The Parshmen and Parshendi

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Spren are, as far as we know, Splinters.

 

I would say that we do not know that all spren are splinters.  We only know that some, like honorspren and presumably the other radiant spren, are.  But the non-sentient ones like windspren, lifespren, or laughterspren?  Those I do not believe are splinters.

[Argent he/him]

They do have limited sentience though. They are not completely brainless, only mostly. We don't know where this puts them.

[Gloom he/him]

Are flys sentient because they are attracted to dung? Are spren sentient because they are attracted to specific stimuli?

[marianmi]

By this definition, nightblood is not sentient then. Cause it's attracted by 1 thing only.

[Shardlet he/him]

Nightblood, thinks, chooses, acts, and communicates.  It has a personality.  It has a narrow focus, granted.  But sentience seems assured.  This may be putting a fine point on it, but I would point out that sentience is not the standard.  Sentience is simply the ability to feel and percieve things.  The quote from Brandon says splinters have self-awareness.

[Argent he/him]

It's still a point that could be argued - but I strongly suspect I will be on the losing side, so I'll let it go. 

[Shardlet he/him]

Could be argued, certainly.  But we really have no support one way or the other to discern whether non-bonding spren have any sentience or self-awareness.

[marianmi]

Dumbed down seons (with hoed masters) were sentient?

[Shardlet he/him]

Are people who are plagued by dementia and other mental maladies not sentient?

[Daishi5]

Yes there are some cultural variances and gray areas, but Shardic intent and common sense seems like it should have an effect in this world.  By your argument, you could make the case that Odium's behavior is honorable.  So Odium is the same as Honor and we need another intent for the now intentless Shard once known as Honor. 

The general alethi concept of honor has been corrupted, which we can easily tell.  The Parshendi may be operating under some other corrupted meaning of honor, but the OP seems to be referring to an absolute meaning of honor when he claims they have been completely honorable. 

Syl's consciousness does not seem to have been changed by the corruption in the Alethi concept of honor, so I would argue that from the Shardic point of view, your argument is, at best, partially true. 

 

At first, I didn't want to get in to an argument about whose version of honor is more honorable because we can't really reach a conclusion, but I had a thought.

 

Maybe, with Honor dead and splintered, the Parshendi have lost the real guidance of honor but are still trying to follow something that seems like honorable actions to them.  

[Oudeis he/him]

What does anyone think stormform looks like or is for the purpose of? Does it allow them to survive a highstorm? They seemed to be trying to summon creationspren at the hall of art. If Shallan summoned some creationspren for them, could they use it?

 

Also I agree with the people saying that Parshendi turn into Voidbringers when someone corrupts their Spren, the way that Spren got corrupted in the Dalinar preview.

 

Second, it seems they went through a great deal of trouble to ensure that the target of the assassination had as good a chance as possible of thwarting the assassination. They ordered Szeth to wear white, they ordered him to be seen, they set it up so that their was enough time for Galivar to not only get suited up in his Shardplate, but create a plan to divert the assassin.

 

Third, they immediately took responsibility for the deed.

 

I won't say that assassination is an honorable action, but I will say that the process they chose to implement the assassination was chosen specifically to ensure that the target had as good a chance at survival as possible while still allowing the attempt a chance at success.

 

My theory from the first book is, I think, supported by Eshonai's interlude. At least one point of the assassination was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Eshonai expressly says that they did what they did in an attempt to thwart the Parshendi Gods. I think that for whatever reason, the Parshendi needed the Alethi army at the Plains, possibly for the purpose of killing Greatshells. Eshonai does say that they had to stop the Parshendi Gods, there's talk from Gavilar's history that the Parshendi think the chasmfiends are Gods, and killing greatshells seems to be just about all that gets done on the Plains. I think the reason he was to make a comotion, wear white, be seen, was to enrage the Alethi beyond reason. To make sure cooler heads would not prevail, to add as much insult to injury as possible and draw out the Alethi armies. Just one man's opinion.

 

... Divine Breaths practically exist to be given away, to be endowed upon someone. The Returned come back to life with a purpose - the Hallandren religion and Lightsong's visions both agree on this. And since what makes the Returned what they are is their Divine Breath, it's an obvious conclusion to me that those Breaths come with the same purpose.

