Author Topic: Truthless  (Read 15164 times)

Stormblessed

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #45 on: September 27, 2010, 06:54:50 AM »
Mistborn spoiler!

Quote
Secondly, I reckon that Szeths surgebinding comes from a type of fabriel created by the stone shamans. The spren is imprissoned in the oathstone and that is why Szeth is very connected to this stone.

I like that idea. It may not be right, but it would be pretty cool. There is ten books worth of magical surprises left. After all, if anyone told you at the end of Mistborn that Sazed was going to be a god, you would think they were crazy!

I agree with you there. Knowing Brandon, we really have no idea about whats going to happen. Brandon does give hints, but what those hints really mean is anyones guess. Maybe when the annotations come out we may get more of an idea.

On another note -and  I hope this isn't going off topic - could Syl be Szeth's spren as well as Kaladin's? She keeps disappearing throughout the story and doesn't explain where she's going. Perhaps Szeth manages to summon her from time to time and she must go to him. However, you'd think if she was drawn to Kaladin, Szeth would start losing his abilities. I don't know. Just wondering where she goes when she disappears. Maybe she goes to a spren hangout.

I doubt Syl is bonded with another. If she was bonded to Szeth, then she would already have all her memories when she meets Kaladin. However, I think it is important that she is always disappearing, e.g. like after the Battle of the Tower.
"You've killed me. Bastards, you've killed me!
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FollowYourMuse

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #46 on: September 27, 2010, 08:46:06 AM »
So far all orther surgebinders are associated with Spren in some way
"All other surgebinders"?

There's Kaladin and Szeth. That's all we've seen.


I should have said all other surgebinder\windfinder\non-fabrial soulcasters (or maybe suspected new radiants?)

Jasnah, Elhokar, Shallan, Kaladin,

Munin

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #47 on: September 27, 2010, 03:13:37 PM »
So far all orther surgebinders are associated with Spren in some way
"All other surgebinders"?

There's Kaladin and Szeth. That's all we've seen.


I should have said all other surgebinder\windfinder\non-fabrial soulcasters (or maybe suspected new radiants?)

Jasnah, Elhokar, Shallan, Kaladin,
Jasnah isn't associated with Spren as far as I know. She seemed surprised when Shallan told her about the symbolspren.
There's a difference between what's best and what's right. What's best might be different tomorrow or the day after, but right and wrong will stay the same after a thousand years.

FollowYourMuse

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #48 on: September 27, 2010, 04:03:02 PM »
So far all orther surgebinders are associated with Spren in some way
"All other surgebinders"?

There's Kaladin and Szeth. That's all we've seen.


I should have said all other surgebinder\windfinder\non-fabrial soulcasters (or maybe suspected new radiants?)

Jasnah, Elhokar, Shallan, Kaladin,
Jasnah isn't associated with Spren as far as I know. She seemed surprised when Shallan told her about the symbolspren.
I think Jasnah is only surprised that Shallan see's them out of Shadesmar, we do not have evidence of Jasnah tied to a Spren. 
But Jasnah certainly knows of the connection to Spren and soulcasting, and identified them in Shallan's images. So we know she has seen Spren, and interacted with them in some form relating to soulcasting.

Munin

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #49 on: September 27, 2010, 04:31:10 PM »
I think Jasnah is only surprised that Shallan see's them out of Shadesmar, we do not have evidence of Jasnah tied to a Spren. 
But Jasnah certainly knows of the connection to Spren and soulcasting, and identified them in Shallan's images. So we know she has seen Spren, and interacted with them in some form relating to soulcasting.
We know that she knows about Spren. But that could be a result of her studies.
There's a difference between what's best and what's right. What's best might be different tomorrow or the day after, but right and wrong will stay the same after a thousand years.

Stormblessed

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #50 on: September 28, 2010, 01:49:18 AM »
Jasnah is probably from a different order of knights radiant from Shallan (jasnah = palah and shallan = shash), so she is surprised that the spren Shallan sees are different from her own. But she knows that a spren is needed to soulcast so she just assumes that these creatures must also be spren.
"You've killed me. Bastards, you've killed me!
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jacobfake

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #51 on: September 28, 2010, 04:19:51 AM »
Didn't it say in the back of the book that all the orders of knights radiant were tied to a specific type of spren? And I guess there could be surgebinders besides the knights but the knights seem to pretty completely be the main ones.

Also, it seems like too much of a coincidence that Szeth has like the most absurdly huge sense of honor, and has the powers that come from bonding with honorspren, for him to not have genuinely bonded at some point. And, if there's always a truthless, what could ever be the point of that (considering that Szeth appears to have been traded away almost immediately after becoming truthless, or at least the guy who traded him wanted to get rid of him so badly that he wouldn't accept payment/threw out what he was given). My theory is that Szeth got his honorspren before he became truthless and now it's like WTF because he's killing people. Or it might be in a morality crisis because his honor is at odds with logical morality, or his spren was trapped in his oathstone as part of his punishment.
My personal theory is yeah, Szeth was a warrior, got traded among people, was picked to have a shardblade, was super honorable, got his spren, followed some ancient traditional command regarding voidbringers, got punished with his spren imprisoned (thus freezing his powers and the spren's sentience at their levels from the time of punishment) and was sent into the world as truthless.

