Timewaster's Guide Archive

25.“I wish to sleep. I know now why you do what you do, and I hate you for it. I will not speak of the truths I see.”—Kakashah 1173, 142 seconds pre-death. A Shin sailor, left behind by his crew, reportedly for bringing them ill luck. Sample largely useless.

I find this one especially interesting. It seems to be addressed to Taravangian's "healers", and implies that the dying man
(or the entity speaking through him) has some degree of consciousness and can choose not to speak.

In support of the "a different consciousness is inhabiting the bodies of the dying" theory: the sample taken from a young child, whose "diction improved remarkably".

And what to make of this quote? Is it from the point of view of a voidbringer? It seems quite different from the others.

9.“Victory! We stand atop the mount! We scatter them before us! Their homes become our dens, their lands are now our farms! And they shall burn, as we once did, in a place that is hollow and forlorn.”—Collected on Ishashan, 1172, 18 seconds pre-death. Subject was a lighteyed spinster of the eighth dahn.

I wonder if maybe Shallan doesn't know what her Shardblade is and how valuable it is. She never refers to it as a Shardblade. She has no background in military or fighting  matters and might not know enough about Shardblades to recognize it as one - especially if her father having a Blade was a secret.

Maybe the events happened something like: Shallan's father dies, his blade materializes, Shallan grabs it, but later lets go of it (perhaps in horror), and it disappears, as Shardblades do. If no one witnessed these events, perhaps no one else saw the sword at all. Or perhaps the only people who saw it also failed to recognize what it was, and may have thought it was gone for good when it disappeared.

Shallan's brothers never say anything indicating they know she is the one who killed their father. Maybe the two were alone when it happened? Or just Nan Balat was there, but he was too badly injured to see what happened? In the viewpoint we have from Nan Balat, he thinks of Shallan as "Shy, quiet, delicate"; he doesn't seem to regard her the way you would expect if he knew she had killed someone.