spanreed assasination?

[Beodrakis he/him]

could you theoretically murder someone from a long distance using a spanreed? since they are bonded, and will move the same way, if you were to suddenly stab yourself then move out of the way, could that transfer enough force to kill someone. I think it might, but curious what you guys think.

[Trusk'our he/him]

15 minutes ago, Beodrakis said:

could you theoretically murder someone from a long distance using a spanreed? since they are bonded, and will move the same way, if you were to suddenly stab yourself then move out of the way, could that transfer enough force to kill someone. I think it might, but curious what you guys think.

It's funny- I think that I did a thread on this very topic awhile back. I guess great minds do think alike .

The conclusion I got from basically everyone was that a Spanreen would make a poor weapon of choice for assassination; not only can you not see your target, but Spanreeds probably aren't that durable when trying to stab someone. Plus, the decay involved with distance means that the amount of strength you could put behind your attacks would be reduced.

Personally, I still think that it would be possible, though from a practical standpoint I don't know how effective it would be. Maybe if you handed the Spanreed over to a Horneater bodybuilder it would prove more effective though 

[alder24]

34 minutes ago, Beodrakis said:

could you theoretically murder someone from a long distance using a spanreed? since they are bonded, and will move the same way, if you were to suddenly stab yourself then move out of the way, could that transfer enough force to kill someone. I think it might, but curious what you guys think.

Oh that's a very interesting idea. I think spanreeds can be deadly - but you have to aim them correctly. If you hit eyes or carotid artery you can kill the person on the other side. But it would be almost impossible to actually hit those points, and for every person those points' location would not only be dependent on where exactly they are standing in relation to the spanreed table, but also on how tall they are and what direction they are looking etc. In other places of the body, bones would mostly protect from lethal strikes - you can't stab well into the heart (possible but sternum and ribs covers most of your heart). So while I think it's theoretically possible to kill somebody via spanreed, it's basically a random chance for success, making it improbable in practice.

[Treamayne]

I think the better question would be "can you take paired rubies from a spanreed, and use them to set a trap?"

For example, remove the paired rubies, attach one to a glove and one to a small knife (say, hidden on a shelf behind the target's desk). If the assassin has done thier homework, they know the target's routine. They know when the target is likely to be alone. You wait for the target to be at the desk then activate your glove ruby, walk forward a few steps and mime a throat slash from behind - the knife moves forward from the shelf and does the work for you . . .

[Trusk'our he/him]

41 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I think the better question would be "can you take paired rubies from a spanreed, and use them to set a trap?"

For example, remove the paired rubies, attach one to a glove and one to a small knife (say, hidden on a shelf behind the target's desk). If the assassin has done thier homework, they know the target's routine. They know when the target is likely to be alone. You wait for the target to be at the desk then activate your glove ruby, walk forward a few steps and mime a throat slash from behind - the knife moves forward from the shelf and does the work for you . . .

Oooh, clever. I like it. .  . in a scholarly manner, that is.

[Duxredux he/him]

Traps would work pretty well, however for spanreed assassination keep in mind that for a substantial number of people you could be communicating with you may be writing through a scribe. There are important people, generally women who write their own communications, Queen Fen, Jasnah, Navani, Shallan, and others, even then you need to get a direct line to that person. The spanreed communication can't go through an intermediary in Tashikk for example.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Duxredux
Forgot a k on Tashikk

[drunkenbotanist]

So it only takes the scribes in Tashik to start selling luxury spanreads made of premium strong materials and now it's a guild of assassins

[Authorspren]

I think this could work especially well if the assassin was a Radiant. If they were the right Order and didn't violate their Oaths, they could just stab themselves for real and then heal the wound. Their target obviously couldn't.

[Duxredux he/him]

As I consider this further, spanreeds are the equivalent of exchanging email addresses. If the goal is to eliminate a target and get away with it, then things get more complicated, since you're basically leaving a signed note "I killed this person from this address". Stealing another person's spanreed is possible, but that's the equivalent of figuring out someone's contact list, tracking down someone on that list who contacts them enough to have a direct line and stealing their email account. Possible, but hard.

For assassinating the paranoid, this gets even harder since the only truly important part of the spanreed is the ruby setting. It wouldn't surprise me if Jasnah pre-Radiance routinely replaced the shaft of her spanreeds with something designed to fail if used with excessive force. Without knowing the exact state of the spanreed on the receiving side, using the reed itself as a weapon is highly risky.

On the other hand... you might be able to load the spanreed into a crossbow and fire it so that the ruby of the spanreed would hit the general torso or head of the target. Since the ruby is designed to act as an indicator that someone wants to write to you, the ruby itself is almost always left exposed. That seems to have less failure points, though I don't know how big the ruby is and how brittle it would be. If a crossbow doesn't work, once they give you control of spanreed communication set the ruby into a spear shaft or other weapon that would give you sufficient leverage to kill someone in any circumstance. Wouldn't even surprise me if someone with enough combat experience like Dalinar or Kaladin could tell by the impacts what they were hitting if they were to blindly fight with their ruby-tipped weapon of choice, though you'd be hard pressed to convince either of them to do something like this these days. 

It's worth noting that the upper Alethi dahns tend to be quite familiar with assassination, and as seen with Navani writing with the Sibling's intermediary, they have already developed forensic techniques to triangulate the location of an unknown conjoined fabrial. Navani's scholars already had the equipment, techniques, and mathematics to get her an answer in the middle of a conversation, so I'm guessing they weren't coming up with the methodology on the fly. It wouldn't surprise me if spanreed or conjoined fabrial assassination was a thing, did happen, and precautions have since been implemented even if they aren't overtly mentioned. If precautions haven't been made, forensics already has a start on tracking assassins down.

[Letryx13]

I think it could work, but only if the assassin was very lucky, or had some way of knowing exactly how to move the reed.  

[Beodrakis he/him]

On 9/20/2023 at 6:43 AM, Duxredux said:

If precautions haven't been made, forensics already has a start on tracking assassins down.

yes, but it's pretty easy to dispose of the spanreed afterwards, you could just chuck it out a window, and no one would know who did it.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

I am pretty sure this could only be used once (at least on someone important), before nobles the world over came up with precautions when using spanreeds. So, while it is certainly an intriguing idea, it wouldn't work as a viable long term means of assassination.