Susebron

Susebron
by Shuravf
Family Spouse Sisirinah Parents Mother
Abilities	Returned, Awakener, Cognitive Shadow
Titles	God King of Hallandren, Susebron the Grand, Immortal Majesty, His Excellent Grace
Nationality	Hallandren
Homeworld	Nalthis
Universe	Cosmere

“ When others look at something—a person—one may sometimes seem more beautiful than another. This is not so for me. I see only the colors. The rich, wondrous colors that make up all things and give them life. ”

— Susebron to Siri

Susebron is the God King of Hallandren on Nalthis around 300 years after the Manywar. He is a Returned and is given two or more Breaths every week by his subjects in order to keep him alive. He is the fifth God King in the three hundred years since the Manywar.

Appearance & Personality

“ All of those stories are just tales told by people who lived lives before ours. What they say about humankind is true. I have watched and seen how people act. It is strange, for me, to interpret these things, for I do not see as normal men do. I am the God King. Everything, to my eyes, has the same beauty. ”

— Suseborn on his perception of beauty

As a Returned, Susebron looks much younger than his fifty years. He is described as having dark hair, black eyes, and pale skin, though it is revealed later that he can learn to change his appearance at will.

He is naive, having grown up in a virtual prison imposed upon him by his priests. He is highly trusting of them, and refuses to believe that they may wish him harm. His main source of knowledge about morality is a book of stories that once belonged to his mother, the morals of which he follows from memory. Later, he begins to figure some things out for himself, though he continues to hold to the book's rules, making him honest to a fault. He's highly devoted to the people he trusts, including Siri and the priests, and refuses to abandon either of them. Nonetheless, he can be realistic in his asessment of others and is keenly aware of his own shortcomings as a ruler.

He's very fond of sweets, and justifies eating a lot of them by saying that as a Returned, he can't gain any weight.

History

Childhood and Early Life

Susebron was an infant Returned fifty years before the Pahn Kahl rebellion. At the time of his Return, the God King was unable to produce a child, and so the infant Susebron was given Peacegiver's Treasure and made the new God King after his predecessor gave up his Divine Breath to cure a plague. At some point either before or after his crowning, his tongue was removed so that he would be unable to use the wealth of Breaths that had been bestowed on him. He was separated from his mother, though he managed to retain a storybook she used to read him. He had heard the stories so many times and looked at it over the years that he had memorized each symbol, and the morals of the stories in the book were in part the code by which he lived.

Throughout most of his life, Susebron resided mostly alone in the black palace of the God Kings in T'Telir. Despite being the official ruler of Hallandren, he was kept away from its people and other Returned, only coming out briefly on special occasions, to hide the fact that he was mute. At the time, he had not been taught to Awaken with a thought.

Marriage to Siri

by Howard Lyon Siri meeting Susebron for the first time

“ I don't think God Kings are supposed to be "sweet." ”

— Suseborn showing his lack of knowledge on metaphorical terms

To forestall a war between Idris and Hallandren, Susebron was promised the hand of king Dedelin's daughter, Vivenna. At the last moment, however, she was swapped for her sister, Sisirinah, and Susebron ended up marrying Siri. For a long time, Susebron and Siri met only at night, as the priests wanted them to make a child, but neither acted, as Siri was awaiting Susebron's first move, while Susebron had no idea what was expected of him. Initially, he feared Siri, uncertain as to why she spent her nights waiting, naked, on his floor. After she began to perform her moaning and screaming routine for the priests, he approached her with a book, hoping to start some communication.

Siri taught Susebron to read and write using his mother's storybook and they started to converse, him writing on a board, and her speaking. Siri taught Susebron to read using the story book of his mother. As he and Siri planned how to reveal to the other gods that had no tongue, the two began to fall in love. He would spend long hours with her, learning about things like sarcasm and mockery, and about places such as Idris, and Siri's life growing. During one of those conversations, Susebron expressed an interest in meeting Austre. Eventually, he and Siri consummated their marriage.

The Pahn Kahl Rebellion

After much convincing from Siri, Susebron decided to finally reveal his true function in the court to the other gods, with the plan for failure being to flee with Siri. However, before either could happen, Siri was taken away by the priests, under the guise of her pregnancy forcing her to stay in seclusion. Almost immediately afterwards, the Pahn Kahl attacked the Court of the Gods, and imprisoned both Siri and Susebron.

The latter found himself in a cell next to Lightsong, who sacrificed his own divine Breath to heal him, restoring his tongue. Now able to speak, and armed with enough Breaths to let him instinctively Awaken, Susebron freed his palace from the Pahn Kahl invaders and saved Siri.

Soon after the rebellion was quenched, Susebron was approached by Vasher, who gave him the command to the Kalad's Phantoms strewn about the city. He uses it to send them after the Lifeless bearing down on Idris. He himself remains in T'Telir along with Siri, now with far more influence on Hallandren politics.

Attributes and Abilities

by Fyrebeam Portrait of Susebron

Throughout most of his life, Susebron was mute and unable to read or write using the common alphabet. He did, however, understand the color-coded Hallendren artisan's script, which provided the only means of communicate between Susebron and his priests. Because he wasn't taught how to Awaken mentally, he was unable to use his Breath to Awaken. He eventually manages to learn how to read and write from Siri, and has his tongue restored by Lightsong, immediately gaining the ability to speak.

