Thunderclasts vs Chasmfiends

[Andrew the Great]

So, I've heard a lot of claims that Thunderclasts = Chasmfiends. I'm inclined to believe that this isn't the case, as Thunderclasts apparently have hands, while Chasmfiends are apparently more crustacean. However, they also seem to be quite related. The descriptions are similar, the blood is apparently purple for both of them... I suppose we could have a Parshedi/Parshmen thing going on here.

So I guess my question is, does anyone have any thoughts on what it is that distinguishes Thunderclasts from Chasmfiends, or if they're the same, why and/or how?

[Shivertongue]

Simple.

Chasmfiend's pupate, which means they undergo a process of tranformation. We never see what they pupate into, however, because the pupating chasmfiends are always hacked open and killed for their gemhearts.

If they were allowed to finish pupating, I'm betting they would form into a Thunderclast.

To put it more simply:

Chasmfiend = Caterpie

pupating Chasmfiend = Metapod

Thunderclast = Butterfree

[Andrew the Great]

Wow. The second time in 2 hours I've had something explained to me in a pokemon analogy. Not to mention all the talk lately about Codex Alera being based off of pokemon.

It's definitely a possibility. I have to wonder, though, why there aren't at least SOME thunderclasts around. I mean, first of all, the Alethi and Parshendi have apparently only been on the Shattered plains for the last several years. It seems that Chasmfiends that pupated before that would still be around as thunderclasts, especially since the Alethi don't mention killing any thunderclasts (though admittedly, it's possible that they think that thunderclasts = chasmfiends, and just didn't think anything of the differences). Also, it seems like they would eventually have Chasmfiends pupate on the really isolated plateaus that can't be accessed via bridge or jumping. Then we'd have thunderclasts as well. So why no thunderclasts?

I suppose this could be akin to asking why the Parshmen aren't all Parshendi, but at the same time, if pupating is the means by which chasmfiends become thunderclasts, it seems odd that they pupate, but there aren't any thunderclasts.

Although maybe they're hidden in the stone of the chasms - in the prelude it mentions that the ground is torn where thunderclasts had ripped themselves free. If thunderclasts can become part of the stone, or buried in it somehow, that would explain a lot (and also explain the need for them to rip themselves free, incidentally).

[Silus - Shard of Flame]

I got the impression from the Prelude that Thunderclasts were made out of stone and were formed from it by some kind of magic.

[Andrew the Great]

If they aren't made from stone, they're skin is remarkably similar. The second sentence describes it as an enormous stone beast. But it could be metaphorical, too. Also, it's entirely possible that the chasmfiends could develop a stone shell of some sort. After all, thunderclasts apparently bleed, which hints that they're more than just stone. Unless it's other voidbringers that have purple blood, but Kalak doesn't mention any others aside from thunderclasts. Although there are apparently some Parshendi around (based entirely off of the comment about orange blood). That was like four or five qualifying sentences in a row. Wow.

Thunderclasts appear to be sentient before joining the fighting.

The stone ridges and mounds bore numerous scars. Some were shattered, blasted-out sections where Surgebinders had fought. Less frequently, he passed cracked, oddly shaped hollows where thunderclasts had ripped themselves free of the stones to join the fray.

They rip themselves free to join the fray, as opposed to being ripped free. They could still be created by magic while in the stone, then rip themselves free, though. I still hold that they are more than just stone, though, as the only thing we've seen that bleeds purple is a chasmfiend, and they are remarkably similarly described to thunderclasts. That, and the presence of purple blood in the Prelude, make it likely that thunderclasts bleed, though I admit I can't prove it.

[Zas678]

That's what I gathered too. And from the vision Gavilar has of Nohaden, with those giant creatures of stone.

850: There aren't stones. They're creatures.Massive creatures, easily five or six times the size of a person, their skin dull and grey like granite. They had long limbs and skeletal bodies, the forelegs-or were tehy arms-set into wide shoulders. The faces were lean, narrow. Arrowlike.

[Andrew the Great]

Although in favor of chasmfiends and thunderclasts not being related, Dalinar doesn't think to himself even once that the thunderclasts look like chasmfiends, or mistake them for chasmfiends. So thus, despite the incredibly similar descriptions, we have to assume that they don't look as alike as I at least had presumed they did.

That said, they're described so similarly it has to be intentional. Either they're related in some way, or Brandon wants us to think they are.

