The Singers

The Singers, known to humans as the parshmen in their dormant form and as the Parshendi or listeners among those who regained their will, are the native people of Roshar, a sapient species with carapace-armored bodies who change their physical forms by bonding different Spren. They are central to the history and conflict of The Stormlight Archive, and their fate is bound up with the Voidbringers and the Fused.

Description

Singers have skin marbled in patterns of red, black, and white, and bodies partly armored with chitin-like carapace. Their defining trait is the ability to take on different forms by bonding particular Spren -- each form granting different physical attributes, capabilities, and even degrees of intelligence and emotion. They can sing and hum the Rhythms, internal songs tied to their emotions and to the Spren they bond.

Forms

Among the singer forms are dullform, workform, mateform, warform, and others, each suited to a purpose. Crucially, the docile slaveform or the dull state of the parshmen is a deformity -- singers cut off from spren and stripped of their will, used as mindless labor by humans across Roshar for centuries without realizing they were an enslaved people. The dangerous stormform and related powered forms, bonded to spren of Odium, turn singers into Voidbringers.

The Listeners

The Shattered Plains Parshendi were listeners -- singers who had broken free of Odium's influence and regained their own minds, carefully choosing their forms to avoid the powered forms that would deliver them back to their god. Their assassination of King Gavilar set the war of the early Archive in motion. Eshonai and Venli are among the prominent listeners.

History and Significance

The singers were Roshar's original people, displaced and later enslaved in the long aftermath of the ancient wars. The coming of the Everstorm awakens the parshmen across Roshar, restoring forms and, with the Fused, reigniting the war. Their tragic history complicates the simple tale of humans versus Voidbringers and lies at the moral heart of The Stormlight Archive.