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  1. So, many of us speculate, that BAM could become Bondsmith Spren. But this Theory goes further. Shortly, i think Ba-Ado-Mishram allready WAS Godspren and had a Bondsmith. During the False Desolation. FIrst, we know that BAM was earlier general of Odium's forces, but wasnt able to do what she did during False Desolation. Bonding with entire Race was new, not expected by anyone ability. And spren normaly dont have new abilities by themselves. Spren are gaining new abilities by Bond. Or no, they not have new abilities, more like they find new aplications for their abilities. In most cases this is ability to manifest in Physical Realm as Shardblades, and also ability to larger interaction with items, but for Powerfull Spren this can be something different. For Stormfather could be Visions, and also images, map and so on. We know also Bonding Unmade is possible, like with any other Spren. We also know killing Bondsmith Spren would have massive consequences for whole Roshar. Imprisonment could do the same. We can also assume that BAM was able to comand not only Singers, but also Voidspren. They are integral part of Odium's forces, essential for recon, as messengers, spies, or fight in the Cognitive. Maybe BAM could comand Voidspren to start bonding Singers and this was her main power as Unmade. But during False Desolation BAM had ability to provide Voidlight, exactly like Stormfather, Nightwatcher or Sibling. While Stormfather has this ability without Bondsmith, Sibling for example needet Bondsmith, at least now, with damaged Connection to Honor. BAM is even called little god. Like Godspren? So this theory goes on. There is two thousand years between Last Desolation and False Desolation. What Singers do during this time? They doesnt fight against Humans all the time. They live, eat, change forms. And research. And have songs about Forms of Power. Someone from them, some Singer Scientist came to conclusion than he can try mimic Human-Spren Bond and try to bond Unmade. And was able to do this. And I can gues who he was. It was EL. El, Fused with very, very specific behaviour. Is fascinating with Humans, so I can see why he could try mimic human-spren Bond. He also is scientist, good partner with Raboniel. He literaly experiments with his own body, by replacing carapace with metal. What metal is this? Could be Duralumin? But El is Fused. Shouldnt he be on Braise during False Desolation? I think not. Fused are locked on Braise, but probably like Heralds, they need to be killed first and be sent back. If he wasnt killed, if he hide among Singers, it is possiblity he would live on Roshar all the time between Last and False Desolation. So how all action with False Desolation goes? Radiants and Melishi are fighting against Singers and came to conclusion there is something wierd about Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram. Singers have Voidlight and Forms of Power, but Odium is still on Braize. Singers have Bondsmith now. So Melishi wants to go for BAM, even while he knows about Risk for all Roshar. Radiants strike Team assault Singers with El, and Melishi uses his Bondsmith Powers to ripp off Bond with BAM from El. He replaces his Bond with Sibling with Bond with BAM, then he summons BAM similary to what Dalinar did to Stormfather, and he puts her in perfect gemstone. El sees this, and he strikes Melishi and kills him, but is killed by Radiants companions of Melishi and is sent to Braize. Sibling is damaged but was temporarly unbonded, so damage wasnt lethal. Melishi probably wants to Bond Sibling again, but was killed. When Melishi ripps off El's Bond, El loses ability to hear Rythms (literaly the same happened to Sibling!). When El arrives on Braize suffers Odiums wrath and mistakes his lose with this. He also brings Raboniel knowledge about imprisonment spren in gemstones. This is why El is so important. Is first Odium Bondsmith, and he is the one who brings knowledge nesessery to kill Heralds. What do you think?
  2. 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.
  3. I don't know if anyone has posted something to this effect before, but I think there's a concrete explanation for Shallan's dissociative identity disorder. I might just be dense for posting something that seems obvious to everyone, but here goes. I think the real reason for Shallan's mental problems is because of what happened to Testament. Up to finding out about the Cryptic, we're led to believe that Shallan's mental issues stem from the trauma she experienced when she killed her mother. To be fair, this likely contributed to the problem, but I don't think it's the root cause. I think that when a radiant breaks the mind of their spren, the spren isn't the only one to be damaged by the process. This leads me to wonder what happened to the ancient radiants of the recreance. I've always assumed that the ancient radiants spread stories about a betrayal to make people think they'd been tricked in order to make them hate the radiants so no one would pursue surge binding powers again. But maybe there's more to it. If the minds of the ancient radiants were broken similarly to Shallan, then maybe not all the tales of radiant's being traitors are false.
