Helaran allegiance

[Zrogezrg]

While rereading stormlight archive I wondered about Helaran. 

Mraize claims that Helaran is an acolyte of skybreakers. This seems fairly weird. Why would Nale give him shards to kill Amaram on the battlefield?

-The only shard we see Nale giving to anyone is Nightblood (Skybreakers would probably not want to keep any dead shardblades as radiant spren do not like them).

-Amaram belongs to Sons of honor who are lead by Kelek, Nale's buddy.

-Amaram does not seem to attract any spren.

-Skybreakers hopefuls seem to go on a mission with full skybreakers, while Helaran seemed to be alone.

So who else could be responsible for sending Heralam to assassinate Amaram? Well, most of assassination attempts seem to come from ghostbloods, especially when trying to kill sons of honor. Amaram thinks that the ghostbloods have sent him. However, Helaran being a ghostblood does not add up either. He is in communication with Wit, who does not like ghostbloods too much. Lin is connected to ghostbloods and it does not seem like they are in the same organisation, he says "your knew friends" not "our". Weirdly, we do not see any ghostblood wielding shards.

The one organisation with many shardbearers is Diagram. This also could make sense with his goals being noble as Wit claims. Maybe he was an independent agent similar to Graves and he read the diagram in a way that would push him towards this assassination. But I do not see much evidence to support this idea.

Another question that arises, If Mraize did lie about Helaran allegiance, why did he? It would make sense if he was ghostblood as it could create some bad vibes between Shallan and him.  Maybe Mraize did not know for certain what Helaran was doing, but wanted to manipulate Shallan with presumed knowledge. 

All we know is that Pattern did say that there are lies in the letter...

Any ideas?

P.S.

I searched the Arcanum and I have not seen Brandon saying that Helaran indeed was a skybreaker acolyte, while the Coppermind treats Mraize's letter like some wisdom of heralds.

[the_archduke]

28 minutes ago, Zrogezrg said:

 

-The only shard we see Nale giving to anyone is Nightblood (Skybreakers would probably not want to keep any dead shardblades as radiant spren do not like them).

 

No evidence that the Highspren are as fastidious as other spren about using spren corpses.  Further, even if they are, no evidence that Nale would care one way or the other.  

 

29 minutes ago, Zrogezrg said:

 

-Amaram belongs to Sons of honor who are lead by Kelek, Nale's buddy.

 

Nale is also insane.  His current view on justice is incredibly twisted.  Just because Amaram is one of his buddies' pawns does not mean he wouldn't take him out if he thought he had a good reason to do so.

 

30 minutes ago, Zrogezrg said:

 

-Skybreakers hopefuls seem to go on a mission with full skybreakers, while Helaran seemed to be alone.

 

We don't know if there were other Skybreakers there.  Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.  We get this scene through Kaladin and Cenn (the raw recruit)'s POVs.  There could have been the entire order of Skybreakers and Nale himself there, and Kaladin wouldn't have known, very much less Cenn.  

 

Bottom line, I don't see any reason to doubt Helaran was involved with the Skybreakers, and a huge reason to believe he was.  The Skybreakers were trying to prevent the return of the desolations.  The Sons of Honor were trying to start them.  Killing Amaram is exactly what a Skybreaker would be wanting to do, regardless of whether Amaram ever would have gained a nahel bond.  

[offer]

I think it it likelly that the Skybreakers sent Helaran with a shardblade to kill a radiant within Amaram`s army and he imself decided (incorrectly) that it is Amaram. We saw in Edgedancer that Nale does not neccceserally give the accolytes full details when they go on a mission as the accolytes there decided that Arclo was the radiant. 

[Quantus]

For what it's worth:

 

 

Quote

 

marcos

As of Words of Radiance, are there two groups of Skybreakers running around claiming to be Skybreakers?

Brandon Sanderson

Nale’s group is the only one I think I’ve had on-screen, so yeah I think there’s only one. Why would you ask that?

marcos

Was the group that Helaran joined the actual Skybreakers?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, I get what you’re saying. Okay. Yes, there is one unified group that call themselves the Skybreakers, good question.

Calamity Philadelphia signing (Feb. 20, 2016)

 

 

[Green Hoodie Mistborn]

That WOB actually makes me more inclined to believe that Helaran wasn't actually involved with the Skybreakers with how Brandon answered it. 

I think the best evidence against him being involved with the Ghostbloods is what you already presented. The only other group he could have been involved with that might have had Shards would have been the Diagram if it's not the Skybreakers. 

Off the wall thought... what if he was a Shin agent somehow? There is a ton of missing shards out there...

I think at the end of the day it'll have been the Skybreakers after all, but I do hope we find out at some point more of the "why" they were striking at Amaram/Son's of Honor, and why they loaned plate/blade to Helaran rather than sending a bonded Skybreaker

[Zrogezrg]

Thank you all for replying!

Well, I did not think I would meet with such a strong opposition to this idea.

Ok, let me have a last stand. So when looking at the timeline:

-we see Helaram having the blade in Shallan flashback 5.5 years ago.

-Kaladin killed Heralan in a flashback 1 year ago.

