Timewaster's Guide Archive

Or maybe Brandon is devious enough to arrange a prolonged checkout of Dragonsteel so as to not spoil any Cosmere secrets that he is not yet ready to reveal. 

Syl is a minor character? I mean sure, she's kinda Kaladin's "sidekick", but I wouldn't call her role "minor".

Hey, I was following the criteria of the OP, which was any character that is not a POV character (or Hoid).

It's been quite a while since I've read Elantris, and I don't have my copy with me. Do we ever hear any words, or just Hrathen's description of the language? Also, what was his description?

I am actually in the process of re-reading Elantris, but I am not very far into it. So far, the language has not been described or spoken, outside of Aon names. I did find an interesting blog post written by Brandon regarding the construction of Elantris' languages:
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/book/Elantris/page/35/Creating-the-Languages-of-Elantris

If any of these languages were to apply, I would guess Aonic, but that doesn't really seem to fit.

Edit: Found another article on the Warbreaker language / naming convention:
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/annotation/377/Warbreaker-Chapter-Four

Quote from: hubay on September 13, 2010, 04:19:35 AM

I am curious as to how they reproduce. They must somehow, since they populate half the planet. But there's been no mention of parshbabies, as far as I can remember. Even if there isn't some strange voidbringer cylce it's possible that the dead parshmen are resuurected somehow, right? Maybe stormlight revives them, which is why they're just left in the wild.

I don't think so. When Bridge 4 is down searching the chasms, they find all kinds of Parshendi bodies, and at one point I believe Kaladin makes a comment about how the Parshendi bodies were heavy enough that a highstorm wouldn't move them (since that would be the best way for the bodies to be infused with Stormlight), so he would have noticed the distinct lack of bodies after a highstorm.

Also, remember at one point, Dalinar comments that he thinks he found a female Parshendi (he also put forth that maybe the pairs of fighters were husband and wife). That's a possible explanation of the reproduction.

Random thought. You know how Parshmen/Parshendi are very particular about not disturbing the bodies of their fallen comrades? How Parshendi will go to great lengths in battle in order to avoid doing so? And then there was Shen's reaction to Kaladin when he moved a Parshendi corpse, and Sigzil explaining that all Parshmen were like that - a seemingly emotionless bunch, except that they become irate when someone tampers with their dead.

Hubay mentioned resurrection, that perhaps Parshendi are revived by Stormlight. This was something I suspected as well, when I was reading through the book. But maybe there are certain conditions that must be met - such as, a Parshmen/Parshendi must not be disturbed except by their own kin, else the revival is nullified. Perhaps their bodies must be handled in a very specific way. And maybe it's not a resurrection that occurs, but an evolving of sorts - Parshmen become Parshendi which grow into to something else, maybe Chasmfiends.

This is all just idle speculation, of course. But it's interesting to ponder...