On a side note (I know this is the wrong thread but it will take someone like two seconds to answer) what is the second number in Posts: number out of number. In Brandon's like FAQ he says he's going to explain the levels but as I remember the answer is mysteriously missing.

Galavantes

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #52 on: September 28, 2010, 05:06:26 AM »
I've always felt like Szeth was far too competent to just be a random warrior who is being punished for something. To me it seems like the "Truthless of Shin" is a recurring title. An intentional position that for some reason the Shin abhor and yet believe is necessary. Therefore someone is chosen, trained, sworn to oaths of service, and armed with possibly the only shardblade possessed by the Shin.
It is apparent to me that he was given the blade by the shin, as he states at one point that the stone shamans would retrieve it upon his death.

The problem is that we don't know enough about the shin culture to know what the purpose of the Truthless is, or why a particular person is chosen for the position. Szeth clearly believes it to be a punishment, although whether it is a literal punishment or just his own personal idea of a living hell isn't clear yet. But I do believe that its a permanent position that will be filled again if Szeth were to die. Unfortunately at this point it's all RAFO, maybe next book will give us enough info for some serious theorycrafting on the subject.

Rew

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #53 on: September 28, 2010, 06:17:47 AM »
Honestly, I think we know quite a bit about Shin culture that helps describe and put together where they came from and what role Truthless have in their society. 
I wrote up three big theories on Stormblessed.com incorporating all these facts together, and while it doesn't account for the specifics (because as has been pointed out we don't have the specifics spelled out for us yet...) I think that a lot of it can be pieced together.

Here are the links to my  theories about the Shin that are most relevant here (the third is specifically about Szeth's Shardblade) because they are long and I don't want to just paste them in here:

http://www.stormblessed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=173

http://www.stormblessed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=174

http://www.stormblessed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=172

Tilinka

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #54 on: September 28, 2010, 06:00:37 PM »
We do know Syl does not like Shardblades on some fundamental level. I figure that must play into this somehow, though I can't pin down the bridge my brain is trying to make yet. :)

guy

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #55 on: September 28, 2010, 08:04:03 PM »
if there is one surgebinder in Shin, there are bound to be more. also i dont think that Truthless is a position that any normal citizen in Shin can get, i think that Szeths dad is someone very important, and that is why he refuses to go by his fathers name

Stormblessed

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #56 on: September 29, 2010, 12:39:34 AM »
if there is one surgebinder in Shin, there are bound to be more. also i dont think that Truthless is a position that any normal citizen in Shin can get, i think that Szeths dad is someone very important, and that is why he refuses to go by his fathers name
He doesn't go by his father's name because he doesn't want the dishonour of being truthless to be attached to his father's good name.
"You've killed me. Bastards, you've killed me!
 -- Darkeyed Soldier

Munin

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #57 on: September 29, 2010, 01:25:56 AM »
if there is one surgebinder in Shin, there are bound to be more. also i dont think that Truthless is a position that any normal citizen in Shin can get, i think that Szeths dad is someone very important, and that is why he refuses to go by his fathers name
He doesn't go by his father's name because he doesn't want the dishonour of being truthless to be attached to his father's good name.
Right, but he doesn't appear to have any such compunction about his grandfather. Either his grandfather is dead and is therefore immune to shame (at least in the Shin culture, if it works that way), or he respects his father greatly.
There's a difference between what's best and what's right. What's best might be different tomorrow or the day after, but right and wrong will stay the same after a thousand years.

Stormblessed

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #58 on: September 29, 2010, 04:08:30 AM »
if there is one surgebinder in Shin, there are bound to be more. also i dont think that Truthless is a position that any normal citizen in Shin can get, i think that Szeths dad is someone very important, and that is why he refuses to go by his fathers name
He doesn't go by his father's name because he doesn't want the dishonour of being truthless to be attached to his father's good name.
Right, but he doesn't appear to have any such compunction about his grandfather. Either his grandfather is dead and is therefore immune to shame (at least in the Shin culture, if it works that way), or he respects his father greatly.
I was leaning more to the fact the grandfather is dead, and in a place of eternal torment already. Or maybe the grandfather is also a warrior and therefore has not much honour to begin with, while Szeth's father may be a farmer with much honour.
"You've killed me. Bastards, you've killed me!
 -- Darkeyed Soldier

guy

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Re: Truthless
« Reply #59 on: September 29, 2010, 05:50:00 PM »
I was thinking his father was something like a stone shaman, or someone who was also a surgebinder, and was able to teach it to Szeth, or maybe his father is some kind of ruler or leader in Shin or something