Theory: The Kandra on Roshar

[Tower]

I’m not sure if anyone has made this speculation, but I am doing a Stormlight reread and something small stuck out to me in Words of Radiance. 

In chapter 17, Shallan is doing sketches and starts “simply letting her pencil go where it willed.” In these sketches, one of them is Yalb but “the face felt off to her.” It’s such a small thing, but it kind of makes sense that this is a hint that Yalb is the Woldhopper Kandra. 
 

I think the evidence is pretty weak, but that one line sticks out to me for some reason. Shallan is a Lightweaver so maybe she couldn’t recreate the face right because she is subconsciously seeing through the Kandra shapeshifting? There are lots of hints that Shallan’s drawing ability is supernatural and this would definitely go along with Shallan’s arc with the Ghostbloods. Also, if I recall correctly, Yalb has worked with the Davar family for years prior to TWOK and *another* Ghostblood secretly spying on them wouldn’t be that far of a stretch. Also, also, Yalb is THE reason Shallan doesn’t give up on becoming Jasnah’s ward. And then after all that, he pops up in Dawnshard, spots a ship from an unnaturally long distance (Tin blessing) after a very mysterious survival of the Wind’s Pleasure sinking. Call me crazy, but I’ll sit here in my tinfoil hat refusing to believe that’s all coincidence.

Edited Saturday at 05:44 PM by Tower

[LightRinger he/him]

Yalb could definitely be a Kendra in my opinion. Brandon says he has some plans for the character, (possibly in Stormlight [era?] 2) and that he had potential to be a main character.

From WoK annotations:

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson:
Still, writing Yalb, I wanted him to really pop off the page even though he's only in the book for a few pages in these early scenes. I intend for him to return. In another type of story, he'd be one of the main characters.

This would also explain why he survived the shipwreck, due to kandra’s natural adaptability. 

[alder24]

3 hours ago, Tower said:

I’m not sure if anyone has made this speculation, but I am doing a Stormlight reread and something small stuck out to me in Words of Radiance. 

In chapter 17, Shallan is doing sketches and starts “simply letting her pencil go where it willed.” In these sketches, one of them is Yalb but “the face felt off to her.” It’s such a small thing, but it kind of makes sense that this is a hint that Yalb is the Woldhopper Kandra. 
 

I think the evidence is pretty weak, but that one line sticks out to me for some reason. Shallan is a Lightweaver so maybe she couldn’t recreate the face right because she is subconsciously seeing through the Kandra shapeshifting? There are lots of hints that Shallan’s drawing ability is supernatural and this would definitely go along with Shallan’s arc with the Ghostbloods. Also, if I recall correctly, Yalb has worked with the Davar family for years prior to TWOK and *another* Ghostblood secretly spying on them wouldn’t be that far of a stretch. Also, also, Yalb is THE reason Shallan doesn’t give up on becoming Jasnah’s ward. And then after all that, he pops up in Dawnshard, spots a ship from an unnaturally long distance (Tin blessing) after a very mysterious survival of the Wind’s Pleasure sinking. Call me crazy, but I’ll sit here in my tinfoil hat refusing to believe that’s all coincidence.

Great catch and an interesting theory, however it's highly unlikely based on several WoBs. Brandon RAFO a lot of questions about Kandra on Roshar, yet when asked if she appeared on pages in WoK, he said he doesn't know - weird thing to say if that was Yalb. In contrast, he stated that she appears in OB - Yalb was not featured in that book, he was still presumed dead. Also, Brandon was "excited" when someone asked him, if this Kandra was Felt's wife - Malli - who indeed appeared only since OB. As a tangential note, this Kandra isn't working for Harmony. 

Regarding survival of the sinking of the Wind's Pleasure, Yalb wasn't the only survivor, there were several of them. It seems they were simply Fortunate to survive.

WoBs:

Spoiler

Questioner

Does the kandra worldhopper appear in Way of Kings, on screen?

Brandon Sanderson

I don't know.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Have we seen the worldhopping kandra on-screen in Oathbringer?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I believe you have. Ahhhh, yes, she gets around. 