  4. Here's the theory. BAM specifically Connected herself to the power of the Nahel Bond on Roshar, and I think a lot of problems are caused by an asymmetrical breaking of the Bond. Perhaps the bond is now slightly too strong and unregulated. Elantris spoiler: Here's some things we know or highly suspect: When a Radiant dies, their spren does not become a Deadeyes, that only happens if the Radiant forsakes their Oaths. When this happens, the spren gets a more permanent tie to the PR, either they manifest as a Shardblade or they are dismissed while bonded to a Shardbearer. The deeper the bond, presumably the more damaged the Deadeye. BAM gained new abilities that allowed her to grant forms of power to the ancient Singers, possibly as a copy of Ishar's Knights Radiant. Singer forms by their very nature are spren bonds, Nahel bonds. Presumably when BAM was imprisoned, the Singers became Parshmen, unable to form bonds with spren to gain forms and they lost their minds in the process. Voidspren, particularly Ulim seem to have far, far more mental stability in the PR than they ought to, considering Ulim was able to leave Venli's gemheart with no negative consequences to his mind. There is an imbalance here. Not a new idea, but I agree with the idea that at the imprisonment of BAM, the Singers with forms of power, basically all of them except the Listeners, lost a portion of their Cognitive selves to the Voidspren that inhabited their hearts. This provided an anchor to the Voidspren in the PR, allowing them to retain their minds even when in the PR. This widespread rending of the fabric of Roshar's nature may have kicked off the decisions that lead to the Recreance, though 17 Sharders who track the history would need to check that. At the Recreance, by a similar mechanism the spren became Deadeyes, a portion of their mind trapped in the other realm. Just as a Deadeye can forcibly be Connected to a Shardbearer by application of Stormlight, perhaps the Everstorm on the first pass forcibly Connected the Parshmen to the CR and restored their ability to form bonds with Voidlight. This allowed the Fused to be more directly reborn in their bodies with the Everstorm. The restoration of their minds may have been a side effect, though Odium is likely better served by thinking, passionate Singers. Why did the Parshmen still have their lost minds after generations? Perhaps the mostly severed bond that kept the Voidspren sapient was passed down generation to generation. Nahel bonds can be passed. I also wonder if a Deadeye Enlightened by Sja-anat would have their mind restored with the Everstorm. Thoughts? I wrote this late at night, and needed to get it out of my head.
  5. 1) The Recreance and the “False Desolation” First a few preliminary thoughts. The Recreance happened during the "False Desolation", in which BAM handed out Forms to the Singers, as Jasnah concluded in chapter 56 of OB by inspecting Dalinars vision of the Recreance. The Humans in Dalinars vision also appear to be a very multi-ethnic group, a kind of coalition that only came together to fight against the Singers in a Desolation. The following two epigraphs confirm this, as the “sentiment of betrayal” was surely regarding the war against the Singers and not some other human group, which would not have access to surges. The last epigraph suggests that all these events were connected somehow. “This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at the time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal;” WoR chapter 41 epigraph. "Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her." OB chapter 80 epigraph. “I was there when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured. I know the truth of the Radiants, the Recreance, and the Nahel spren RoW.” Ch. 94. Epigraph. (Kalak speaking) 2) The Discovery As the original Radiants faced the False Desolation one thing was made patently clear: The Heralds had lied to them, when they said that the Humans or Team Honor had “won” the wars of the Desolations. Because here was BAM, handing out void forms and leading a Desolation in all but name. This must have caused some considerable consternation and a desire to know what actually happened. I think they figured out pretty quickly that the Heralds had walked away from the Oathpact at the cost of Taln staying back. That was pretty easy to find out given the nine swords in Shinovar. They learned that they were in this kind of limbo state inbetween Desolations and Peacetimes. Odium would come back eventually. I do think however that Taravangian was right in seeing the discovery of the Humans as Odium`s original people being the “fact” that caused the Recreance. But as with many other things, this lacks its proper context in order to be meaningful. 3. Singer Slavery Here comes my actual theory. I think the Singers being reduced to servitude was not a consequence of BAM`s imprisonment. They already had been made slaves sometime after the Humans had “won” the war of the Desolations, let`s say after 1000 years. The False Desolation probably started out as a mass slave rebellion of the Singers. So why did the KR accept Singer slavery? Institutions corrupt over time. The Vorin church was founded during the time of the Heralds as well. The Skybreakers were a KR order and currently serve Odium. Or take the storming Honor Spren of Lasting Integrity, which condemned all Humans based on the false belief that the Radiants had killed their spren en masse during the Recreance. The Knights Radiants could likewise condemn all Singers based on the false belief, that Singers were by nature Odium`s people, like the orcs in LotR, and Humans Honor`s chosen ones. This should be seen as the core ideology, which justified the enslavement of a large portion of Singers, if not all of them. As the Radiants figured out the secrets of the Eila Stele, the core ideology upon which they had justified the enslavement of large numbers of an entire species fell apart. 4. The Recreance As we know from Way of Kings slavery is not compatible with Honor. Sadeas used slaves as bridgemen, Dalinar did not. The Knights Radiants therefore discovered something equally shocking: their own order had become corrupted to the ways of Odium as according to the Eila Stele all human beings can be. If things would go on unchanged forever, the Knights Radiants as a whole would become servants of Odium, as the Skybreakers are now. So the Radiants decided to end their order altogether by breaking the Nahel bond and telling the Spren in Shadesmar this was done in malicious intent to make sure no new bonds would be created in the future. This way they wanted to ensure no corrupted KR institution would ever arise to make a resistance to Odium impossible, once he did come back. Secondly, to eliminate the reason for anti-singer prejudice the KR wanted Humanity to forget millennia of wars against the Singers as Voidbringers. In this regard they conducted a large scale cover up operation to ensure key information was lost, like that the Parshmen were the Voidbringers or the location of Urithiru. There is a certain symmetry to Dalinar`s arc in OB I think. Humanity, like Dalinar, had to forget, in order to be make a rebirth of an honorable KR order largely impartial to the Singers possible. The gift of forgetting goes for the Spren as well. They could only "forgive" the Singers as Leshwi put it, because they were so mad at the Humans in the first place. The same also goes for the Singers of course. The fact is there are now Singer Radiants, which had not existed for all those millienia of Desolations. I think the Recreance has made that possible. I also think that the KR, like Dalinar, had help from Cultivation in this regard. Did you ever wonder how a gigantic tower in the middle of Roshar could go unnoticed for millenia? Or that a community of sentient Singers with convinient knowledge of millenias past could be hidden from Humanity though being situated right at the border of Alethkar? Cultivation made sure it stayed that way.