[Ryan]

Remember the scene where Dalinar talks to Jasnah through spanreed, and Shallan copies a drawing from a book? How the image looked like a chasmfiend, but not exactly so? How Jasnah said the book called it a Voidbringer?

Page 415:

The picture re solved into a depiction of a tall shadow looming over some buildings. Hints of carpace and claws showed in the thin ink lines, and shadows were made by drawing finer lines close together.

Danlan set it aside, getting out a third sheet of paper. Dalinar held the drawing up, Adolin at his side. The nightmarish beast in the lines and shadows was faintly familiar. Like...

"It's a chasmfiend," Adolin said, pointing. "It's distorted

[Andrew the Great]

It makes sense, but this also confuses me even more. After all, Dalinar was there. He saw that picture, which I agree is likely of a thunderclast. And yet he didn't appear to recognize the thunderclasts later on in his vision.

[Ryan]

To be fair, Dalinar was rather preoccupied with other things. He was frantically trying to get information from the king, and also to get him to write his book. He was also so stunned by the destruction he saw before him that he momentarily forgot to stay in character. I wouldn't fault him for not remarking on the similarity of thunderclasts to chasmfiends.

[Andrew the Great]

I'd probably be slightly more forgiving of the lack, except that Dalinar is looking right at a Thunderclast and describing it. You'd think that at that point, the similarity would occur to him. Though granted, he is witnessing the destruction of Kholinar. He's a little traumatized.

[Chaela]

Some really good points here. Clearly BS must have created giant pupating insects-things that humans rarely if ever allow to fully develop for a reason. (Aside from the gemheart/war-causing aspects) It's too cool a concept to let go unexplored for the whole series.

For now, I'm in favor of the thunderclast theory. When do humans first become aware of the chasmfiends? I think I remember that the Parshendi told them. If so, does that mean that chasmfiends began showing up in the few years leading up to the new Desolation that is just starting? (Also right when the Parshendi themselves show up?)

Perhaps the Parshendi have been harvesting them and using them to distract the Alethi and prevent them from preparing for the Desolation. I have a feeling that there may be some chrysalises that will come to term next book. (Especially now that the Herald has shown up) Perhaps they've been hanging out and maturing in the unexplored areas of the Shattered Plains?

Also, really enjoyed the Pokemon reference!

[Andrew the Great]

I agree that it's most likely that Chasmfiends are Thunderclasts. Even with the scene with Dalinar that I was being picky about, there's too much pointing towards it for me to ignore.

Does anyone else find it interesting that the Parshendi fight to get the gemhearts out of the Chasmfiends when I believe it was mentioned that the Parshendi see the Chasmfiends as some sort of gods? So why kill it and cut it up to get a gem out?

[Rew]

Well, first, as far as I recall, the Alethi are the ones making the assertion that they (Parshendi) consider them (Chasmfiends) gods, and the Alethi aren't exactly that knowledgeable about the foe they face (culturally at least- consider Dalinar's thoughts on male/females). 

Second, if in fact they do consider them gods of some sort, by taking their hearts and cutting them up and wearing little pieces of them in their beards, they could be trying to adopt/imbue themselves with a portion of the Chasmfiend's power or adorn themselves with a protective amulet.  (Ironic then what this does to enable Kaladin to better fight them...)  This sort of thing is represented in many different cultures in our world.

That's just one theory of why they do it.  Without further knowledge of their culture and belief system that's all it will remain...

Another possibility would be that they understand the importance of Stormlight, but because of a lack of mining, etc, this is the only way that they can obtain anything that can capture it.  They do need to power/repair at least a couple sets of Plate...maybe they consider it a willing sacrifice of their gods, again, to make them more powerful in battle.

[jacobfake]

i read the theory somewhere that the Parshendi followed the chasmfiends to the shattered plains to keep killing them, specifically because they didn't want a bunch of rampaging thunderclasts attacking them, which would explain the lack of thunderclasts.

Also the drawing of the voidbringer/ chasmfiend could have been like the artist saw a chasmfiend, heard the descriptions of thunderclasts (in legends) and combined them, or had descriptions of both of them because they both fought in the battle, but thought they were the same creature (was it a good enough drawing that the artist definitely saw something with his/her own eyes?) or could have heard it described both ways because they're the same creature, and that's why the merger type thing was drawn. just alt explanations.

despite this chasmfiend/thunderclast theory having become extremely common, though, the one thing I can't seem to find discussion of is: What about it's implications for the other GreatShells??