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Will we see the Roshar kandra in Stormlight Five?

Brandon Sanderson

I believe you have seen the Roshar kandra be mentioned… no… RAFO.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 6 (Dec. 19, 2023)

 

Spoiler

Pagerunner

The kandra on Roshar. Is that Felt's wife, Malli?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO! That is an excellent question that one should indeed be... yeah.

JordanCon 2021 (July 16, 2021)

 

Spoiler

Nextorl

In The Lost Metal, MeLaan is said to be the first kandra Harmony sent off-world. Does that mean that the kandra on Roshar are not in Harmony's employment?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! Good way to connect the dots. That is exactly what that means.

R'Shara

Brandon, you previously said the kandra on Roshar WAS an agent of Harmony.

Brandon Sanderson

Did I? *sounds uncertain* Well... I'm changing my mind. Yeah. No. I... uhh... Nope, not an agent of-

I know exactly who this kandra is and what they're doing and yeah. I'm going to say I don't know why I said that before, but now, no.

Footnote: R'Shara is referring to this WOB where Brandon says that the kandra is an agent of Sazed
YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

Edited Saturday at 08:29 PM by alder24

[Tower]

16 hours ago, alder24 said:

Regarding survival of the sinking of the Wind's Pleasure, Yalb wasn't the only survivor, there were several of them. It seems they were simply Fortunate to survive.

I could have sworn I saw that he survived separately from the others, but I think I may have misread that now.

The line I pointed out stuck out to me because when Shallan’s POV talks about restarting her sketchbook, the Santhid redrawing is mentioned before Yalb’s and the book says something to the effect of “it wasn’t as good” and then Yalb’s face as “not quite right.” Which is really weird because she saw the Santhid once and knew Yalb for a decent amount of time, it just doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t remember him as vividly as the Santhid. I just interpreted that as there being something magical about Yalb’s appearance that couldn’t be recreated by drawing him.

I haven’t really looked into the WOBs though and that does kind of shoot the theory down .

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Tower said:

Which is really weird because she saw the Santhid once and knew Yalb for a decent amount of time, it just doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t remember him as vividly as the Santhid. I just interpreted that as there being something magical about Yalb’s appearance that couldn’t be recreated by drawing him.

I think it's more likely this was all foreshadowing that when Shallan takes a "memory" - that is something Magical happeneing (confirmed to be related to her Resonance); so the drawings were showing that without the "Memory" (which expires after the first drawing - foreshadowed when she had to take a second "memory" or Taravangian after cryptics appeared in her first drawing) her drawings were not nearly as accurate. 

Spoiler

Quote

Swamp-Spirit

Shallan's Memory ability to capture an image doesn't seem to be working exactly like an eidetic memory...

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Swamp-Spirit

...because she can erase it by drawing. Is that tied directly to the magic of Lightweaving? And if so would other creative Lightweavers have similar abilities.

Brandon Sanderson

If you look at the epigraphs there is a big hint on this, where it talks about it and yes... I have problems with eidetic memory, just because scientifically most scientists say this is not a real thing. So I would say that whenever-- Because of my knowledge of the science of it understand that you would need some sort of magical enhancement to be able to do what she does.

Words of Radiance Portland signing (March 7, 2014)

Quote

Argent

There is a person on the forums who noticed that Shallan has this awesome Memory thing going on, Jasnah seems to have a really powerful, kind of, geolocation thing going on, Kaladin is a really good fighter - are those just their traits, or is there something supernatural going on?

Brandon Sanderson

There is something supernatural going on. Each Order... Well, how about this. If you look at the scholar interpretations, there are some scholars who think that these things are not supernatural, in the past, and some who said they definitely are. But many, if you look, many Lightweavers had powerful mnemonic abilities.

<Edited for length and relevance>

Words of Radiance Chicago signing (March 22, 2014)

 

 

[alder24]

6 hours ago, Tower said:

I could have sworn I saw that he survived separately from the others, but I think I may have misread that now.