 

I sometimes feel that Endowment gets interpreted rather broadly. Literally any deliberate giving from one person to another is Endowment. When you Riot someone, you're "endowing" them with sorrow. Forgery "endows" an object with an alternate past. Szeth "endows" his victims with Stormlight when he reverses their gravity. You could even say a Coinshot is endowing his target with money. He just endows really really fast. I'm not saying it doesn't fit. I'm saying, what doesn't fit the definition of Endowment?

 

One final thought I just had. The Parshmen are said to be Parshendi without songs, without form... without Spren. They are thoughtless, they are mindless, they have no memory or communication, just the most basic of child-like thought.

 

Like a child... or like a spren. Like Syl, without Kaladin.

 

And yet when bonded to a spren, they gain the ability to think, and talk, and reason. Could it be they are more like Kandra than we realize? Someone told me once that there's WoB that the bit of ruin and preservation in Scadrians is what made them sentient, that mistwraiths turn into the sentient kandra when they get given a small amount of Ruin via the hemallurgic spikes. I understand the common colloquialism is that if a cat were given spikes, that cat would gain self-awareness and reason. What if a Parshman has no Scrap of a Shard in them? What if they're the equivalent of a mistwraith, and the bond with a Spren gives them that tiny Scrap of Honor or Cultivation to turn them sentient? The implications to such a system being so similar to the mistwraith/kandra would be mind-boggling to me.

 

Also Scrap is now totally my word, up there with Shard, Splinter, and Sliver.

[Aether he/him]

My theory from the first book is, I think, supported by Eshonai's interlude. At least one point of the assassination was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Eshonai expressly says that they did what they did in an attempt to thwart the Parshendi Gods. I think that for whatever reason, the Parshendi needed the Alethi army at the Plains, possibly for the purpose of killing Greatshells. Eshonai does say that they had to stop the Parshendi Gods, there's talk from Gavilar's history that the Parshendi think the chasmfiends are Gods, and killing greatshells seems to be just about all that gets done on the Plains. I think the reason he was to make a comotion, wear white, be seen, was to enrage the Alethi beyond reason. To make sure cooler heads would not prevail, to add as much insult to injury as possible and draw out the Alethi armies. Just one man's opinion.

 

I do not see any indication that part of their plan was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Their plan was an 11th hour desperate attempt to stop Gavilar from doing whatever it was that they feared would bring back their gods. It was their honourable nature that made them kill him honourable (id est making the assassin wear white and taking responsibility for it afterwards).

[Oudeis he/him]

You're flat-out stating something you can't possibly be certain of. I have some decent evidence to support my theory.

 

Instead, she and the others had ordered the murder of their king in a desperate gambit to stop the Parshendi gods from returning.

 

That can be interpretted to support your theory, but it could as easily support mine. We know that the Parshendi refer to the Chasmfiends as gods. We know that Eshonai killed Gavilar in an attempt to stop the return of the Gods. A direct result of the brutality of Gavilar's death was the Vengeance Pact, which has resulted in a never-before-seen slaughter of chasmfiends.

 

Eshonai's observations of her own people is that they take a form, and then act how they want to act, blaming the form for their poor choices. She'd be in a position to know, and she claims it's rather universal. Refusing to take responsibility for your own choices doesn't sound terribly honorable to me.

 

I'd like to know what evidence you have to support your presumptions that the Parshendi are an immutably honorable race. I've seen it argued back and forth across this topic. Yes, we've seen them act in ways to indicate honor, and we've seen them act in ways that indicate dishonor. If they wanted to "assasinate honorably" they could have sent a note ahead; slaughtering a palace-worth of innocent guards to give one man a heads-up is a rather blind way of expressing honor. Either Szeth should have given each guard the same warning he gave Gavilar, or the guards accepted the risk to their own life when they became Guards, and how does that not then also apply to the King? If he doesn't want the responsibility and the possibility of assassination, he should abdicate. If the guards don't want to defend their king, they should quit. You can't have it both ways.