  6. How connected were Spren to Honor? In general I view them as functionally separate. I do wonder about the economies of scale of this assumption however. Would an event like the recreance be directly felt by, or be able to directly hurt Honor?
  7. Maya's Statements I think we are misinterpreting one of Maya's statements, or rather, we've been deliberately misled about what it should mean. After the trial, where we learned that the Recreance was a conscious choice by the Knights and their spren together, Brandon hits us with this little sequence to show how the bond between Adolin and Maya is developing: Cool, Maya and Adolin can communicate! So, when we get this next, we just assume it's correct too: Unfortunately, I think we've still got it wrong. But wait, you say, didn't Adolin just understand Maya correctly a few lines ago? Except, figuring out Maya was trying to say the First Ideal, versus interpreting her justification for the Recreance, are completely different things. The statement that they abandoned their oaths "to save us from something worse" is only ever said by Adolin, and we've been tricked into thinking his interpretations are correct! But one (easy) guess doesn't make him an expert at understanding Maya. In fact, note that Maya doesn't nod here, like she did previously. I think that Maya is too exhausted to correct Adolin, and their bond isn't strong enough yet for full communication. The Recreance In fact, I'm willing to propose that the entire idea of the Recreance being undertaken to prevent humans from destroying Roshar is conjecture by modern characters (and readers). Consider: The statement that "they tried to protect the world" here is just conjecture by the Stormfather, who is not all knowing. In fact, he even states here that he only "understands now" because of the influence of Dalinar's bond. We know humans with Surgebinding (and Dawnshards) have the capacity to destroy worlds. We also know the Recreance happened after the final generation of Knights learned about this fact. However, this doesn't mean one was the cause of the other, only that Brandon likes putting these two facts next to each other. My turn to conjecture... So, I personally believe Maya's statement "To save … save…" actually refers to something else the Knights Radiant were trying to do. What specifically, I can only guess. Honor was apparently dying, so were they trying to save him? Did they think Honor was going insane because they were over-using the Surges (like Saidin)? Was he being overrun by Odium because too much of his Investiture was being spent elsewhere? Or, was something happening in Shadesmar, and the spren needed to break their bonds to return there and save their home? Perhaps they were trying to save Ba-Ado-Mishram and/or the singers, after whatever they did to trap her went wrong. If there were no more Radiants, would whatever they accidentally did to the singers stop? Then again, just like how "Stren" was Maya trying to say "Strength", maybe she's actually trying to say something else here. "To savor the delicacies of Shadesmar again... oh no Ba-Ado-Mishram messed everything up and we're deadeyes now, oops" Final Thoughts Whatever the reason, I think there is more to the Recreance than 'apparently we broke our previous planet, let's give up here too'. We're sure to learn more in book 5, be it through Ba-Ado-Mishram, Maya and Adolin's developing bond, the Heralds, or something unexpected.
  8. What happens to a spren whose bond isn't sufficiently advanced to manifest as a Shardblade when their KR breaks their oaths? (Thinking about Syl on WoR, for example) What happened to all the spren whose bonds weren't sufficiently advanced to manifest as a Shardblade during the Recreance? Did they become deadeyes too, but manifesting only in the CR? Are they "less dead" because their Bond was less advanced? Has this been directly explained in the books? Or maybe in WoBs? Thanks to everyone who answers!
  9. So, there has been a lot of debate about the Recreance recently. I feel there are a few specific things we can say are very likely, however, and I'm making this post to sum those up. TL;DR: The Recreance likely occurred on a single day — or at least during a very small time period — shortly after the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram, and during or soon after the abandonment of Urithiru, which had already begun to fail before said imprisonment. The Feverstone Keep vision is accurate: Mishram's capture happened immediately before the Recreance: Moat of the Knights abandoned their oaths on the same day: Urithiru was likely "failing" before Mishram's capture (though this is not certain): Tanavast's death was post-Recreance, but was a protracted event Confirmed by WoB[17] Either the enslavement of the broken singers didn't happen for decades, or the Recreance was decades apart from BAM's capture References:
  10. We know Honor was splintered around the Recreance and that the Recreance was prompted by that generation of Radiants finding out humans were the real Voidbringers, and at that point Tanavast was overtaken by Honor's Intent and was also fighting Odium and so wasn't mentally stable enough to tell the Radiants that they were still morally okay. So what if the Radiants, having not a massive amount of guidance on how shards work, picked up on the fact he was fighting another god from his "ravings", and also noticed how he'd become obsessed with all oaths, good or bad and assumed that this was a consequence of the radiants existing. So what if they decided that they should break their oaths because they thought the oaths were what was draining Tanavast's sanity? Give just how powerful Surgebinding is, we can assume that 9/10 orders of radiant, with most of each type spren probably bonded, all releasing the Investiture they had (kinda) borrowed from Honor did something like in Warbreaker, where The Stormfather also backs this up: The Radiants didn't abandon their oaths because they thought they weren't in the moral right anymore, they abandoned their oaths because they were "try(ing) to protect the world".
