Fanghur Rahl

I really hope he decides to call it something else. I think 'Ingenuity' sounds ridiculous when used as a proper noun. I think 'Inspiration' sounds much better personally: "I am Ingenuity" vs "I am Inspiration". Tell me the former doesn't sound really dumb...

Maybe. Though the problem with Harmony is that he finds it difficult to do anything because of the conflicting natures of the Shards making him up. I really hope he gets over this problem eventually though.

@Pagerunner Harmony didn’t reject Hoid’s plea for aid; quite the opposite in fact. He said that he’d be willing to help provided Hoid explain the situation to him, which if Hoid had any sense would have immediately sent him ‘running’ to Scadrial’s Shadesmar to talk to him. So it’s entirely possible that Harmony might get involved somehow.

Maybe he was afraid of Ruin? I sure as hell wouldn’t want to make him an enemy under anything but my own terms. Honestly, if it came down to a fight to the death between a fully-powered Ruin and Odium, I don’t see how Ruin could lose. Destroying things is a key aspect of his intent.

I know. But I don’t think there can be any doubt that Endowment heavily influenced how the theology evolved. I’m actually really surprised that Brandon didn’t just make her Endowment by another name; she certainly seems to be.

‘Very little connection to Endowment’? I am utterly baffled at how you came to this conclusion. Because I had literally the opposite conclusion. The way he/she/it were described in Warbreaker, Austre is to Endowment what Domi and Jaddeth are to Devotion and Dominion and the ‘Almighty’ is to Honor. I’m really curious how you missed the connection, because it seemed blatantly overt to me...

Along with the random sound amplifier or whatever it is that Kenton’s dad has? lol.

Didn’t Brandon say somewhere that he was planning to ret-gone slatrification altogether?

So I finally got around to checking out the White Sand graphic novel, and I wasn’t that impressed to be honest, though mostly just because I don’t like the medium. But anyway, one thing that confused me is that after all the Sandmasters but Kenton were killed, Kenton was buried under the sand for what was implied to be a considerable length of time before regaining consciousness. But how the heck could he have survived for hours buried alive? Is this just a plot hole or are Sandmasters able to somehow subconsciously draw ‘life force’ or something out of the sand to keep them alive? Because nothing to that effect was ever explained, at least not in the graphic novel (BTW, if anyone has the prose and would be willing to send me a copy, let me know).

Honestly, that’s pretty much how I’ve always pictured Ambition’s Investiture personally; simply as a multiplier of whatever qualities the person already holds. I guess Endowment could be similar though, though I’m not sure, since implicit in the name ‘Endowment’ is the concept of giving people things which they presumably had previously lacked. If I were to assume that any one Shard doesn’t grant anything novel, it would have to be Ambition though; maybe kind of analogous to how Blue Lantern’s can’t really do much on their own, but when paired with members of other Lantern Corps., they act as amplifiers. Ambition is useless without something to be ambitious about.

Honestly, even though I now know that the Shin are supposed to be basically Caucasian, for literally my entire first read of the first three books I was mentally viewing Szeth as oriental, just because he displays pretty much every common stereotype of that ethnicity, including the use of oriental-sounding honorifics such as ‘-nimi’. And even now I typically just picture the Alethi as dark-tanned Caucasians.

@Calderis @StrikerEZ Then wouldn’t humans technically qualify as well? At least on Scadrial? Since it was implied that the humans that Ruin and Preservation created got their sentience directly from being ‘infused’ for lack of a better term with Preservation’s Investiture rather than merely their biological functions? Mind-brain physicalism does not seem to be true in the Cosmere universe, but at the very least not on Scadrial. That would seem to have an obvious conceptual parallel with Nightblood.

The difference is that you seem to prefer to classify things based on what they do rather than what they are. And fair enough, that can if nothing else be conceptually useful, but it doesn’t capture the true identity of a thing and how it relates to other similar things. The fact that planes and birds can both fly clearly should not be seen as implying that they both belong to the same ‘family’ so to speak. I just look at the sentience/sapience the same way. But ultimately I suppose we’re just arguing semantics at this point. @Gasper I think she probably did. Honestly, that’s really the only way of accounting for it. Most of the features we’ve seen simply would not develop naturally, and certainly not in such a short time. Though honestly, a lot of the novel features kind of strike me as being beneath Cultivation, as they’re extremely whimsical and she strikes me as being very similar to Tindwyl in terms of personality.

