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Warning: This post contains a single Stormlight 5 prologue spoiler, masked, and potentially significant spoilers should these theories prove accurate. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. Just as the Stormfather provides Stormlight and surgebinding powers to all of Honor's children, Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM) became the Voidmother proving Voidlight and voidbinding powers to all of Odium's children, all of her Singers, during the False Desolation. One BAM to Connect them all One BAM aligned them One BAM to draw them all And with her Voidlight bind them One gem severs the whole One gem divides them One gem rips away souls And then the darkness finds them In the Land of Roshar Where the Singers die And Listeners live We'll explore much relevant history leading up to and beyond BAM's imprisonment (see Coppermind's BAM and False Desolation articles for supporting canon references) and theories explaining the magical science behind what happened with BAM, her Singers, and related events. BAM-SINGER CONNECTION HISTORY The lead up to and fall out from BAM's gemstone capture includes: Long, long ago, Odium unmakes 9 spren who fight during many desolations in which BAM serves as highprincess and commander of Odium's forces, The last desolation comes where all but Taln survive, Taln holds Odium and his Fused on Braize all by himself (spanning a total of 4500 years), During the long imprisonment of Odium and the Fused, BAM somehow gains the ability to pull Voidlight into the Physical Realm and to Connect herself with all the Singers of Roshar, a feat previously only managed by Odium, making herself a little god (RoW 847-848), Even though Odium and the Fused are still trapped on Braize, BAM's newfound powers give her the ability to provide Singers with forms of power including all the Regal forms plus stormform, which allows BAM to wage war against the Knights Radiant during the False Desolation, with no end in sight, The Listeners, tired of endless war and manipulation from both Odium and Honor, "cast off everything - including our very forms - to find freedom," which severs their Connection to BAM (RoW 159), Honor's long, slow death begins around this time, The Knights Radiant form a special Strike Team to imprison BAM inside a gemstone in order to end the False Desolation, Because BAM is a little god and holds strong Connection to the spren and souls of every Singer in Roshar except the Listeners, these tethered souls and spren get sucked along their Connection to BAM, ripping out pieces of their souls, removing both their Identity and Connection, and possible damaging or destroying their gemhearts in the ripping process, Somehow even Honor and Cultivation's spren and the Sibling get damaged by BAM's imprisonment, though to a much smaller degree that perhaps signals a much smaller Connection between the Voidmother and "all who belong to Roshar," affecting the Sibling's abilities to make Towerlight and crippling Urithiru (RoW 621), Close to dying, Honor cannot help the Sibling, Urithiru, or the Knights Radiant, The Battle for Feverstone Keep begins before BAM's imprisonment since the enemy still pushes for that ground and parshmen are anything but pushy (OB 809), BAM's imprisonment, if during the Battle for Feverstone Keep, would have caused all fighting Singers to experience excruciating pain and then simultaneously transform into docile, mindless parshmen, All Singers Connected to BAM become parshmen through a break in Identity and Connection; only the Listeners escape because of their previously broken Connections to her, Hundreds of Windrunners and Stonewards at Feverstone Keep become the first to abandon their oaths en masse as Honor says, "they are the first" (OB 547), Two thousand years later, the Everstorm travels to Roshar through the Cognitive Realm and is brought through to the physical realm, and The Everstorm restores both Identity and Connection by repairing the Singers’ souls and possibly their gemhearts. SCIENCE-MAGIC THEORY BEHIND CONNECTION, CAPTURING SPREN, AND THE SINGERS' SOULS From Newton, we know: Force = mass * acceleration From Jasnah (OB 1179), we know that "concentrated Stormlight has a faint mass to it." So the more we accelerate the physical mass of the Stormlight, the stronger the physical force we have acting on the Stormlight and anything Connected to and by the Stormlight. How do we move or accelerate Stormlight? Navani's lecture on fabrial mechanics includes details on sucking Light into a gemstone in order to trap a spren inside a gemstone. We first lure a spren into close proximity to a gemstone with something it likes (e.g., flames for flamespren) and by using the type of gemstone it prefers (RoW epigraphs, Chapter 1). Interestingly, we already know the type of gemstones preferred by each Order of Knights Radiant (and each associated herald). Moash's knife had a large sapphire gemstone hilt that gave a subdued glow after capturing Jezrien's spren-soul (OB 1205), which makes me wonder if the gemstone in Leshwi's spear (RoW 80) that drained Kaladin's Stormlight and nearly sucked out his soul (RoW 101) was sapphire, as well. The first questions we must ask ourselves would be 1) what would BAM be attracted to and 2) what kind of gemstone would she prefer? To answer the second, maybe the Voidmother would prefer a heliodor, as