Re-Shephir
also known as The Midnight Mother, Dark mimicking spren
One of the Unmade, named by Renarin as *Re-Shephir, the Midnight Mother.* Manifests in the depths beneath Urithiru as a living blackness — tar pooled over walls, ceiling, and floor, sprouting humanoid figures that imitate people who have been near her, with spiny teeth and blobby distorted faces. Curious about humankind, drawn to violence, spawning midnight figures to copy fresh murders she has seen. SA:OB:Ch 29
A nameless dark spren Shallan glimpses at Urithiru — a body that wriggles through the wall-slots between the upper levels and the Breakaway market cavern, knuckles bent the wrong way, eyes catching her sphere-light from a mashed mockery of a human face. Connected somehow to the second market stabbing, in which a Horneater is targeted because he looks like the man Veil knifed at All's Alley. SA:OB:Ch 25 superseded at SA:OB:Ch 29
Known facts
- imitates-recent-violence-and-targets-look-alikesShallan's sketches comparing the Urithiru murders confirm a pattern: the spren is mimicking recent attacks. Brightlord Perel's body has the same bulbous features and build as Highprince Sadeas; the two strangled women had similar attacks; the two stabbed Horneaters had similar attacks. The spren copies a fresh act of violence after a few days, choosing a victim who resembles the original.SA:OB:Ch 27
- spawns-imitating-midnight-figures-from-her-tarUnder Urithiru, the Midnight Mother flowed her tar over walls, floor, and ceiling and spawned humanoid figures out of it — imitations of people she had seen recently (including Dalinar, Teshav, Lopen, two figures in Shardplate). They fought awkwardly with spears, bled smoke when struck, and degraded into bestial blobby forms with spiny teeth as the fight wore on.SA:OB:Ch 29
- ancient-splinter-ordered-to-sow-chaos-and-fascinated-by-violenceTouching Re-Shephir's essence, Shallan knew her at the same time as the spren knew her. The Midnight Mother is ancient — created long ago as a splinter of the soul of something even more terrible — and was ordered to sow chaos by spawning horrors to confuse and destroy men. Over the long ages she became *fascinated* by what she destroyed and began to imitate it, her spawn growing into hollow stone-like men with no love or fear, only an overwhelming curiosity and a thin ephemeral attraction to violence.SA:OB:Ch 30
- had-been-imprisoned-once-by-a-lightweaverThe Midnight Mother's terror of Shallan had a specific source. She had been trapped once before — recently, in her own reckoning, though centuries had passed in the world — by a Lightweaver like Shallan who had understood her. She feared Shallan as an axehound might fear someone whose voice resembles a harsh master's.SA:OB:Ch 30
- shallan-suspects-she-was-once-humanRecovering at Sebarial's suite afterward, Shallan tells Palona that what she touched was nothing like the lore — Re-Shephir is a vast and terrible spren who has so desperately wanted to understand humankind that she kills them in imitation of their violence. And beneath that, Shallan glimpsed something more: a sense that she might be searching for something she has lost. *Had this creature — in distant, distant time beyond memory — once been human?*SA:OB:Ch 32
Events
- SA:OB:Ch 29 Pours out of the unexplored end of the mural corridor as a living darkness — sweeping up walls and ceiling, spawning humanoid figures to attack the spear line, then resolving into a tar-coated heaving mass twenty feet high in the bowl-chamber, wrapped around a pillar in the room's center.
- SA:OB:Ch 30 Touched directly by Shallan's bare safehand, opens her essence to Shallan as Shallan opens to her, tries to rip Pattern away and replace him, then breaks under Shallan's feigned ferocity and flees down the tunnel deeper into the mountain.
- SA:OB:Ch 25 Wriggles through the wall-slot between the tower's third level and the Breakaway market cavern below, deformed body squeezed into the narrow space, mashed face turning toward Shallan's sphere-light.
Backreferences
- summarySA:OB:Ch 29
- summarySA:OB:Ch 29
- factGlurv
- factThe Unmade
- factRe-Shephir
- factHighmarshal Halad
- summarySA:OB:Ch 30
- factRe-Shephir
- factRe-Shephir
- factThe Urithiru Gemstone Pillar
- summarySA:OB:Ch 32
- factThe Unmade
- factRe-Shephir
- summarySA:OB:Ch 36
- summarySA:OB:Ch 43
- summarySA:OB:Ch 83