I agree, but I’m not quite sure what your point is. The point I was making was that it annoyed me that Brandon uses the label ‘Spren’ to refer to two (at least) entirely different types of beings, making it a ‘polyphyletic’ classification so to speak: fully cognitive entities that inhabit Shadesmar, and what basically amounts to enchanted physical objects that just happen to be sapient. I realize that this frustration stems largely from my scientific background in biology, in which rigorous classification is essential, but if nothing else I think Brandon could have at least differentiated things as different in concept as these. If you want to relegate ‘Spren’ to only refer to cognitive entities that have some measure of cognition, that’s fine. But Nightblood does not match even that. Like I said, he’s just an enchanted sword. Nightblood might CONTAIN a Spren, but I can’t see how one can meaningfully say that he IS a Spren. At least not without making the term so nebulous as to be effectively meaningless.

Yes, they are superficially similar, but fundamentally very different. Not to get on a soapbox, but that’s the difference between the old antiquated Linnaean taxonomic system which was pretty much entirely based on superficial similarities (though to be fair it did get it pretty close, albeit accidentally), and the modern cladistic system which deals in fundamentals.

Agreed. That’s literally not even a blink of an eye as far as evolutionary timescales are concerned. Most likely it’s Cultivation’s handiwork in some way.

That can be handwaved just by saying that Adonalsium wanted it that way; biologically, there is absolutely no way that Singers and humans should be able to successfully hybridize, especially considering that don’t even have the same biochemistry.

It’s a little like classifying both bats, birds, flying insects and pterosaurs in the same group simply because all of them are able to perform true flight, never mind the fact that they couldn’t be much more different otherwise. That’s a common theme I’ve noticed in the Cosmere, but especially on Roshar (spoiler: Roshar does NOT have ‘plants’ or ‘crustaceans’, at least not native to Roshar. Some of their flora and fauna just superficially resemble them). As a biologist, that’s always been a beef of mine. Even though Roshar is arguably the most scientifically advanced world other than Scadrial, they have some of the dumbest classification conventions I’ve ever seen.

Honestly, I still question whether Nightblood should be considered a Spren if the Honorblades aren't though. Sure, Nightblood is at least somewhat sapient whereas the Honorblades at least seem to be mindless. But on the other hand, all Nightblood essentially is is an ordinary steel sword that had a ton of Endowment's Investiture infused into it. It's a physical object that had Investiture (or perhaps a Splinter) put into it, it isn't Investiture manifested in the physical form of a blade like the Shard and Honorblades are. So calling it a 'Spren' seems questionable to me; I personally think it belongs in a category of its own. Because the thing is, regardless of whether it's sentient or not, the Honorblades have much more in common with Sprenblades than they do with Nightblood in terms of their essential natures.

Well if they aren’t Spren, I think at the very least they would certainly qualify as Splinters of some kind, since they are basically distilled manifestations of Honor’s Investiture.

Fair enough, I guess it largely depends on what you mean by ‘think’. I always thought of the non-sentient Spren, or at least some of them, more as mindless forces just following the rules imposed by their natures than semi-sentient animalistic beings. Though I suppose at least some of them probably have cognition comparable to higher mammals.

The only problem is that not all Spren DO have a mind, in fact the overwhelming majority of them do not. So in of itself that is not really a necessary quality. I dunno, like you've said, the Rosharan system is so vague as to be effectively useless in many respects.

I was just wondering, would the Honorblades technically qualify as non-sentient Spren, at least by the extremely broad definition Rosharans use? I would have said no, but Brandon has said that even Nightblood qualifies, and it’s technically nothing more than a normal sword that had a crap-ton of Endowment’s Investiture pumped into it, whereas the Honorblades are basically incarnate Investiture of Honor. So wouldn’t they technically qualify as ‘Spren’ as well, at least inasmuch as Nightblood and Vivenna’s sword does?

I don’t think she did either. But I do personally prefer to believe that at the very least it genuinely was her words that Dalinar heard; a ‘spiritual imprint’ so to speak, that Dalinar heard because he had also begun to forgive himself as well. But I suppose this is a other one of those things that has no canonically ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ interpretation.

But my point is, can we at least be certain that ‘Evi’s’ words “I forgive you” were true? Before she died, did she utter those words or have that thought and then later Dalinar ‘accessed’ them? Or for all we know could Evi have actually died hating him and wishing she never met him?