This seems to me quite weird if he really was acolyte of skybreakers, at least 4.5 years of having shards without becoming at least a squire? Maybe he could be some sort of skybreaker free agent wield shards none of true skybreakers would want, but this does not convince me. He was not a fresh recruit, skybreakers require justification for killing and killing bystanders is not what they accept, as was in WoR lift interlude. This whole attack is most similar to assassination of Galivar, randomly appearing shardbearer killing bystanders to get to their target. 

7 hours ago, Green Hoodie Mistborn said:

Off the wall thought... what if he was a Shin agent somehow? There is a ton of missing shards out there...

It could be, but we have close to no information what is going on in Shinovar...

13 hours ago, the_archduke said:

Bottom line, I don't see any reason to doubt Helaran was involved with the Skybreakers, and a huge reason to believe he was.

Well, actually, the only reason one would believe so is the Mraize letter. And I would not call it a trustworthy source.

[+Child of Hodor]

I think Helaran actually joined the Skybreakers and Nale gave him some shards. If he's giving something as dangerous as Nightblood to someone as unstable as Szeth then it's not out of character for Nale to give a more mundane blade and plate to a recruit.  

Nale is the only Herald to become a Knight Radiant and the Skybreakers are the only order not to quit during the Recreance. Nale would have been a member by the time of the Recreance and likely encouraged the order not to quit. I imagine as these other orders were giving up their plate and blades the Skybreakers swooped in and grabbed a bunch for safekeeping which is why Nale has a stash of them to give out to new recruits like they're nothing. 

I don't think Nale has ALL the missing blades, but I bet the Skybreakers grabbed a bunch of them. 

Edited September 15, 2022 by Child of Hodor

[Returned]

9 hours ago, Zrogezrg said:

Well, I did not think I would meet with such a strong opposition to this idea.

Better than having your theory ignored! Plus, if your theory is true it would have really big implications for a lot of things. So the standard of proof is higher, and resistance will be higher too. Congratulations on an idea provocative enough to generate engagement!

I agree with you that there is something off about what we've heard regarding Helaran being on that battlefield. It doesn't make a ton of sense to think that Helaran was on the battlefield to assassinate a nascent Radiant for two reasons that I can think of: Nale seems to generally kill such people himself, and Blades and Plate are famous and recognizable. The former, at least, might be a later development (possibly due to this event?). But it strains credulity that no one on the battlefield would recognize that a full Shardbearer is there that isn't one sworn to anybody involved in the conflict and has no support team (armorers and the like). Amaram later states that he doesn't know the history of his Blade, and while I wouldn't expect him to question it too much (he did become a Shardbearer due to this, after all), it should be a huge deal that a "new" Blade suddenly appears in Alethkar. The official explanation, that it belonged to a Veden assassin who tried to kill Amaram, is good enough for most Rosharans but shouldn't be satisfying to more knowledgeable people. Blades are generally known and carefully accounted for, though obviously there are exceptions.

 

However, I find the evidence for your specific idea too lacking to be decisive. It neither rules out the Skybreakers nor suggests any particular other group.

Helaran might have been a Skybreaker squire or even a Skybreaker who had sworn 2-4 oaths. For all we know his presence on the battlefield might have been part of his Crusade oath, or a mission (official Skybreaker business or a test, like Szeth's experience at the Purelake) to kill a criminal (Amaram). And as @offer suggested, Helaran could have simply mis-identified the person he was there to kill, if he was targeting anyone in particular at all. Striking down enemy soldiers on a battlefield probably wouldn't be illegal in Alethkar, so collateral damage shouldn't be an issue. As others have pointed out, there wouldn't be any reason for other Skybreakers present to reveal themselves there.

I don't think we'd see him doing any Surgebinding, or anything else that would reveal magical abilities, because Nale and the Skybreakers are working pretty hard to keep people from knowing about Surgebinding and spren bonds at all. A squire might not have enough ability to use Stormlight to survive a knife into the brain, but one of the third or fourth oath probably would (Shallan survived a crossbow bolt), but Helaran seems to have definitely died, so that's unlikely. Further, he seems to have been wearing dead plate (it's stated that Kaladin scratched the armor's gold paint, which suggests it's not living), and we know that dead plate interferes with Surgebinding. The Blade itself could have been a living Blade, since we don't really know what happens to such a Blade when it's manifested and the bonded Radiant dies; indeed, what we saw of the Recreance suggests that this is exactly where the dead Blades came from. In any event Helaran obviously had experience using Plate and Blade, as he was a skillful fighter instead of an awkward one.

The things that the Sons of Honor were trying to do are directly opposed to what Nale has spent centuries or millennia trying to prevent-- the start of a new Desolation. Knowing Kelek doens't seem like it would override that, though we also saw Nale meeting with Kelek and Gavilar, so who knows?

 

There isn't a shortage of secret groups and conspiracies on Roshar, so it's definitely possible that Helaran was working with any other group besides the Skybreakers, including groups we haven't heard about yet. And we know that lies and mysteries abound, especially surrounding the Davar family. I am sympathetic that Mraize isn't the most trustworthy source, and so his claim that Helaran was a Skybreaker isn't fundamentally reliable. But there it is literally the only evidence we have of what Helaran was up to and with whom he might have been working. If we want to talk about evidence it's unreasonable to just assert that the letter is false in this specific regard. It's at least as likely, if not more so, that Helaran really was a Skybreaker but we are in the dark about his motivations or assignments, and/or that he or the Skybreakers were manipulated by Taravangian, Mraize, or any of countless others.