From a quick look at Dawnshard, Yalb and two others seem to have survived  more or less together. There was nothing particularly "special" about his survival, but people like to tell stories, so a gossip quickly spread that they've served on a ghost ship for years - maybe that confused you? Dawnshard prologue:

Quote

“Didn’t you tell people the whole storming ship vanished underneath you?”
“Yeah, well, I swallowed half the ocean before someone fished me out,” Yalb said. “I wasn’t exactly a reliable witness at that point, was I?”
[...]
The other two told the same terrible story, same as Yalb remembered it. Assassins in the dark—something worse than a mutiny. And then . . . the whole ship just gone.
[...]
Special experience. The rumors weren’t true, but everyone believed them, whispering that Yalb had sailed on a ghost ship for years—which was why it had eventually vanished. There was a reason nobody would hire all three of the survivors together, and they’d had to go their own ways.

 

7 hours ago, Tower said:

The line I pointed out stuck out to me because when Shallan’s POV talks about restarting her sketchbook, the Santhid redrawing is mentioned before Yalb’s and the book says something to the effect of “it wasn’t as good” and then Yalb’s face as “not quite right.” Which is really weird because she saw the Santhid once and knew Yalb for a decent amount of time, it just doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t remember him as vividly as the Santhid. I just interpreted that as there being something magical about Yalb’s appearance that couldn’t be recreated by drawing him.

Shallan doesn't just draw, her ability to create a Memory is a supernatural thing. She creates something like a photo of what she sees and then she moves it from her mind into a piece of paper, perfectly replicating every single detail of the Memory, including text. But once drawn, the Memory is gone from her mind and she can't draw it again. When Shallan tried to replace her sketchbook she was drawing everything from her normal, human memory, she couldn't use her magical Memory, because she already drew those pictures. That's why everything felt off to her, it wasn't as perfect as the first drawings.

Moreover, as evident from her drawing of survivors of the Wind's Pleasure, she can draw things by glimpsing into the Spiritual Realm. That's why she drew Yalb surviving the sinking of the ship with others, that's why she can draw better versions of people. 

Spoiler

Spun Lines

We’ve seen Shallan’s drawings appear to make people into “better versions of themselves.” But we also see her draw Yalb surviving the shipwreck, and later find out he did. Is she actually seeing the future in which she just happens to inspire people to be better? If so, this would make Wit’s warning to her in Oathbringer more concerning.

Brandon Sanderson

As will all sort of future sight/foretelling in the cosmere, it is not necessarily telling the future so much as seeing possibilities. And Shallan has… we’ll get into this in Book Five. Shallan’s a little extra good at this, for Spiritual mumbo jumbo. (It’s not necessarily just Spiritual mumbo jumbo, 17th Shard.) In this case, we have a very distinct reason why this is happening with Shallan that you might be able to put together. It’s pretty obvious. But you should be able to see these things with Shallan very early in the books. As early as Words of Radiance, I was sticking in little nods to this. She is able to grab glimpses of the Spiritual Realm in ways that even other Lightweavers can’t do. Lightweaving always has a bit of this, right? And this comes back to what’s going on with the Realmatic Theory and Plato’s Theory of the Forms as kind of a foundational text that helped me develop this in my mind. You’re seeing more perfect versions of who you could be. When she’s doing a sketch, she’s sometimes sketching not who you are, but who you could be.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 6 (Dec. 19, 2023)

 

[Treamayne]

39 minutes ago, alder24 said:

From a quick look at Dawnshard, Yalb and two others seem to have survived  more or less together. There was nothing particularly "special" about his survival, but people like to tell stories, so a gossip quickly spread that they've served on a ghost ship for years - maybe that confused you?

Also note that in the other WoR passage, she actually draws Yalb's survival, but doubts herself (WoR Ch 30):

Spoiler

Quote

It was so nice to not be moving on a wagon while sketching. The environment here was just perfect—sufficient light for drawing, still and serene, surrounded by life . . .

She paused, noticing what she’d drawn: a rocky shore near the ocean, with distinctive cliffs rising behind. The perspective was distant; on the rocky shore, several shadowy figures helped one another out of the water. She swore one of them was Yalb.

A hopeful fancy. She wished so much for them to be alive. She would probably never know.