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The An's Blade Is a Shaped Plant Guarding Something in the Eld

fringe mechanism · popularity 75 · 1 source thread

The An's blade's unnatural human-only weakness marks it as a Fae-shaped warning system protecting a secret in the Eld.

Also involves: Shaping, The Fae, Tempi, The Doors of Stone, Ans Blade, The Eld

The theory§

This theory argues that the An's blade, the plant Marten shows Kvothe and Tempi in the Eld which withers and dies at a human's touch yet tolerates the forest's animals, is too narrowly and strangely vulnerable to be a natural growth and was therefore bred or Shaped. Because a faint human residue could not plausibly kill a large sprawling plant unless the touch triggered a deliberate chain reaction, the lethality looks engineered rather than incidental. The proposed purpose is detection: the Fae, wishing to keep an untouched tract of old growth, ringed its perimeter with An's blades as an alarm that registers encroaching humans, which would also explain why people never settle that part of the Eld. From this the theory speculates the plants guard something significant deep in the forest, perhaps a ruined city or the Doors of Stone, consistent with Bast's observation that visiting Fae prefer old, pristine places. Real-world parallels such as poison ivy's near human-specific reaction and the touch-sensitive Mimosa pudica show the behavior need not be magical, tempering the claim.

Evidence§

  • The An's blade is the plant that Marten showed to Kvothe and Tempi that whithers up and dies if a human touches it. … the An's blade has a really specific and really odd weakness.
    Sets up the core oddity: a plant lethally vulnerable only to human touch. — u/aerojockey
  • None of them should have any reason to ignore touching the An's blade or climbing it or alighting on it (as far as we know), so I'm assuming that the plant doesn't react to those animals. It only reacts to humans
    Argues the weakness is human-specific, not a general animal reaction. — u/aerojockey
  • how would the tiny amount of human toxin (sweat or whatever) transferred by touching kill a fairly large plant? … The only way would be if the touch triggers some kind of chain reaction in the plant.
    Lethality from a faint touch implies an engineered chain reaction, not nature. — u/aerojockey
  • it ain't natural. A natural plant shouldn't have a such a specific weakness, shouldn't die that easily from a touch, and shouldn't survive as a species if it has such such a weakness. The An's blade was designed: bred, or (probably) shaped.
    Core conclusion: the plant is Shaped/bred, not naturally evolved. — u/aerojockey
  • And why would someone design a plant that dies from the barest touch of a human? As a warning system, of course. … whoever notices it will know that humans have been there.
    Proposes the purpose: a detection alarm for human encroachment. — u/aerojockey
  • Who put them there? Probably the Fae. … Bast says in the Lightning Tree that Faeries who visit the mortal world prefer old, pristene places. So the Fae, wanting to keep their piece of old growth forest, set up a bunch of An's blades at the perimeter
    Attributes the system to Fae guarding pristine old growth. — u/aerojockey
  • what if there's something in particular in the Eld that someone *does not want humans to see?* Like, say, a city. Or the remains of a city. Or... giant stone doors.
    Speculates the plants guard something significant deep in the Eld. — u/aerojockey
  • This is very similar to an observation I've posted several times on An's Blade being some kind of shaper weapon. Hard agree that it's not natural.
    Independent reader corroborates the Shaped/unnatural reading. — u/_jericho
  • There's a passage in How Old Holly Came to Be that I believe relates to the An's Blade; … its wood of living green. Its blade as bright as berry blood. This he drove into the shadow thing
    Offers in-text textual link tying An's Blade to a Fae weapon. — u/thek3vn
  • It's worth noting that poison ivy basically only creates an allergic reaction in humans (with very few exceptions)
    CounterCounter: a near human-specific reaction can occur naturally. — u/awmountain52
  • There are some real world plants that do this so it doesn't have to be magic but it's a well thought out idea and an interesting possibility.
    CounterCounter: real plants behave this way, so magic isn't required. — u/balrog222

Book refs: WMF

Tier reasoning§

tier verified: speculative inference from an odd plant trait

Contributors§

Source threads§