  11. We know Honor was splintered around the Recreance and that the Recreance was prompted by that generation of Radiants finding out humans were the real Voidbringers, and at that point Tanavast was overtaken by Honor's Intent and was also fighting Odium and so wasn't mentally stable enough to tell the Radiants that they were still morally okay. So what if the Radiants, having not a massive amount of guidance on how shards work, picked up on the fact he was fighting another god from his "ravings", and also noticed how he'd become obsessed with all oaths, good or bad and assumed that this was a consequence of the radiants existing. So what if they decided that they should break their oaths because they thought the oaths were what was draining Tanavast's sanity? Give just how powerful Surgebinding is, we can assume that 9/10 orders of radiant, with most of each type spren probably bonded, all releasing the Investiture they had (kinda) borrowed from Honor did something like in Warbreaker, where The Stormfather also backs this up: The Radiants didn't abandon their oaths because they thought they weren't in the moral right anymore, they abandoned their oaths because they were "try(ing) to protect the world".
  12. I realize this theory is going out on a limb, and makes a couple of very big assumptions. But I really think this could be a possible route to how the things go in StormLight book 5. Ever since I finished Oathbringer, I've come to the conclusion that since Honor and Cultivation restrained Odium in some way, Odium himself is only a real threat while he has the fuzed and singers obeying him. Obviously, there are humans following Him, along with the Unmade and Thunderclasts, but the vast majority of his forces come from the singers. The Fuzed are basically helpless without willing singers to sacrifice their bodies for them. When I realized this, it also occurred to me that the way to defeat Odium is to find a way to separate him from the singers. My first, relatively stupid, idea was to simply find a way to have the humans and singers on different worlds. Obviously this is never going to happen, since the humans have lived on Roshar for so long, and since the singers were the original inhabitant species, both feel as if it rightfully belongs to them. So I started trying to figure out what might get the singers to turn on or reject Odium. I've posted a theory already about how I think it was the singers that started the wars in the first place. But that alone wouldn't be enough to change their minds. They might not be happy that it was the Fuzed and their like that started the fighting, but that doesn't seem like it could overshadow their anger at humankind. The years they spent as slaves to humans is what is truly fueling their rage. That's when it hit me. What if the humans weren't the only ones to blame for the singer's enslavement? Stick with me on this. During Dalinar's last vision in WoK, Honor tells Dalinar various pieces of puzzle in the conflict between Him and Odium. One line that specifically stood out to me was when he mentions that Odium has realized that the people of Roshar will fight amongst themselves if left alone. This is a fairly simple concept. Getting multiple enemies to turn on each other is one of the easiest ways to defeat opponents. He also claims He will be dead by the anyone ever receives the message, if anyone even does. So it's safe to say that Honor died shortly after he created that message. This line in Honor's message is the first of two pieces of information supporting this theory. Honor's death would have happened after the Herald's decided to abandon the Oathpact (since the visions not only showed their abandoned swords, but at least one vision afterward at FeverStone Keep), which means that two of the four largest unifying forces for humankind, their god and his heralds, would be gone. The main unifying forces left would be the Knights Radiant and the singers, humankind's enemy. You might be able to see where I'm going with this. If Odium could figure out a way to remove both of those, humans wouldn't be as strongly united anymore, and would likely turn on each other. This brings me to my main point. I think that Odium intentionally setup Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment, knowing what would come of it. I believe that Odium realized what would happen if the singers were removed from the equation; that the Radiants and their spren would choose to end the orders if they no longer had an enemy to fight. Honor encouraged the radiants not to give up even after they found out that Roshar originally belonged to the singers, and he also acted as a check against their powers. With Him gone, they lost both of these things, and Odium was likely crafty enough to deduce that if he could remove the singers somehow, the knights would be gone, and humans would eventually start fighting amongst themselves. But what's the evidence that Odium did anything like this? It takes a some amount of reasoning, but there is another piece of information that supports it. The fact that the entire population of singers were bonded to BAM at the time of her imprisonment. Not counting the Listeners, since they were separated at the time. Previously, the Fuzed had taken over willing singers, and some voidspren had granted some singers forms of power. But, if it's possible for one of the Unmade to grant every existing singer a Regal status, then why didn't Odium himself do this? Why hasn't he done this during the current desolation? A larger quantity of powerful soldiers would be better for his army. It doesn't fit. With the way Regals act so aggressively, it's likely they've be even more willing to give themselves up to the Fuzed. Yes, it's possible that there just weren't as many singers at the time of BAM's imprisonment, and this evens things out, but that answer doesn't sit right with me. If their numbers were proportionally smaller, then the Radiants shouldn't have needed to imprison BAM to end the war. During one of Venli's flashback chapters, the voidspren Ulim talks to her about how BAM was imprisoned and what that did to the singers. The fact that he never mentions anything about Odium being responsible makes sense however, since he wouldn't want to reveal anything that might turn singers against Odium, assuming Ulim even knew about it. We don't know when exactly human's learned to imprison spren, but judging from the way the Fuzed were surprised by it, it was probably after Aharietiam. We also don't know where humans learned to imprison spren in the first place. It's entirely possible that Odium himself leaked that knowledge to humans, but i admit that's pure speculation. It's more likely he took advantage of humankind's ability to imprison spread in gemstones. And let's not forget that Odium would need to eventually bring the singers back. Obviously, this is done with the Everstorm. While the Stormfather said that the Everstorm is new, it is old of design, which means that the idea for it probably existed before the recreance, during the time of the desolations. So it could easily have been a part of Odium's plans. It is also possible that he just never thought that Taln would be able to resist for for over four thousand years, and figured by the time Taln broke (which never happened) the humans would be sufficiently divided. If the information that Odium was responsible for the singer's enslavement were somehow distributed to the singer population, I imagine that would turn the entire situation on its head. They might not be any less angry at humans, but if they found out the very god they were following, the one their ancestors had followed, had betrayed them and gotten them enslaved, they would probably abandon Him pretty quickly. It's the sort of thing that could end the war in a chaotic enough way to upend the new Odium's plans and bring a semi-conclusion good enough for the first half of the ten book installment. Of course, the contest of champions would still happen, but this would be a dramatic enough event to impact even that.