[Gloom he/him]

My question then is this. How does having the Alethi on the Plains increase the number of Chasm Fiends killed? Wouldn't it be easier and quite a bit safer to just go to the Plains alone and start killing off all the pupating Chasm Fiends rather than instigate a war with the most powerful military nation in Roshar? I would imagine it would also be more profitable.

[Aether he/him]

Gloom has a point, and I would also add that the Alethi (Gavilar in particular) was already interested in hunting the Chasmfiends, so killing Gavilar to get them to the Shattered Plains only so that they could kill Greatshells would have an utterly stupid move. We still do not know exactly what it was Gavilar did or wanted to do that they feared, but it definitely was not forming a foundation for the preservation of Greatshells.

 

And I am not saying that the Parshendi do not act dishonourably at all, but that they act with considerably more honour than most Alethi - at the very least in war. Read Kaladin's analysis of the Battle of the Tower for his thoughts upon the subject.

[hoser he/him]

Are we saying that the Shards are purely cognitive?  Because if they have a spiritual aspect then this quote argues for Shardic intent being somewhat absolute.  We already know that while the bearer of the Shard is affected by the Intent of the Shard, the Shardic intent is not affected at all by the bearer.

 

I don't agree with that second part.

 

Shards affect you over time, but your mind will not leave a permanent effect on the Shard. A holder's personality, however, does get to filter the Shard's intent, so to speak. However, if that holder no longer held that Shard, the Shard will not continue to be filtered by that person.

 

So the Shardholder's perception of "Endowment" or "Honor" does have some impact on how they go about fulfilling that intent while they hold that Shard.

@Windrunner.  Well, I'm confused. Again. Or I miscommunicated.  Again.  I think that what I was saying is perfectly consistent with the quote you offered.  The shardic intent is absolute and not altered by the bearer.  I am saying nothing about the subsequent actions taken by the bearer.  So when you say that the subsequent actions are somewhat dependent on the bearer, it does not bear on the veracity of the statement I attempted to make.  Does that make sense?

Edited November 30, 2013 by hoser

[Satsuoni he/him]

What does anyone think stormform looks like or is for the purpose of? Does it allow them to survive a highstorm? They seemed to be trying to summon creationspren at the hall of art. If Shallan summoned some creationspren for them, could they use it?

We don't know, but the "blurb" (I think the term is) for WoR implies that it somehow increases the probability of  them becoming Voidbringers. (at least that is how I read this:

The Parshendi take a dangerous step to strengthen themselves for the human challenge, risking the return of the fearsome Voidbringers of old.

)

 

My theory from the first book is, I think, supported by Eshonai's interlude. At least one point of the assassination was to provoke the Vengeance Pact. Eshonai expressly says that they did what they did in an attempt to thwart the Parshendi Gods. I think that for whatever reason, the Parshendi needed the Alethi army at the Plains, possibly for the purpose of killing Greatshells. Eshonai does say that they had to stop the Parshendi Gods, there's talk from Gavilar's history that the Parshendi think the chasmfiends are Gods, and killing greatshells seems to be just about all that gets done on the Plains. I think the reason he was to make a comotion, wear white, be seen, was to enrage the Alethi beyond reason. To make sure cooler heads would not prevail, to add as much insult to injury as possible and draw out the Alethi armies. Just one man's opinion.

Well, in addition to the points expressed above, there are two things that may count against your theory: one is that in the same paragraph, Eshonai says that the plan failed, while the Alethi are still on the plains and killing Greatshells. And the other is that they were trying to prevent the return of said gods, and the greatshells were around for a while, so preventing their return doesn't make sense - they are already there.

 

One final thought I just had. The Parshmen are said to be Parshendi without songs, without form... without Spren. They are thoughtless, they are mindless, they have no memory or communication, just the most basic of child-like thought.

 

Like a child... or like a spren. Like Syl, without Kaladin.

The Parshmen are not exactly mindless. They are perfectly capable of following instructions, which requires ability to parse language at least (you can train the response for a certain phrase to an animal, but not to a general "bring me object of type", for example).

