User:Stargazer

I started reading Brandon's works in 2015 and have been following the community on and off since then. I finally decided to start contributing here in 2019. I'm new to editing wikis, so I'm mostly going to be using this page for figuring that out and drafting articles.

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Current Projects (in rough priority order)

• Tanavast and Honor: Working out the difference between Vessel and Shard pages and adding detial.
• Sylphrena (History Section): Worked on this as my June/July objective, but didn't get far. Hopefully, I'll get back to it at some point.

Sub-pages

• User:Stargazer/Tanavast
• User:Stargazer/Honor

Small Workspace (Currently for Syl)

This page or section contains spoilers for Oathbringer!

This information has the ability to potentially ruin elements of the plot for the reader. Proceed with caution if you have not read this book.

History

Creation & Early Life

Sometime before the Day of Recreance, Honor passed on the responsibility of creating honorspren to the Stormfather, who only created a handful of spren at first, including Sylphrena. Sylphrena formed a Nahel Bond with a human who died before the Recreance, saving her from the fate of her brothers and sisters, who were all destroyed and turned into deadeyes by the Knights Radiant abandoning their oaths. The loss of her human sent Syl into a deep slumber that lasted thousands of years, during which time the Stormfather only created ten other honorspren, who in turn created the next generation and so on, making Syl one of only eleven living spren created by the Stormfather. Sylphrena was found asleep by the other honorspren, who gave her the moniker "The Ancient Daughter." Some time after awaking, around 1770, she felt drawn to Kaladin because of the protective way he treated children while he was a squad leader in Amaram's army and, though the other honorspren told her not to do so, ran away to the Physical Realm. This escape caused the honorspren to put a sizable bounty on bringing Syl back to their capital, Lasting Integrity.

Adjustment to the Physical Realm & Meeting Kaladin

As is usually the case with spren, transitioning from Shadesmar to the Physical Realm made Sylphrena lose most of her cognitive ability. As a result, she lost almost all of her memories, including the knowledge that she is a honorspren, and acted much like a windspren, which are considered a sort of cousin to honorspren. After transitioning, Syl follows Kaladin around during his time in Amaram's army and plays tricks on him by making things stick together, which may have been uses of the Surge of Adhesion. Proximity to Kaladin slowly returned her memory and intelligence and, just before Tvlakv's slave caravan arrives at the Shattered Plains, she regains the ability to talk, though Kaladin was initially hesitant to respond, as he feared she was a sign that he was going insane. During those initial conversations, Syl struggled to understand Kaladin's depression and why humans act certain ways

When Kaladin was exhausted after his first bridge run, she called his name and urged him to get up and move. After a few weeks in Bridge Four, Kaladin's depression grows progressively worse, and Syl misses the old Kaladin who stood up for others. Despite the risk of breaking their nascent bond, she sets out on a journey to try to help Kaladin, though she does not explain her purpose to him and he is terrified of loosing her too. When she returns, she finds Kaladin at the Honor Chasm, prepared to kill himself by stepping over the edge. Before he can do so, she calls his name and gives him a leaf of blackbane, a deadly poison, because Kaladin had been holding on to such a leaf during his time in the slave caravan and, from her perspective, he has gotten worse since he lost that leaf. The sheer irony of her giving him a deadly poison to make him happy makes Kaladin laugh, and Syl convinces him to help others "one last time" by trying to protect Bridge Four.

After Kaladin becomes bridgeleader, she is afraid that Gaz will try to harm Kaladin in retaliation for how Kaladin treats the bridge sergeant. She also begins to develop a sense of right and wrong. For example, she is glad when Kaladin pays Gaz as he had previously promised. As her bond with Kaladin continues to strengthen, she begins to understand concepts like age and death and her cognition advances enough that she views humans as discordant because, unlike spren, they all act differently. Still, she struggles to understand things that are totally counter to her nature as a honorspren, like why people lie. When Bridge Four goes out to gether stones for the camp, she leads Lunamorto knobweed, the sap of which can be used as an antiseptic.

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Developing the Bond

When Kaladin began to break his oaths during Words of Radiance, Syl started losing sentience, reverting back to a mindless windspren. She became more childlike, easily distracted, and lost her bond with Kaladin to the point where he could no longer draw upon Stormlight to Surgebind. When Kaladin fell into the chasm, he was able to draw one breath of Stormlight to save himself, though he heard Syl scream in his head. She did not reappear after that, and during the next highstorm, Kaladin received a vision from the Stormfather, saying that he had killed her. He was no longer able to use any Surgebinding powers, and Syl vanished. When Kaladin tried to save Elhokar from the assassination attempt, he thought the words of the First Ideal, and began to hear shouting. It resolved into Syl arguing with the Stormfather and being forbidden to return to Kaladin. Syl then told Kaladin to speak the words, and he spoke the Third Ideal of the Windrunners. Syl then reappeared and spun around Kaladin, telling him to hold out his hand. He did so, blocking Moash's Shardblade as Syl formed into a Shardblade in his hand. His Surgebinding abilities came back, and Syl was able to speak in his mind and tell him that she was only as dead as his oaths.

Oaths Restored

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Abilities and Attributes

Like other larger spren, Syl could change her form, although since bonding with Kaladin, she was usually in the shape of a small, glowing woman. She had the ability to cause things to stick together which she generally used to play pranks on people. She could float or fly through the air, as well as walk sideways, and was particularly good at finding things such as when she helped search for the knobweeds and loot from the chasms for Bridge Four. She had the ability to bond with people and gain higher sentience in exchange for granting that person Surgebinding abilities, although whether this is voluntarily caused by her is unknown.

Nahel Bond

For more information, see Nahel bond.

“ I'm behind what is happening to you. I'm doing it. It's both of us. But without me, nothing would be changing in you. I'm . . . taking something from you. And giving something in return. It's the way it used to work, though I can't remember how or when. I just know that it was. I'm willing to stop it, if you want. But I would go back to being as I was before. That scares me. Floating on the wind, never remembering anything for longer than a few minutes. It's because of this tie between us that I can think again, that I can remember what and who I am. If we end it, I lose that. ”

— Syl to Kaladin on where his Surgebinding abilities are from

As a true spren, Syl is capable of crossing into the Physical Realm to forge a Nahel bond with another sapient being. This starts the bonded creature on the path to being a Knight Radiant and grants him or her Surgebinding and the ability to breath in Stormlight, and also helps Syl regain some of the sapience and memories she lost by transitioning from the Cognitive Realm to the Physical. If the bond advances to a certain point, Syl becomes close enough to the Physical Realm that she can be summoned as a Shardblade. While in the Physical Realm, Syl can change her appearance and make herself invisible to others.

Since Syl is a honorspren, those who bond with her become Windrunners, with access to the Surges of Adhesion and Gravitation.

The Nahel bond can be broken in three main ways. One, if the Radiant dies, the bond ends; this is painful for the spren, but not deadly. Second, if the Radiant breaks his or her oaths, the spren is killed and becomes a deadeye unless the Radiant returns to the oaths. Third, Notum mentions unspecified "other ways" that work as long as the Fifth Ideal has not been sworn.