I thought Shen/Rlain was in the Everstorm near the end of the book. Why didn't he transform into a Voidbringer?
Or did I misunderstand and had they teleported out before the storm actually went over them?
Posted Apr 17, 2015, 8:14 PM UTC
The way I understood it was that the Everstorm wasn't like an Oprah deal (You become a voidbringer, you become a voidbringer! EVERYBODY BECOME A VOIDBRINGER!) The parshendi/parshmen had to take in an odium-spren or whatever the little red ones are. So some of them may have been able to escape unchanged.
My understanding was that the Everstorm forcibly gave them the Odium-spren and made them turn into Voidbringers.
It's more that the parshmen/parshendi can take on multiple forms. There for soldier forms, work forms, etc, and parshmen were just parshendi without a specific form. Shen was a dullform at first, to try to blend in with the parshmen and act as a spy.
The parshendi with forms had to take in the stormspren (the red ones) to transform into stormform (which they were at the end), and the ones that didn't want to transform stayed as they were. The parshmen had no forms, and were automatically transformed.
Seems reasonable enough. Because they were unbonded, the stormspren could more easily force themselves on the parshmen, while the already transformed parshendi can't change without breaking the existing bond willingly.
I like that idea.
This makes sense, it would be stupid of the Parshendi to turn ALL their people into Voidbringers, they'd still need people to make food / babies.
Was he really hit with the actual Everstorm? I thought they made it inside that building before the actual storm hit and then they teleported out. But I may have to re-read. My understanding was once they get hit by the Everstorm parshmen and parshendi change and so it's not just the ones that already accepted the Odium spren.
The everstorm goes west to east. So he was on the plains but the storm headed away from him since the Alethi came from the west. Likewise the escaped Parshendi may be unaffected so far. The question is what happens when the storm hits urithiru. It might be too high to have an effect, becoming a safe haven for parshendi...
I believe the Everstorm only changes the Parshmen specifically, because they are not in any (slave)form. I think it says something about that in the last chapter of WOR between Hoid/wit and Jasnah.
"The True Desolation appears to be different from the other Desolations as noted by Wit; the Storm will transform parshmen into Voidbringers rather than all Parshendi transforming at once, as was thought by Jasnah Kholin. She notes that this makes all the information she gathered during her time in Shadesmar nearly useless." From the Wikia