the Stormfather would. As for the first question, she appears to like war and commanding, and she has shown particular interest in Feverstone Keep (OB 809). One might imagine Melishi, the False Desolation's Bondsmith, and her Strike Team showing up at the Battle for Feverston Keep with a large and perfect (or nearly perfect) heliodor gemstone, knowing that BAM would be nearby commanding her troops and in search of something in the area that interested her. Navani's next stages in capturing a spren (RoW epigraphs, Chapters 2-5) would be filling the gemstone to around 70% full of Stormlight (Voidlight in BAM's case) and then quickly sucking that Stormlight out to create a vacuum that will suck in a nearby spren. Suppose you take a brown paper lunch sack and suck the air out. It collapses, right? The same would be true of a Ziploc bag. By collapsing to reduce the volume, the bag equalizes the pressure. But what about something that has a rigid structure like a gemstone, especially a gemstone that doesn't leak? If you suck all the air out of a glass, for example, you'd suction that glass to your face since you've created a vacuum of extremely low pressure. Because air and Light will always seek the lowest pressure possible, they'll get sucked into a vacuum until the pressure outside of the gem roughly equals the pressure inside the gem. Since volume is inversely proportional to pressure, the larger the gemstone, the lower the pressure (where the lower pressure goes the stronger the vacuum becomes). And finally, the tighter the seal, the less a gemstone will leak and the stronger the vacuum will be. So large, perfect gemstones make the perfect traps for these gods. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how does the spren gets sucked in along with the Stormlight? That's where Connection comes in. When the Stormfather gives Stormlight to his children - his spren and his surgebinders - an invisible cord of Stormlight will Connect that spren or that Radiant to the Stormfather. The same can be said for the Voidmother's children - BAM's spren and her Singers: they're all Connected to their mother by a physical force from the Voidlight she provides. Let's say you have a massive gemstone and a larkin quickly sucking a ton of Light out of your stone. The gemstone will quest out seeking to replace all or almost all of the light it just lost with a powerful force. Once it captures a nearby Stormlight Connection cord, the spren will be drawn in along with the Stormlight the spren is tethered to. Yes, the Connection is mostly spiritual, but there is a small physical Connection, too (because the Stormlight Connecting them has a small mass, as Jasnah said, and mass * acceleration is force, as Newton said). If we yank hard enough on that tether, the spren cannot help but be pulled in. We see this with spren pulled into fabrials, yes, but also with human and Singer souls, tethered to their home planet by their Connection to the Investiture there. We saw Jezrien's spren-soul sucked into Moash's sapphire knife and Kaladin's soul nearly sucked into Leshwi's gemstone-capped spear, both of which had metal that specifically draws in Stormlight including the Stormlight cords of Connection. Let me digress for a smidge to explain that Identity and souls are nearly synonymous. For instance, the Fused (where each Fused is the soul of one ancient Singer fuzed together forever to a surgebinding spren, granting surgebinding powers and immortality) maintain their Identities - and most of their intellect, knowledge, and memories - even though they constantly lose the rest of their bodies because Identity is stored in the soul. Connection for the traditional Singer bond appears to be stored in their gemhearts since that is where their spren and probably their souls reside. Now I said all that to say this: this, this, this is how Singers' souls were ripped away, how their Identity and Connection were stolen, and how they became mindless parshman slaves, by having parts of their souls that were tethered to their Voidmother ripped free, likely destroying their gemstones in the process, as BAM and all her many Connections were sucked into her gemstone prison. With Singer souls damaged, they were not quite soulless and mindless nothings but nearly so. And with Singer gemhearts damaged or destroyed, the parshmen lost their abilities to bond any other spren or to hear the rhythms of Roshar inside their gemhearts. The Listeners were spared, maintaining their Identity and their abilities to Connect with other spren because they had previously severed their Connections to BAM before her imprisonment. TRAVEL & WORLDHOPPING We'd be remiss if, while we're here with Connection, we didn't speculate on travel and worldhopping. Connection tethers Invested individuals to their home planet, not letting them escape lest they rip out part of their souls, their Identity, and destroy their Connection. But of course there is a way around this problem, a way out, because this is Sanderson, after all. The remainder of the post includes a little speculation about how off-world travel may be possible based on what we know of Connection above and a single spoiler from the Knights of Wind and Truth prologue that gives a bit more detail regarding the quote above. Reading the prologue for Stormlight 5 first is recommended. I've kept all non-Stormlight cosmere spoilers out of this post.