  13. This is something I just thought of while finishing RoW. Typically a Darkeye can become a Lighteye when they bond a Shardblade or become a Knight Radiant. Yet somehow we have had natural born Lighteyes that has continued for just a bit under 4000 years, most likely since the Recreance. We also know that Deadeyes only started appearing since the Recreance. The link between both "races" would seem to be that the eyes were affected since this happened. We are aware that the sealing of BAM had wide reaching affects on Roshar. A similar example we observe is how the Parshendi were affected by the sealing of BAM, specifically in my opinion is that their Identity was taken away from them. Deadeyes also seem to be in a "Identity"-less state like the Parshmen are. So it feels like something was ripped from the Spiritweb of the spren and imprinted on the humans at the time of unbonding. This then became a hereditary trait on the few people who unbonded their spren/took the dropped shards and continued to pass it onto their descendant's spirtiwebs. TBH I think this might have been very obvious for some people but this just hit me like the stormwall haha.
  14. The question's in the title. Maybe it's obvious, and there's a passage I'm forgetting, so let me know if this is duh. We know the following, either directly from text or WoB: Nine out of ten Orders of Knights Radiant took part in the Recreance. There was only one Bondsmith alive at the time: Melishi, bonded to the Sibling. Melishi was definitely alive for the Binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram. The Binding was very shortly before the Day of Recreance. The Sibling was considered dead for a long time. Many of their functions shut down, and they lost their Light. It seems a slam dunk, to the extent that I'm amazed the connection isn't explicit in the book, or even the question. Did I miss something? It also means that Adolin isn't the only person to rehabilitate a deadeye - Dabbid has too.
  15. "Honor is dead, but he lives on in the hearts of men" - I think this phrase is going to be very significant, and is related to what is wrong with humans/deadeyes post-Recreance (more specifically with how to fix it). Kalak's epigraphs reveal a lot about what is going with spren/Connection on Roshar - he talks about the mechanics of what happened to Jezrien (and the Heralds are functionally spren who remain Connected to Roshar through the Oathpact). The usual Nahel bond functions by humans giving spren conscious in exchange for power (the Connect): "The bond is what keeps us alive. You sever that, and we will slowly decompose into ordinary souls—with no valid Connection to the Physical or Spiritual Realms." - Kalak (Sanderson, Brandon. Rhythm of War). I think this applies to spren, except pre-Recreance the spren would still have a valid Connection through Honor and would probably return to Shadesmar. However now, Kalak tells us: "I felt it happen to Jezrien. You think you captured him, but our god is Splintered, our Oathpact severed." So when a human breaks their oath, spren do not have a valid Connection through Honor, but they ARE connected to Mishram (as Odium is now part of Roshar), and thus remain trapped in the physical. So when Radiants sever the bond post-Recreance, the spren who usually would have Connected to Honor (keeper of oaths) instead Connect to BAM, hence their minds being trapped. Reversing this requires a version of the Nahel bond that functios according to Odium, which is what we see between Adolin and Maya. With the usual Nahel bond, humans take power from spren in exchange for their minds. Re-reading the trial scene when Maya speaks, and the exchange between her and Adolin is so similar to how Odium takes pain (Passion) from people. "Adolin...felt her pain somehow.A deep agony. And...anger?" He gives her some of his "strength" and feels a warmth deep inside: I think this works the same way it does for the Sibling - they couldn't hear Honor's tone anymore so I don't think any deadeye spren on Rohsar can. However, if they Connect with a human they can because Honor lives on in the hearts of men - as Navani proved.
  16. Am I the only one who is more excited about knowledge on what happened before the First Desolation than the Recreance? Like, yeah, 9/10 of the Knights Radiant broke their oaths and flew away from existence, but are you seriously comparing that to the Dawnsingers (presumably) giving up their spren bond in order to come to serve under Odium's wings?? What on the Almighty's storming name happened there???!?! Please tell me that I'm not alone here! Also I wanna know your theories on what happened both in the Recreance and before the True Desolstion. I can't wait to find some clues about that on book 5!!!!
  17. I was thinking about Maya and Adolin when I realized that Adolin almost certainly doesn't have the suit that matches her. What I mean is that Maya's wielder on the day Recreance probably had Shardplate and Adolin almost certainly does not have that plate. My question is whether or not that having the plate would give Adolin any sort of advantage in fighting or restoring her. Like, could he restore her more/faster if he found it? Or, pre-restoration, could he swing Maya faster or throw harder or something? Does anyone know if there's a WOB on this or something similar?