[withrye]

I was totally taken by this idea. Chasmfiends are huge and devastating enough; what kind of gigantic horrors would they metamorphose into?? I think thunderclasts would be too tame. I'm thinking an elongated, gem-encrusted body with six 100-foot wings along each side and talons, lots and lots of talons.

[Wonko the Sane]

While this has nothing to do with thunderclasts, Szeth stated that voidbringers were said to have held stormlight perfectly, and chasmfiends, like most greatshells, have a gem growing inside their bodies.

[Argent]

I am re-reading The Way of Kings right now, and just noticed the similarities. I am only on Book II for now, but I came up with pretty much the same theory for pretty much the same reasons:

• Both thunderclasts and chasmfiends have purple blood. Could be a coincidence, but Brandon doesn't have a whole lot of those, being the outliner he is.
• Both have arrowhead-like faces, which I think is a big hint.
• Kalak describes the thunderclast he sees in the prologue as being of skeletal shape. While chasmfiends aren't exactly skeletal, their forms with all those legs/claws could be similar.
• Finally the gemhearts. One thing I noticed just today was that the great chasmfiend Dalinar and Elhokar kill has a giant emerald for a heart, and its eyes are described as being of pure and uniform green - no different shades, no iris, nothing like that. The one Kalak sees has red eyes, but I believe this could easily be due to it having a ruby heart (which is a speculation, it doesn't actually say that). My theory is that since thunderclasts were brought up from stone, possibly by Voidbringing, they need a giant gem (gemheart) as a focus. There seems to be a relationship between certain types of Surgebinding/Voidbringing and the way fabrials work, the two being natural and artificial manifestation of the magic on Roshar. You need gems to hold the Stormlight you use for Soulcasting (and possibly other forms of Surgebinding), so it could be possible that you would need a ton of Stormlight to create a beast as massive as a thunderclast. In addition to all that, we have those spren people can only see around freshly killed chasmfiend. They made me think of fabrials and the spren people trap in them to make them work. Maybe when a chasmfiend dies, the magical energy that kept it going, its spren, goes away. There is obvious some handwaving here, but it feels like puzzle pieces fitting together - we just don't have all the pieces.

[Satsuoni]

Um.. Two things against that theory: One - size. Both the picture and the Dalinar's description show that chasmfiends are much bigger than just 5-6 times the person:

Something dark—something mind-numbingly enormous—rose out of the chasm on thick, chitinous legs. It climbed onto the plateau—not the small plateau where the hunt was supposed to take place, but the viewing plateau where Dalinar and Adolin stood. The plateau filled with attendants, unarmed guests, female scribes, and unprepared soldiers.

The chasmfiend towered like a mountain of interlocking carapace the color of dark violet ink. Dalinar could see why the Parshendi called these things gods. It had a twisted, arrowhead-like face, with a mouth full of barbed mandibles. While it was vaguely crustacean, this was no bulky, placid chull. It had four wicked foreclaws set into broad shoulders, each claw the size of a horse, and a dozen smaller legs that clutched the side of the plateau.

Its claws alone constitute 5-6 human sizes. he picture also shows them towering over the houses. So, unless they shrink - a lot - they should be different creatures.

2nd thing - it is mentioned that thunderclast has hands, not claws:

The monstrosity was vaguely skeletal in shape, with unnaturally long limbs that sprouted from granite shoulders. The eyes were deep red spots on the arrowhead face, as if created by a fire burning deep within the stone. They faded.

Even after all these centuries, seeing a thunderclast up close made Kalak shiver. The beast’s hand was as long as a man was tall. He’d been killed by hands like those before, and it hadn’t been pleasant.

But the chasmfiends are also mentioned to have claws. The eyes are different, too (not stalked, and not even properly formed).

Of course, they can possible transform into something completely different while pupating, but I think they were two separate creatures, both oth the Voidbringer side during the wars, along with night essence.