First post, long time lurker. I'm copying a theory i sent to my brother and I haven't proofread this. Ok bear with me here I think Bah Ado Mishram’s imprisonment is the cause of the deadeye spren. There’s an epigraph where kalek pleads for her release because he claims her capture affected not just roshar but all Spren. He was present for her capture, as well as the recreance and the false desolation. There’s more. After maya’s “we chose” testimony, adolin asks her if they knew the spren would die, she says, verbatim “pain yes, death no, maybe” how would the spren know there would be pain from a broken Nahel bond, but didn’t know they would die? Unless they had seen it happen before the inprisonment. Perhaps they saw some evidence that spren were dying from broken bonds in the time between that and the recreance, but not enough to make a decisive conclusion. They knew it would hurt though because it always hurts when a bond is broken. Lastly, and this is just assumptions. All the deadeye spren that are meeting at lasting integrity are going to be fixed. The next book is going to involve the release of Bah ado mishram. Then there will be thousands upon thousands of radiant spren to bond. Winning the war. And adolin will be one of them when maya is fixed. He said the first ideal to her, and they formed a bond but she didn’t change yet.

Could the Sibling and Ba-ado-Mishram be one and the same? - a Godspren - light-producing - stuck inside a gem - missing a part of itself - wary of Knights Radiant! - both went dormant about the same time Could "Mishram" have been a three-part spren, an equal divide between the three Shards - the three pure tones - of Roshar... perhaps even created to symbolize the unity of the three when the Ashynian Refugees were accepted? Perhaps even created as *part of the Oathpact*?

So we all know that the heralds have a unique madness that is most likely linked to their divine attributes and how people perceive them. I’ve seen several threads theorizing that the capturing of Ba-Ado-Mishram is what caused their madness, but if you remember what Ishar said in his brief moment of clarity to Dalinar, he says that their madness retreats when they are around Radiants that swear ideals or when they are near the Spiritual Realm. Now I’m not trying to pinpoint when their madness started, although Kalak’s epigraphs hint that it could be a result of their enormously long life. What I am trying to say is that if their madness retreats when around Radiants getting upgrades, and if the only Radiants left after the Recreance are the Skybreakers playing Radiant whack-a-mole, I wonder how many opportunities the Heralds would actually have after the Recreance to experience an Oathed-up moment of clarity. I think it is most likely true that they were quite mad before the Recreance and that they already knew what sort of experienced brought clarity. So ya, there you go.

I am pretty sure that I saw someone else say something about this, but for the life of me I can’t find the post. It is an interesting theory so I want to hear ideas. When BAM was imprisoned, it affected the entire land and created slave form among the singers. It created a new state of being for them. What if it also affected the spren of the Knights Radiant?. What if before the imprisonment of BAM, the bond could be broken without killing the spren, only some pain on their part. BAM getting imprisoned changed the land and the Knights didn’t know anything had changed. They had the plan to end their oaths but they didn’t realize it would kill the spren.

So far it seems as if Shallan and Adolins next step is to find BAM and release her, as they both have deadeye spren and Kalak indicated that BAM being captured lead to dead eyes. However there are only ten days left till the battle of champions and they are stuck in the middle of shadesmar, more than ten days away from the closest perpindicularity. So by that logic BAM is most likely in shadesmar and within ten days journey. Kalak was there for the capture of BAM so he could have her in shadesmar. But if he did he likely would have told Adolin and Shallan at the end of RoW when they all talked together about BAM, dead eyes, and Maya. However we know that another Herald was there at the capture of BAM other than Kalak. We know acording to maps and RoW that Lasting Integrity is on the between Tukar and Emul right near where Dalinar and Odiums forces faced each other, and where Dalinar talked to Ishar. AT the end of which Ishar went into the congnitive realm. So he is somewhere close to Lasting Integrity in the cognitive realm. I believe that Ishar was the other Herald there for the capturing of BAM and that the radiants gave him the perfect gem that holds BAM. Because if he has it, Shallan and Adolin could get it from him within the ten days as he is right outside Lasting Integrity. But there is more, near the end of RoW dead eyes started gathering outside Lasting Integrity. The honorspren said it was because they were finally going to get justice, but what if instead they were drawn to BAM. Because again acording to Kalak dead eyes only occured after BAM's capture and said that BAM was conected to all of Roshar including spren. So the dead eyes could still be connected to BAM enough that they are drawn to where she is. In that case it would mean that BAM was near the border of Tukar and Emul, right where Ishar was, waiting for Dalinar. In sumation, another Herald was at BAM's capture, dead eyes who only exist because of BAM's capture are flocking to Tukar and Emul's border where Ishar is, Ishar went through a perpindicularity and is now right outside Lasting Integrity, and there are only ten days left for Adolin and Shallan to find and free BAM. The only logical thing is that Ishar has BAM.