He has been gifted with Peacegiver's Treasure, a sum of approximately fifty thousand Breaths. Additionally, he receives two to three Breaths every week which causes his hoard of Breath to grow steadily over time. This grants him the Tenth Heightening and all the abilities of the Heightenings beneath it, including:

• Aura Recognition - allows him to assess the number of Breaths a person possesses.
• Perfect Pitch
• Perfect Color Recognition - allows him to instantly and instinctively determine exact shades of colors and their hue harmonics.
• Perfect Life Sense - allows him to sense people around him.
• Agelessness - makes him immune to most toxins and physical ailments, as well as making him functionally immortal.
• Instinctive Awakening - allows him to know commands necessary for what he desires to do without learning them beforehand.
• Invested Breath Recognition - allows him to recognize the auras of objects, and can tell when something has been Invested with Breath via Awakening.
• Command Breaking - allows him to instinctively override Commands in other Invested objects, including Lifeless. This requires concentration and will leave him exhausted.
• Greater Awakening - allows him to Awaken stone and steel objects
• Audible Command - allows him to Awaken objects that he is not physically touching, but that are within the sound of his voice.
• Color Distortion - Wherever Susebron goes, white objects in his vicinity break up their colors like a prism, creating further colors. To show this off, he's usually dressed in white for public functions, although he wears black in private, as it is a more powerful color from an Awakening standpoint.
• Perfect Invocation - when Awakening he drains objects to white instead of grey.
• Mental Command - this ability, which is difficult to learn, allows him to give Commands and Awaken mentally. Susebron would have been able to Awaken through this ability before having his tongue healed, but was never taught how to do so.
• There are rumors of other powers granted by the Tenth Heightening which are not understood or have not been made known by the God Kings who have been the only ones to achieve it.

The Peacegiver's Treasure makes Susebron effectively immortal, and even if he were to suddenly be cut off from his weekly supply, he could still live for over nine hundred years feeding off it. This amount of Breath might also make him immune to emotional Allomancy. In addition, as the God-King, he's capable of using his divine Breath to heal multiple people instead of just one. Whether this is because he was Returned young or some side-effect of holding Peacegiver's Treasure is uncertain.

Though little has been shown of Susebron's Awakening abilities, he is naturally extremely powerful by the virtue of the sheer number of Breaths he possesses. Shortly after regaining his tongue, he was capable of controlling hundreds of individual Awakened objects simultaneously.

Though he is a king, it's uncertain how much in the way of political skill he has, as until very recently, he's been little more than a figurehead of the priesthood.

Relationships

Siri

“ There is nothing so wonderful as you, even in my entire court. The mountains must be special indeed, to produce such beauty. ”

— Susebron to Siri

Siri and Susebron are married. Though their marriage is to solidify political alliances, and the agreement between Hallandren and Idris set up several decades before it is finalized, they come to love each other deeply. Siri was not meant to be Susebron's wife through the agreement, instead her older sister Vivenna was groomed to marry the God King. However, at the time Vivenna was to travel to Hallandren and wed Susebron, her father King Dedelin, decided to send Siri in her place. Despite her initial terror at the prospect her marriage to Susebron, the two strike up a friendship which turns quickly to love.

Development

This page or section contains details from the unpublished work Mythwalker!

This information has the potential to ruin plot elements of both published works and upcoming book releases for the reader. It should also be considered uncanonical and could completely change in the future.

Siri, Vivenna and Susebron were developed together. Originally, they were all characters from Mythwalker, Brandon's ninth, unpublished novel. Susebron was unnamed in Mythwalker, going only by the name of the Emperor, but was likewise going to marry Vivenna (Vvenna in Mythwalker) before marrying Siri instead.

The Emperor in Mythwalker retains the same divine status Susebron has, but the details are slightly different: he's significantly younger, has been crowned at the age of ten rather than shortly after his birth, and wears black rather than white in court. He's also not a Returned, as Awakening did not yet exist in its current form.

Though the Emperor is present for Siri's marriage to him (in contrast to Susebron), his early meetings with her go much the same as they do in Warbreaker. However, as the Siri in Mythwalker possesses powers that would allow her to regrow his tongue, the plot requires the two to remain in that initial state of non-communication for far longer than they do now.

Though Brandon never finished Mythwalker, the budding relationship between Siri and the Emperor was one of his favourite parts of the story, which is why he revisited it in Warbreaker. Though their plot was re-written significantly to improve the pacing, the Emperor's personality did not change when he became Susebron.

Trivia

• Several people emailed Brandon saying that lacking a tongue, Susebron shouldn't have the sense of taste. However, this is a misconception born out of a common urban legend that the taste buds are segregated by taste on a person's tongue, while in reality, the roof of the mouth also has them.
• Though Susebron believes that he has hidden his book of stories from the priests, they are aware of it, though they decided to let him keep it as a memento.
• According to Brandon, Susebron might not make a good God-King, but he will certainly make an earnest one. It's possible that Llarimar will become his high priest.
• Though Susebron might appear in Nightblood, he will not be the focus of the story.

Notes

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