had to commit murder no?

[StanLemon]

21 hours ago, yulyulk said:

I've been fascinated by Shinovar since the Szeth prologue. Nothing about it makes sense. Somehow they were training with honorblades while the rest of Roshar was like "lol what is a knight radiant? Is the stormfather a herald?"...warriors are supposed to be the lowest of the low in Shin society yet they've made multiple attempts in the past to conquer Roshar...and why do they revere stone?!

RoW makes Stone Shamanism make a lot more sense to me after Venli's chapters. Stone has a memory of the whole of Roshar

[Shob the Voidbringer]

7 hours ago, WasingtheWhy said:

And it's been alluded to (I can't recall where, but I SWEAR I remember reading it somewhere) that the Honorblades have a lot more power than people think. So it's also possible that Nale was just able to summon it back to himself because it was gifted to him by Honor.

normally, i would ignor this, but the heralds do still have a connection to their honorblade, this is proven when ishar dismisses and resummons his blade to get past a block, without the limit of ten heartbeats between summons, so while it's still unlikely that this happened, it is good to look into it.