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Midnight Essence, Shardblades, the Fall of the Radiants, and The Rise of Odium


Voidbringer

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I hope this hasn't been covered. I tried finding threads related to it without any success. So firstly, as a preliminary, I definitely think that the Shardblades are part of the Oathpact, in that they are the tools approved by those who made said pact (I assume Honor and Odium, perhaps Cultivation). I think they were approved by Honor because Honor saw it as a powerful method to defend against Odium's near invincible rock creatures, and Odium agreed for a different reason which is one main point of this post.

We all know that when people are killed with Shardblades their eyes smoke. From one of Dalinar's visions we learn about Midnight Essence, some kind of creature someone released to preempt the coming Desolation or something (Please correct me if I'm wrong). When punctured or killed the Midnight Essence leak something like black smoke... Dun Dun Dun.

I promise I am getting to the point.

So I think it could be that when someone non-voidish is killed with a Shardblade, it somehow replenishes the Midnight Essence and/or some other force of Odium's, which is why Odium would agree to the use of Shardblades even thought they can beat Thunderclasts and such.

Here is where the Knights Radiant really tie in.

So Odium influences the Knights Radiant to start using Shardblades for killing non-Voidish people during wars between Desolations, thus empowering his forces for the next Desolation. Then the Knights Radiant, after who knows how many Desolations, finally catch on to what is happening.

So then the Radiants decided that their battles were pointless and only making things worse over all, since Odiums forces were growing stronger every time because of the misuse of the Shardblades between each Desolation.

Aside: If this is true, just imagine how the next one would be since it was like 4500 years since the "Last Desolation", and since The Recreance, however long that was after Aharietian, the people had been misusing Shardblades to kill non-Voidish even more than the Radiants had. So Odium's forces would be freaking ridiculously huge.

It may or may not be that the Heralds figured this out before they bailed, though I think they were just tired of suffering for who knows how long.

I have gone on too long, but any thoughts?

Edited by Voidbringer
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I think if the Radiants suspected Odium was gaining strength from the improper use of Shardblades, they wouldn't have just given them up to random people in the world. They would have probably tried to get rid of them in some way or created a system to stash them away and guard against anyone using them again.

However, I really do think you're on to something about the black smoke and the afytereffect of killing with Shardblades. It may be that you're completely right about killing non-voidish folk with a Shardblade strenghtens Odium in some way, I just don't think anyone has caught on to that yet.

Also, I think the Heralds abandoned the Honorblades for a very simple reason as explained by Kalak in the beginning of tWOK...they couldn't take it anymore, Odium finally broken them.

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The black smoke reassembles on a strange island somewhere on our world and plays with people.

Btt

# some cosmere-spoiler talk #

There is the connection between the black smoke from Shardblade-victims and the black smoke from Nightblood-victims. In the Warbreaker-annotations Brandon told us that it's corrupted spirit.

Don't know if we can say it's canon but spirit would be the spiritual energy as in part of the Power of Creation.

So there is some spirit that's corrupted. Assuming that the spirit originally belonged to Honor as the Creator of humankind on Roshar, one can assume that the spirit will at some point return to Honor.

Of course inbetween the liberated spiritual energy could serve Odium as well. After all Honor and Odium are part of the same Power of Creation.

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I don't think Shardblades worked that way from the beginning. And I don't think Midnight Essence is working that way whatever that is.

Its last desolation because people have forgotten about Voidbringers and they're not ready. Maybe Odium is stronger now but thats not the point to it. I think when there were ten heralds bound to Oathpact Desalotaions happened every 450 year. Now when there is only one Herald it took 4500 years so thats why humans have forgotten Desolations. + Heralds lied to them that they won.

“Ishar believes that so long as there is one of us still bound to the Oathpact, it may be enough.

There is a chance we might end the cycle of Desolations.”

If what I said above is right this quote makes sense because Heralds knew it would need more time to happen again but they knew in the end it would happen. They were just trying to deceive themselves.

Oathpact is a bit simpler imo. Honor had Shardblades(Maybe even back then it was Odiums but Humans back then lived with honor so it wasn't used the way it is used now. And it may be Odiums longshot to corrupt humanity), Heralds and Knight Radiants. Odium had Voidbringers. Midnight Essence was something else entirely. Desolations were matches between Odium and Honor. Honor needed Heralds to be 'immortal' so they could be there for every desolation but his abilities weren't enough for that. Odium on other hand, hated heralds and would torture them for centuries just for fun. So each time humans won, he(and maybe honor too) took those 10 guys and tortured them then resurrected them so they could fight again. Odium couldn't attack humans while heralds were in 'hell'. It wasn't about how much time heralds spent in hell but amount of pain they took. So when 9 heralds left, one left there had to take all of the pain and it took more time. After more then 4500 years Taln came back and soon last desolation comes.