  18. Hey guys, new member here. I finished reading RoW and processing it and wanted to discuss something that picqued my interest but I saw no dicussion about (if I missed something please point me out, there were so many threads). First thing that drew my attention is how Kaladin was able to defeat the Pursuer with barely any powers, a foe that was known for taking down at least several 4th Ideal Radiants. That in itself is perhaps not that surprising, given that Kaladin is somehow special in addition to being trained to fight without powers. The second is a quote from Jasnah in the book: "Our battlefields are a careful balance of Radiant against Fused, Shardbearer against Regal, soldier against soldier." That implies that the forces of the enemy in the present are equivalent to those of Team Dalinar. A team with 50 Windrunners, some Edgedancers and a few other Radiants sprinkled in, with only Jasnah being of the 4th Ideal. But in Dalinar's visions we saw at the at least 300 Windrunners and Stonewards, all of whom are described as having Plate and Blade. We can assume that there were perhaps lots more Knights from the other orders. And those forces, apparently far greater than the current strength of Team Dalinar during the Recreance had to face Ba-Ado-Mishram and not Odium himself, giving the singers Regal forms but no Fused and thus no Surgebinders. And yet those Radiants of the past seemed to have so much trouble that they had to follow a risky gambit that Melishi proposed, with apparently disastrous consequences. What posed a challenge for them? Was the infighting (amongst the Windrunners and Skybreakers) more than that? Perhaps a civil war? Was it Honor's deterioration? Was BAM able to provide for Surges amongst her subjects? Perhaps due to connecting with the Parshmen directly? What do you think?
  19. The thing about the Recreance that bothers me the most is how they all agreed to murder their spren. These were their friends, their partners, their life companions-- and they killed them en masse. The Knights Radiant, to a man and woman, were onboard with subjecting their other halves to agonizing sort-of death, leaving their corpses on the ground to be used and abused by whoever. I mean, can you imagine Kaladin doing that to Syl? Looking her in the eye, Sylphena, then killing her? Probably while Syl was begging him to not do it? Multiply that by all of them. All of them did that, except the Skybreakers. And don't tell me Oathbringer gave us the reason. Oathbringer said that the KR were afraid their powers would destroy Roshar. Okay, fine. So don't use your powers. Or if you're Fourth Oath or below, you can just dissolve the whole partnership, no harm done. Okay, Notum implied the process was painful, but I think it must be less painful than being zombified. But they didn't do that. They killed them. So I've been thinking: what if the spren were in on it? Spren and Knights agree: their powers will destroy the world, that's bad, there should be no more Knight Radiants. Ever. And so, to make sure that no one is tempted to join in the future, the Knights publicly and theatrically turn their backs on humanity. They make their name synonymous with "traitor". No human is going to want anything to do with them thereafter. And on the spren side? The spren too want to make absolutely certain that none of their kind are ever tempted to form a nahal bond. And so they have their Knights summon them as blades, leave them in agonized undeath, drop them in the dirt to be used by murderers. It's awful, but they grimly agree it's the only way to save the world.
  20. Today I would like to make a guess about a greater Cosmere idea that Brandon is foreshadowing to us using a pivotal moment from the Stormlight Archive. The evidence I have is mainly thematic. Let's start with a quote from Khriss: Khriss is talking to Kelsier, alluding to the nature of the Shards of Adonalsium as mere men and women. People who seized power and became something more. Brandon talks broadly about the bigger themes that he is writing into the Cosmere in this article, among them being that Warbreaker is meant to foreshadow something greater: This leads me to a thought; what if the Recreance on Roshar is foreshadowing a future event when people in the Cosmere become aware of the true nature of the Shards? Now, to be clear, I am not referring to the actual action of the Knights Radiant breaking their oaths, but rather to them gaining the knowledge that would eventually break them. The Recreance was an event that doubtless had multiple causes. The Radiants learning the true nature of humans on Roshar (that Surgebinders had destroyed Ashyn, were the original Voidbringers and, according to Honor, were bound to destroy Roshar as well) was only part of what lead to the downfall of the Order as a whole. However, I believe this event is a hint towards how many people will act once it is widely known in the Cosmere that 16 people killed God and usurped his power. I can only imagine the fallout from that revelation would be destructive & immense. I think that Brandon hints at this eventuality with groups, cultures, and persons who do seem to have some sort of knowledge of Adonalsium. In certain societies, the there is a sort of cultural memory pertaining to a God that existed before the Shards. This is heavily debated, of course, but I contend that the Iriali's belief in the One, and the various mentions of The God Beyond are examples of this. Now, it's not as if this knowledge is completely unknown at our current point in the timeline. Of course all of the original Vessels know of their own origins, and we can assume that new Vessels such as Harmony have a pretty good handle of their Shards history as well. There are certain informed scholars, such as Khriss, who seem to know quite a lot. And of course there are outliers like Hoid or Frost, who have just been alive forever. My point is simply that by and large, the vast majority of people in the Cosmere are unaware of the various Shards and the origin of their power. Alright, let me wrap up the argument I've laid out here with a summary: Once we hit Space Age Cosmere (or possibly sometime earlier, depending on technological advancements) the majority of cultures will be able to rapidly communicate and share information. During this time, it will become known that the Shards of Adonalsium are just that - mortal beings who murdered God and stole his power. What happens after that is anyone's guess, but I imagine it will be chaotic. Please let me know what you think, and thank you for reading. Special thanks to Pevin-son-Kalak on Discord & @asmodeus for their help with a little bit of research I couldn't seem to find.
  21. So I think I understand the reasoning behind wanting to abolish the knights radiant. The reasons being that Honor was crazy, and saying they would destroy roshar, they lobotomized the parshmen, then found out humanity were the original voidbringers. However, is there any reason why the knights radiant wouldn't try to make a deal with their spren to stop forming bonds with humans? If they could not break there bonds without killing their spren why not make a pact saying. "After we die, you stay in shadesmar, do not bond with anymore humans." The reason I bring this up is that they are bonded and have deep relationship with their spren. I feel like the spren would potentially understand that surge bonding is dangerous, especially with Honor raving about it. Wouldn't the knights radiant would have a hard time talking about potentially killing their spren without trying to negotiate with them at all?