Also, a tangent, purely IMO:

Like any people, you for some reason seem to assume that adults are smarter than children. My experience shows that, if anything, children are smarter, learn easier and faster and capable of more flexible decision solving. The problem is that they are also naive and inexperienced.

Ahem.

Anyway, I think that the problem with Parshmen is that they have "no song". From the interlude it can be seen that many emotions that Parshendi feel are aligned to those songs, or at least "rhythms." Now this is also a debated notion, but I posit that emotions are absolutely necessary for decision making, and that is what parshmen lack most of all - they don't decide anything, including going to eat (IIRC), with a few exceptions, like their dead. So I think that parshmen are capable of normal thought, but don't care enough to engage that ability most of the time. Mistwraiths, on the other hand, have something similar to mental block, and are on the level of severely mentally retarded person, though above many animals:

One thing to keep in mind is that mistwraiths are people who have a blockage between the physical and the cognitive realm, messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

 

 

And yet when bonded to a spren, they gain the ability to think, and talk, and reason. Could it be they are more like Kandra than we realize? Someone told me once that there's WoB that the bit of ruin and preservation in Scadrians is what made them sentient, that mistwraiths turn into the sentient kandra when they get given a small amount of Ruin via the hemallurgic spikes. I understand the common colloquialism is that if a cat were given spikes, that cat would gain self-awareness and reason. What if a Parshman has no Scrap of a Shard in them? What if they're the equivalent of a mistwraith, and the bond with a Spren gives them that tiny Scrap of Honor or Cultivation to turn them sentient? The implications to such a system being so similar to the mistwraith/kandra would be mind-boggling to me.

Hemalurgy steals Preservation and adds, it doesn't add Ruin (at least to our knowledge). From the book:

However, a Hemalurgic spike can also be created by killing a normal person, one who is neither an Allomancer nor a Feruchemist. In that case, the spike instead steals the very power of Preservation existing within the soul of the people. (The power that, in fact, gives all people sentience.)

 Also, creation of Cat Inquisitors is a Brandon-approved process, not just theory (As in, he confirmed that it was possible)

 

Also Scrap is now totally my word, up there with Shard, Splinter, and Sliver.

I think that is what Brandon calls "Innate Investiture"

 

Chaos

Is there a Cosmere-specific term you use to describe, say, a Shard's power inside someone? For example, people on Scadrial had little bits of Preservation in them that made them sentient (and, with enough Preservation, Allomancy). This obviously doesn't make these people Slivers or Splinters, so I was just wondering if you had a word for it.

Brandon Sanderson

In my own terms, I refer to all of this as types of investiture. The degree, and effects, can be very different - but those people are invested. I term this Innate Investiture, and it is similar to what happens with people on Nalthis. That is also innate.

[Oudeis he/him]

My question then is this. How does having the Alethi on the Plains increase the number of Chasm Fiends killed? Wouldn't it be easier and quite a bit safer to just go to the Plains alone and start killing off all the pupating Chasm Fiends rather than instigate a war with the most powerful military nation in Roshar? I would imagine it would also be more profitable.

 

The Alethi brought the ten largest military forces on the planet. I think this task was something larger than the Parshendi could do on their own; they needed help. They needed someone to watch almost half the territory of the Shattered Plains, to keep sending out forces when their own troops were wearied. I'm not sure the Parshendi had enough troops on their own to do it. Until the Tower, the concern was that the Parshendi slain in any specific battle were too small a number; almost like they wanted to fake an engagement, while secretly they're fine with the Alethi killing the Chasmfiend, as long as someone did it before it pupated.

 

Well, in addition to the points expressed above, there are two things that may count against your theory: one is that in the same paragraph, Eshonai says that the plan failed, while the Alethi are still on the plains and killing Greatshells. And the other is that they were trying to prevent the return of said gods, and the greatshells were around for a while, so preventing their return doesn't make sense - they are already there.