There are other two shards and I'm pretty sure they would have to do something with all of this but we don't know much about them so nothing can be said for sure at this point.

Edited by 213
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Fascinating stuff! I hadn't heard about the connection with Nightblood and I really like the idea about the 450 to 4500 year change due to the fewer Heralds! In regards to the return of Taln bringing the Last Desolation: should Roshar survive another Desolation, couldn't Taln go back to Damnation for another 4500 in fulfillment of the Oathpact?

...

I suppose not since the Oathpact was probably invalidated with the death of The Almighty.

...

So I did glance back at the encounter with the Midnight Essence and one of the Radiants mentioned that someone released it (the Midnight Essence). So I am not sure what how to interpret that. I mean, did they have the stuff locked up and someone betrayed or sneaked in and let it out, or did it exist in some other realm and was "released" onto Roshar. Ugh... Book 2 can't come soon enough...

Edited by Voidbringer
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Fascinating stuff! I hadn't heard about the connection with Nightblood and I really like the idea about the 450 to 4500 year change due to the fewer Heralds! In regards to the return of Taln bringing the Last Desolation: should Roshar survive another Desolation, couldn't Taln go back to Damnation for another 4500 in fulfillment of the Oathpact?

...

I suppose not since the Oathpact was probably invalidated with the death of The Almighty.

...

So I did glance back at the encounter with the Midnight Essence and one of the Radiants mentioned that someone released it (the Midnight Essence). So I am not sure what how to interpret that. I mean, did they have the stuff locked up and someone betrayed or sneaked in and let it out, or did it exist in some other realm and was "released" onto Roshar. Ugh... Book 2 can't come soon enough...

... You know, this has me questioning whether the Oathpact was a kind of mutual bargain like Preservation. It's fair to say that Odium had Honor on the ropes, since he lost the Tranquline Halls. Maybe Honor threatened to kill them both ala Vin, but Odium instead proposes the Oathpact, sacrificing some of his weapons or essence (the Shardblades), provided Honor gives him ten Heralds to torture. The Honorblades are created by Honor to bind them to the Oathpact, and are functionally different in that there is no way for them to kill non-Voidish creatures. Shardblades, being of Odium, work on both, but the Heralds tell people not to use them in man-made wars or else it will strengthen the Voidbringers. Fastforward, and the Heralds abandon their posts, the knowledge is lost, and after centuries of being tools/peacekeepers, whatever, the Knights Radiant abandon their posts and Blades. People start using them to kill en masse, directing enough corrupted spiritual energy into Roshar to actually kill Honor, as the energy would be corrupted by Odium, his opposite. This could explain why the last vision Dalinar sees is of the KR giving up their Blades, at it's the literal smoking gun to why Honor is dead.

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Giving humans immortality but also requiring them to spend most part of their immortal life into hell sounds like Nightwatcher to me. I don't think she's just a Spren, more likely splinter of shard of bargain or something so she could've had her own part in Oathpact.

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Giving humans immortality but also requiring them to spend most part of their immortal life into hell sounds like Nightwatcher to me. I don't think she's just a Spren, more likely splinter of shard of bargain or something so she could've had her own part in Oathpact.

Wow I hadn't made that connection but that definitely makes sense and that totally sounds like a Nightwatcher curse/boon situation! The only thing I'm not sure would work is that the Heralds decided not to go back to Damnation, so they kind of just decided to not accept the curse. Hmmm... If this is in fact true, then could everyone who recieved a curse from the Nightwatcher "decide" that it is no longer in effect, thus Dalinar could suddenly remembers shshsh again?

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Wow I hadn't made that connection but that definitely makes sense and that totally sounds like a Nightwatcher curse/boon situation! The only thing I'm not sure would work is that the Heralds decided not to go back to Damnation, so they kind of just decided to not accept the curse. Hmmm... If this is in fact true, then could everyone who recieved a curse from the Nightwatcher "decide" that it is no longer in effect, thus Dalinar could suddenly remembers shshsh again?

Yeah I thought about that exactly after posting it... Only explanation I came up with is that both, gift and curse was on all ten of them and as long as at least one herald endured hell(Most likely for all of them - '450-4500 theory') others could just walk away and stay immortal. Though its weak because I don't think heralds planned abandoning one of them or anything like that and as far as we know Taln's death was just an accident... Though if it wasn't... I hope Taln will get his own book.

Edited by 213
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