  22. So we know at the recreance through the vision that Dalinar see's that the Knight radiants leave their blades and plate at the fields in front of feverstone keep. But we know that there aren't hundreds upon hundreds of blades and plate in roshar so what happened to them all?!?! So what happened to them, were they recovered by the shin or taken offworld? and if they were taken offworld than why haven't we seen them in other worlds? Either this is a massive mistake or suddenly we're gonna be shocked by hundreds of shardweilding shin riders in the immediate future? Any thoughts or theories on where they might be?
  23. So for a while now I’ve been thinking about this subject, and the other day I had made a post in the Stormlight Facebook group addressing it, and it ended up being a pretty big hit there, with reactions ranging from people loving it, to thinking it’s interesting but likely misguided. So I wanted to lay this out here as well and get some more feedback on it. So ever since I listened to Stormlight Archive the second time, with the benefit of hindsight from my first listen-through, I began to wonder whether there might be potentially more to Lirin (Kaladin’s father) than meets the eye. But at first I couldn’t quite place what it was about him that seemed off about him to me, but recently, it hit me. I realized that literally every single one of Kaladin’s ideals thus far, including what his fourth one is most likely to be, namely accepting that you can’t save everyone and to not allow your failures to prevent you from doing what you can, are things that Lirin has explicitly tried to instil in Kaladin and also operates by himself. In short, Lirin almost seems to me to be a Windrunner without a Spren. The first ideal is really too broad to find anything specific, but the second and third are very explicit in that he dedicates his life to helping people whose lives are in danger, he very explicitly was put into a situation in which Roshone, a man he had every reason to despise and allow to die, had his life entirely in Lirin’s hands, and Lirin chose to do what he knew was the right thing and save his life, which is the third ideal of the Windrunners. And he also has told Kaladin on more than one occasion that he no matter how hard he tries, he can’t save everyone, and that he needs to come to terms with that inevitability, which is most likely at the very least related to the fourth Windrunner ideal. So again I say, Lirin seems to be very Windrunner-y in his philosophy, with the only real difference being the way in which he chooses to protect people, namely as a surgeon rather than a soldier. Now I don’t believe for a second that Brandon wrote his character this way accidentally; the parallels are just to explicit for that. But the question is: what does it mean? And could it possibly be hinting at something? Now, before I go any further, I just want to freely admit that I have very little confidence that this theory is correct, as there are many other explanations for this that are much simpler, but I still think it’s at least worth laying out. So, here’s my admittedly unlikely theory: what if Lirin is a former Windrunner? Specifically a Windrunner from the time of the Recreance? Now, like I said, I realize how unlikely this probably is, but I don’t think it’s completely out of the question. After the Recreance, I think it’s entirely possible that some of the disgraced Radiants may have chosen to go into exile and leave Roshar, maybe becoming worldhoppers. And we know that worldhoppers often gain a greatly extended lifespan by as yet unknown means. And the one piece of evidence I have for this is how thickly Lirin lays on the whole ‘violence is always bad; nothing good can ever come of it!’ spiel. The way he speaks of that, and his conviction, seems to me to bespeak some deep familiarity with war and conflict. And the Radiants at the time of the Recreance pretty much got the ultimate example of this by their unwitting lobotomization and subsequent enslavement of the Singer species. With the Windrunners probably being even more deeply disturbed than many other orders by virtue of how much their order was all about protecting people and doing the right thing; I happen to be in the camp of fans who suspect that the horror of realizing what they had done to the Singers probably caused many of them to consider their oaths broken. And if Lirin was one of them, I can easily imagine his guilt driving him to be a hard pacifist, which he clearly is, and changing his method of protecting people from the role of a soldier to the role of a healer. And the other somewhat intriguing thing is that Lirin had a very interesting reaction to seeing Kaladin use his Windrunner powers, namely to look horrified and dismayed, maybe because he knew first hand what those powers could potentially cause and was horrified that his son now possessed them? Again, clearly there are many other possible explanations for this, and I freely admit that even I think that most of them are probably much more likely than this one. But I will say one thing with conviction, and that is that regardless of whether he’s a former Windrunner or not, I do think that Brandon must have written his character like this for some reason. One doesn’t just overtly display pretty much the entire Windrunner philosophy (in stark contrast with 99.9% of the rest of Roshar) for no literary purpose. Like I said, the only question is what that literary purpose is in this case? Could Brandon be hinting at something more important here? What does everyone think?
