The Stormlight Archive: A Pocket Companion to The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Author:Brandon Sanderson [Sanderson, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765393043
Publisher: Tor
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The period after a Highstorm is an especially good time for the plants to feed because most animals have been driven into shelter by the boulders tossed around by hurricane-force winds.

SPREN

Every concept in Roshar has the potential to attract a visible spirit called a spren. These ethereal creatures vary wildly in shape and size, and seem to react to how humans perceive ideas. Spren are an essential part of Sanderson’s world and are deeply tied to how humans access the magical powers of Surgebinding.

EMOTIONAL SPREN

Spren are drawn to cognitive events within human minds, and as such have a particular predilection for strong emotions. Angerspren, fearspren, painspren, and others all appear around humans locked in the throes of strong emotions, giving rise to a highly performative emotional culture.

Angerspren

“His expression was as thunderous as a highstorm, angerspren boiling up from the ground around him like small pools of bubbling blood.”

Whenever someone feels sufficient rage, these spren bubble up from the ground around them. It has not been confirmed whether a skillful enough actor could hide his or her anger well enough to keep angerspren from materializing.

Fearspren

“Small fearspren—shaped like globs of purple goo—began to wriggle from the masonry, pointing toward the doorway. They were drawn by the terror being felt on the other side.”

Fearspren point towards sources of intense fear and can potentially reveal a terrified person hiding from something. It is noted of Bridge Four that, “to their credit,” they were not attracting any fearspren, which indicates not that they are fearless, but that they are less afraid than other nearby people. Not attracting fearspren seems to be a sign of valor.

Painspren

“Painspren—like small orange hands with overly long fingers—were crawling around him, reacting to his agony.”

It is likely that the extremely unpleasant physical manifestation of painspren is due to the fact that they are shaped by unpleasant emotion.

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA SPREN

There are many spren who are formed by human perception of natural events, which help humans understand phenomena that they couldn’t otherwise perceive with the naked eye.

Groundspren

The Alethi believe that things fall towards the ground instead of floating away because groundspren pull them downwards. This is fundamentally interchangeable with a working theory of gravity. Brandon Sanderson has said that groundspren pull with a force equivalent to .7g.

Rotspren

Rotspren manifest as small red bugs. Their existence has given the people of Roshar a working germ theory of disease and allowed them to develop sophisticated surgical hygiene routines.

Lifespren

“Tiny lights rose around the plants. Lifespren. They looked like motes of glowing green dust or swarms of tiny translucent insects.”

Lifespren are most likely to appear in the blossoming stage directly after a Highstorm, when plants hungrily drink in stormwater. This might highlight the fact that spren are tied to the storms, especially considering how both spren and storms are absent from Shinovar.

Judgmental Spren:

Some spren seem to pass judgment on how well humans are succeeding at their performative tasks. Some of these appear at moments when a person is performing before a large crowd, but others can appear privately.

Creationspren

“Creationspren were of medium size, as tall as one of her fingers, and they glowed with a faint silvery light.

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