 

The Parshmen are not exactly mindless. Anyway, I think that the problem with Parshmen is that they have "no song". From the interlude it can be seen that many emotions that Parshendi feel are aligned to those songs, or at least "rhythms." So I think that parshmen are capable of normal thought, but don't care enough to engage that ability most of the time. Mistwraiths, on the other hand, have something similar to mental block, and are on the level of severely mentally retarded person, though above many animals:

 

 

Hemalurgy steals Preservation and adds, it doesn't add Ruin (at least to our knowledge). 

 

I think that is what Brandon calls "Innate Investiture"

 

The Parshendi were wrong. We know that, because Eshonai says that whatever they did, didn't work. So you can't tell me that my theory on what they planned can't be true because it didn't work; we know it didn't work. I think the chasmfiends have always been there, like how the parshmen have always been there and yet Jasnah believes they are the voidbringers. Jasnah is trying to prevent the return of the voidbringers; she hasn't already failed just because there are parshmen around, she'll only fail once they start being voidbringers again. I think something has changed recently and the Parshendi now want the chasmfiends wiped out; they thought that killing them all before they can pupate was the way, and I think we've got WoB that they're mostly succeeding in that; it just seems that like how Vin was sure the Well was in the Terris Mountains, someone was certain and yet wrong.

 

First, I don't know how much direct experience you have with children. My own experience comes from being the oldest grandson out of 29, having five nieces and nephews, and spending a decent chunk of my own childhood babysitting. For all I know you're a 3rd grade teacher or a child psychologist, and if so I bow to your wisdom. That said, in my experience, the situation is a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be.

 

Also, I retract the word "mindless". All of the other words I used to describe the parshmen still stand, I believe.

 

Kids learn quickly, and they have interesting ways to go about problem solving, and in certain immediate and incredibly specialized areas they can be quite intelligent, but no, they are not smarter than adults because of this. This is a deep and intriguing discussion that would involve nuerophysiology, child psychology, educational sciences and would take a long, long time, but the average 4-year-old is not capable of learning, remembering and applying the quadratic equation, no matter how many darndest things he says. My two-year-old nephew is a genius, because he figured out on his own that we get milk from cows and he remembers that babies like to be "warm and cozy". You can tell him, "Please go to the table, get me your juice, and bring it back" and he can handle something that complicated, but if you tell him to wait in one spot, wait for the timer to beep, then go to the play room and line up his blocks in size order, he's not capable of instructions that complicated.

 

I oversimplified slightly for the sake of brevity, but I still stand by my theory.

 

messing with their ability to think. Think of them as mentally-stunted people. There's enough there to train, but then you have to dig into the ethics of it...

 

 

I think that this is an excellent way to describe Parshmen.

 

Thank you for the correction; I was under the impression that it was Ruin rather than Preservation that granted sentience. Regardless, my theory remains this: There's nothing special about Preservation. A bit more of any single Shard would grant sentience; in Scadrial's case it is Preservation. On Roshar, Honor or Cultivation would work as well. Alternatively, perhaps it is like future-sight; it's a general Shardic trait, but some Shards do it better than others. Perhaps Ruin couldn't grant sentience, but that doesn't mean only Preservation can; Cultivation might work just as well.

 

Aha! I had been arguing about this with my friend. I used the term Innate Investiture to describe this (when I was telling him my theories on allomantic bronze and copper) and he didn't like it; now I can go back to him with WoB. Thank you!

[WeiryWriter he/him]

 Perhaps Ruin couldn't grant sentience

 

Just a side note but it is possible to grant sentience with more Ruin than Preservation. (My personal theory is that this is what happened when the koloss got turned into a true-breeding species, they have more Ruin than Preservation, and that is where at least part of the extra Ruin in Harmony is going.)

[Aether he/him]

 The Alethi brought the ten largest military forces on the planet. I think this task was something larger than the Parshendi could do on their own; they needed help. They needed someone to watch almost half the territory of the Shattered Plains, to keep sending out forces when their own troops were wearied. I'm not sure the Parshendi had enough troops on their own to do it. Until the Tower, the concern was that the Parshendi slain in any specific battle were too small a number; almost like they wanted to fake an engagement, while secretly they're fine with the Alethi killing the Chasmfiend, as long as someone did it before it pupated.