[Kuri Shardweaver]

It's an interesting theory, but differences in the two creatures don't necessarily eliminate them from being connected. Any living creature that we know of which undergoes a pupate-type metamorphosis generally drastically changes in both size and form. For example, look at the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. The 'end result' is very dissimilar to the original form. This is further compounded upon by any of the 10 million species of beetle, all beginning life as small grubs before transforming into much larger, fascinating creatures.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Thunderclasts were the final form of the chasmfiends, there is much supporting evidence to it, even in the behavior of the chasmfiends. After all, this is what we know about them:

They live down in the chasms, feasting on whatever living material might fall down there, arguably to fuel growth and prepare for its pupating phase. Then, it climbs to the top of a plateau and forms its chrysalis. This part is particularly important for one major reason. As quoted above, Voidbringers were said to hold Stormlight perfectly, and chasmfiends have gemstones of immense size for hearts. Assuming that there is something identical or akin to electricity involved in a highstorm that equates to gathered stormlight, lightning will always strike the tallest available object first. Climbing to the top of a plateau and already being so massive, a pupated chasmfiend would be a veritable magnet for 'stormlightning'.

So arguably, the chasmfiends climb to plateaus to pupate because they need a massive amount of stormlight to complete their transformation into a Thunderclast, and that's the best place to gather it. But of course, along come the humans to hack open their chrysalis, harvest the gemheart, and boom, no Thunderclast. And think about it, even the name 'thunderclast' supports them being born of a supercharged stormlight source such as a massive gemstone. Thunder always follows lightning, after all.

Just my two cents, at least.

[Inkthinker]

Peter should correct me if I'm wrong, but I think chasmfiends are related (taxonomically/geneologically, anyhow) to axehounds. Hence the resemblance. Remember, however, that paintings and illustrations may represent unreliable narration (unless they're Shallan's, in which case it's much less likely, at least from a visual standpoint).

Chasmfiends are WAY BIGGER, of course. And have several times the number of legs (didn't the one that jumped the King's party have 14?), but I think they share a common genetic ancestor.

Thunderclasts, I actually have no idea what they look like, exactly. Somehow I thought they were related to stone.

Chasmfiends are big on my list of stuff to draw. Now that I have some time again, I think maybe I will... gotta get back into the groove soon anyhow.

Edited October 1, 2011 by zas678
Please no swearing.

[Argent]

I thought chasmfiends climbed up the plateaus to "recharge", but the evolution theory makes more sense than that.

[Kuri Shardweaver]

I thought chasmfiends climbed up the plateaus to "recharge", but the evolution theory makes more sense than that.

That's what makes most scientific sense to me (and we all know how much Brandon loves scientific fact-binding). The act of metamorphosis takes an enormous amount of energy, the larval stage of anything will gorge for days on end, increasing vastly in size until it pupates so it has enough calories stored up. However for something the size of a chasmfiend, it would take several villages worth of people to equate enough of a meal as a few branches of leaves for a caterpillar. Back in the day, this probably happened fairly often, but then man got a hold of the Shard/Honorblades, and suddenly devouring a few villages and pupating became a lot harder.

So, evolution rears its head and offers an alternative. We've seen what Kaladin can do with just a few charged chips, so imagine the potential energy of a fully charged gemheart. No way that couldn't fuel a metamorphosis into something like a thunderclast.

Also, Inkthinker, your art is absolutely fantastic, can't wait to see you render a chasmfiend

[Satsuoni]

I still think that jumping orders is a little too much of the transformation, even for a pupation. After all, the chasmfiends are arthropods, and have exoskeleton (from descriptions, i think so). And thunderclasts are described as "vaguely skeletal", suggesting internal bones similar to mammalian structure, including "riblike protrusions" on its chest:

The enormous stone beast lay on its side, riblike protrusions from its chest broken and cracked. The monstrosity was vaguely skeletal in shape, with unnaturally long limbs that sprouted from granite shoulders. The eyes were deep red spots on the arrowhead face, as if created by a fire burning deep within the stone. They faded.

Also, unless the chasmfiends has changed their habits recently, they have pupated there for the last 4000 years or so, but not a single thunderclast has been seen. (Of course, it may be that they actually burrowed somewhere, waiting the Desolation to awaken. But I don't think so).

And the last question : I had an impression that the gem should be exposed to the storm (at least visually) to infuse/charge properly. Are you sure it can charge from inside the beast? Doesn't the pupa shell work as a kind of house, to stop the gem from charging?

[CrazyRioter]

I didn't get the impression that it literally had an internal skeleton just that it's limbs and body were spindly and it had lumps of rock on it's chest that look like ribs.

Also, the things are either made of stone or coated in it, I don't think they fit into any real like taxonomic classifications.