  24. This may have been discussed already in another thread, but did anyone else think Jasnah's conversation with Hoid at the end of WoR was really strange, especially considering that it was barely mentioned during OB? When Jasnah Elsecalls into Shinovar, she seems pretty untroubled (or as Brandon would say, "nonplussed") to find Hoid sitting there, waiting for her. This whole conversation is very unusual, considering that everyone else in Roshar for the most part treats Wit like a foolish court jester - no one is aware of the fact that he is intelligent and important to the larger cosmere. Jasnah, however, instead of being surprised to find him there, immediately begins interrogating him, assuming that he knows important things. A couple questions arise from this. For one thing, when does Jasnah realize that Hoid/Wit is more than just a simple court jester? Does this happen before she enters Shadesmar, or does she somehow learn more about Hoid during her journey? In addition, why does she still call him Wit? I suppose it's possible that she learned more about him in Shadesmar without discovering his real name (or, well, his main alias), but this somehow seems unlikely. She apparently knows, when she exits Shadesmar, that Hoid is important and that he knows things, and yet she still doesn't know his name. We know from OB that Hoid tells Jasnah about the reason for the Recreance (or at least, he tells her a part of the story). Is this the information that Jasnah was specifically looking for from Hoid, or does she just know that he is full of cosmere knowledge in general? Her pointed question - "Tell me what you know" makes it seem like there is something in particular that she is looking for from him. In OB, Jasnah only refers to her conversation with Hoid once when speaking with Ivory, and besides that she doesn't say anything about him, or mention him to any other character. Even here, she refers to him by Wit, which suggests that she really doesn't know his name is Hoid (or Cephandrius, or something else). However, she doesn't talk about Wit at any other point in the book, or tell another character that she realizes he is important. This makes me wonder if Jasnah is possibly working with him (or else she is just her normal enigmatic self and is paranoid about telling people anything). So here is what we know: 1. Jasnah seems to realize Hoid is important when she exits Shadesmar. It is unclear if she knew this before she entered Shadesmar. 2. When she exits Shademsar, it is implied that Hoid has been looking for her, and that she has possibly been trying to evade him ("How did you find me?"). 3. There seems to be specific information she wants to get from Hoid ("Tell me what you know."). It is unclear if she realizes that he knows about the Recreance, or if he proffers that information freely. 3. Jasnah doesn't mention Hoid to anyone throughout all of OB, and her strange encounter with him in Shinovar is not brought up. I was expecting the Jasnah-Hoid meeting to be more important in OB, because it comprised the final pages of WoR. But the fact that their meeting is barely mentioned at all is even more telling, and prolongs the mystery of their interaction. What do you guys think about the situation with Jasnah and Hoid/Wit? What does she know about him, how could she have gained that information while in Shadesmar, and how will she work with him/deal with him in future books?
  25. @CrazyRioter and @RShara neatly destroyed my “Why the Sibling Slumbers” theory, but I upvoted their posts for setting me on the proper course-correction. WARNING: THIS “THEORY” CONTAINS INFORMED SPECULATION AND GUESSES. Summary Note the homophone in the OP’s title. The idea the name “Recreance” began as an epithet for the faithless, cowardly Knights Radiant - “the Recreants” - goes back at least to this 2012 post and others have periodically raised it. I buy this idea. I think the Radiants believed they acted in the only way they could. Melishi’s plan enslaved the Singers and stopped their transformations. When the Radiants learned this, nine of the orders concluded honor demands “a spren for a spren.” If Singers couldn’t bond spren and transform, Radiants wouldn’t bond spren either. Their own spren may even have agreed. Only the Skybreakers demurred, thinking the result “just.” Here’s the sequence of events that I think may have brought the Radiants down: False Desolation Begins – BAM Connects Voidlight to Singers by forging a Connection to the Sibling. Radiants Abandon Urithiru – Voidlight flowing through them causes the Sibling to “withdraw.” Strike Team Executes Melishi’s Plan – Radiants “kill” Sibling to cut BAM’s Connection to Singers. Recreance – Radiants discover what Melishi did and break their oaths. Only Skybreakers think this “just.” Gem Archives I think these are the most relevant gem archives: Sibling Personifies Gemheart Growth Process I think Roshar’s three great spren personify essential features of the Singer transformational life cycle: spren, gemhearts and the highstorm. IMO, these are the Eila Stele’s “spren, stone, and wind.” Gemheart Investiture leaks into the Physical Realm like atium. I think the Sibling personifies this process. Like the Stormfather distributes Stormlight, maybe the Sibling distributes gemheart Investiture. This Investiture grows gemhearts. The Sibling’s Withdrawal With no Everstorm, Voidlight during the False Desolation must have infused Singer gemhearts directly. BAM “Connected with the parsh people,” not just those with forms of power. To grow gemhearts, the Sibling must Connect to them. I speculate BAM used the Sibling’s Connections as her conduit for Voidlight infusion. I think this is when the Sibling began to withdraw. The Sibling metaphorically gagged on Voidlight. The Sibling’s Slumber Voidlight may have caused the Sibling’s withdrawal before Melishi, but the Stormfather blames humans for the Sibling’s slumber. A Radiant strike team executed Melishi’s plan. Whatever happened stopped Singer transformations. Parshmen no longer bonded spren. I speculate the Radiant strike team cut BAM’s Connection to Singer gemhearts by somehow cutting the Sibling’s Connection to Singer gemhearts. The sudden break in Connection shocked the Sibling into coma – “slumber.” (FWIW, Syl also uses the term "asleep" to describe her condition after her first Radiant died.) Gemheart Investiture still flows into gemhearts but it doesn’t seem to aid Singer transformation. The Recreants Maybe Singer enslavement is the true “wicked thing of eminence” that turns Radiants into Recreants. The Skybreakers felt the Sibling’s consciousness loss “just” payment to end the False Desolation. That order kept its oaths. Maybe the other nine orders felt Singer enslavement warranted a greater penalty. If Singers could not bond spren, neither would Radiants. These nine orders gave up their bond mates – perhaps in agreement with them – because they felt it was the honorable thing to do. I’ve never been comfortable with the Eila Stele’s Recreance explanation. It was translated by Taravangian’s ardents in Kharbranth and Jah Keved and served his political purposes. Its explanation to me doesn’t justify everyone but the Skybreakers breaking their oaths. This explanation does. The Knights Radiant fell in universal disgrace, forever tarnished as oath breakers. But I believe these Recreants did what they thought honor required of them.
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