The Parshendi seem to be capable of field an army to meet the Alethi (though not always engage them) every time, so I find it rather ridiculous to suggest that they need the Alethi to kill pupating Chasmfiends - which presumably would only take around a dozen soldiers to kill in the first place, without a rivalling army. 

 

 Kids learn quickly, and they have interesting ways to go about problem solving, and in certain immediate and incredibly specialized areas they can be quite intelligent, but no, they are not smarter than adults because of this. This is a deep and intriguing discussion that would involve nuerophysiology, child psychology, educational sciences and would take a long, long time, but the average 4-year-old is not capable of learning, remembering and applying the quadratic equation, no matter how many darndest things he says. My two-year-old nephew is a genius, because he figured out on his own that we get milk from cows and he remembers that babies like to be "warm and cozy". You can tell him, "Please go to the table, get me your juice, and bring it back" and he can handle something that complicated, but if you tell him to wait in one spot, wait for the timer to beep, then go to the play room and line up his blocks in size order, he's not capable of instructions that complicated.

I don't think we should fall into the trap of equating knowledge with intelligence. No, 4-year old children might not be able to apply quadratic equations or muse upon the abstractness of quantum theory (though there are reported cases of near toddlers with exceptional mathematical understanding), but they generally wouldn't even have been taught how to add 2 and 2 at this stage in life. Young children have an amazing capability to learn, but there are a lot of basic things you need to know and understand (including having an advanced language) before you can even start looking into stuff like this.

[Satsuoni he/him]

And in general:

 

Satsuoni

Is it possible to give cats intelligence with Hemalurgy? Or transfer cat's identity to a human?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy can do some very, very odd things. And the endowment of intelligence is a common result of tinkering with shard-based magic.

I see what you mean, Darnam. You might even be right, though I don't think I agree with you on Parshendi goals. Then again, I wonder what would happen to a chasmfiend is its spren were corrupted...

 

Now as to the issue of children: I confess that I don't have much experience with them, and in general, can't really understand humans too well, so I base a lot of things on the only source I can more or less trust: myself And I have solved my first quadratics when I was 5   (my abilities have been degrading ever since then) So you can teach that to a child, though possibly with a side effect that it would take place of, say, social skills

And well, judging intelligence, sentience, sapience, etc, has been a philosophical problem for a long, long time. Maybe we should leave it at that.

Edited December 1, 2013 by OOkla the Felinicious

[Oudeis he/him]

Aether: that's why I didn't say they were children, I said they were child-like. A child can learn, grow, and eventually turn into an adult. A parshman cannot. They are trapped, mentally stunted in a moment of incomprehension of abstract thought.

Point of order, I didn't say a three-year-old is stupid because he hasn't already learned the quadratic equation. I did say that the average 3-year-old is incapable of being taught it.

[Satsuoni he/him]

I'd still say that a parshmen are much smarter than a Mistwraith normally. After all,

 

“They serve our food,” Jasnah continued. “They work our storehouses. They tend our children.

I highly doubt you could train a Mistwraith to tend to your children.

[Oudeis he/him]

I'd still say that a parshmen are much smarter than a Mistwraith normally. After all,

I highly doubt you could train a Mistwraith to tend to your children.

 

This is a fair point, however, how do we know? Has anyone ever tried? They might be a lot smarter than anyone gives them credit for.

 

Even still, even if a Parshman does have a physical brain better able to handle things like child-care, my point that there are similarities between them isn't necessarily false. I do realize you've raised some points casting doubt upon my theory. I will think on it some more.

[Aether he/him]

Aether: that's why I didn't say they were children, I said they were child-like. A child can learn, grow, and eventually turn into an adult. A parshman cannot. They are trapped, mentally stunted in a moment of incomprehension of abstract thought.

Point of order, I didn't say a three-year-old is stupid because he hasn't already learned the quadratic equation. I did say that the average 3-year-old is incapable of being taught it.

Oh, ok. My main point was the one about the hunt for Greatshells; the one about the infantile intelligence kind of snuck in.

 

I'd still say that a parshmen are much smarter than a Mistwraith normally. After all,

I highly doubt you could train a Mistwraith to tend to your children.

Agreed.