oathpact Oathpact and the origin of high storms

[Maple Duke]

Now this is a theory that is mostly based on speculation but I wanted to see what other people think of it. Warning mindless rambling may happen at times, just stay with me.

 

Now lets get to it.

 

The Oathpact. We don't know much about it but I will quickly summarize what we do know.

 

1. It is an oath by the Heralds that returns them to Roshar with each desolation
2. Whenever the heralds are not on Roshar they are tortured
3. It has been in effect for a long time- "Centuries, perhaps millennia"
4. The Oathpact was broken
5. The enemy who is most likely Odium was bound by it
6. Honor is the one who most likely initiated it

While that isn't much to go on I'm going to talk about not only how it effects the heralds, but also how that may have effected the Rosharian ecosystem, specifically the starting the highstorms.

 

Now I'll start with a simple explanation of how the Heralds are important in the oathpact: I believe that they may have become bound to Odium. Now this would explain why they are tortured, after all what else would an entity literally named Hatred do to it's enemy's? Now the reason I was lead to this conclusion was in part because of the fact that shards tend to behave according to the principle of intent. (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/369-theory-the-principle-of-intent/)

 

Now Torture is not Honorable, and I would love to hear anyone argue otherwise. But Odium is more than capable of torturing people. In fact he probably does it for fun. I mean if you hate someone then you want to torture them so it fits his personality perfectly.

 

Now I hope I haven't lost you because this is where it gets interesting. What if Honor, Cultivation, and Odium were all originally on Roshar? Now Odium hates everything, or at least he probably does. So Honor and Cultivation, in order to create a society that wasn't constantly in danger of being destroyed, they had to get rid of Odium. So give odium something to focus all his hate on, preferably something he knows that you like (the heralds) and give him his own planet and then hope he leaves yours alone. And if he ever comes back make him bring back the Heralds. It's like giving the bully at school your toy and then just pulling out a different one after he leaves. Now Odium Isn't stupid so I'm sure he threw in some of his own conditions, namely getting to leave a small part of himself on Roshar mainly in the form of voidspren. Now that probably seemed like a good deal, after all what could things with no, or at least very little, physical form do? 

 

Well a lot as it turns out. Odium could insert the voidspren into the listeners and take control of them, like how Ruin uses hemalurgy. But every time he moved enough of his sentience to Roshar to control the listeners, then the Heralds would return to. This would explain why they always show up right before a desolation, and also why leaving just one of them could end the desolations, Odium still has one of them to Hate. And perhaps having only one of them return stuck Odium in a sort of limbo. He couldn't fully leave because he didn't have all the heralds but he also couldn't return because he couldn't bring the heralds with him as they were already their.

 

Now all of this ties into highstorms because when Odium returned the first time Honor needed a weapon to fight back with. So give the heralds the ability to access surges(the spren) and give them readily available fuel to power those surges(stormlight).

 

Now I know their will be those who say "well what makes you say that?" "why couldn't there have always been highstorms?" Well the answer to that is that Roshar was once much more earthlike. Shinovar across the whole planet kind of deal. This would explain how there were humans in the first place. Shards have access to a lot of knowledge about the workings of the world. Don't believe me, go read what Sazed writes in the Hero of Ages.

 

My point is Cultivation and Honor wouldn't put something as vulnerable as Humans on a land where everything is constantly buffeted by storms that are as big as a continent and as powerful as, well huricane times ten. 

 

Therefore Highstorms must come after humanity and since the Heralds were the first of humanity... well you get the point.

 

Shinovar is the only part of Roshar sheltered from the Highstorms and that is the reason it is so earthlike. Sinovar did not evolve to become earthlike. everything else evolved to weather the storms.

 

I know there isn't much evidence to support that but it's the best theory I could come up with so feel free to poke holes and give me feedback.

[natc]

Somewhat of a tangent about the torture, but there is a possibility that Honor is driven to inspire honorable deeds, but isn't honorable himself. Ruin wants everything destroyed, but never tries to self destruct and was actually actively trying to reclaim his power sealed in atium, meaning he cares about his own well-being and being whole. While Preservation split his power up amongst humankind, (mistborn spoilers)

tossed his mind down the gutter just to chain Ruin up and stall for time, and his plan literally involved dying to turn someone else into Preservation to do the job.

Preservation was highly suicidal in that ordeal.

With that said, the torturing itself is probably Odium, but it does make more sense this way why Honor would knowingly doom innocent mortals to eternal torture like that. I mean, don't argue he didn't foresee it happening eventually. The guy knows Odium.

On the other hand, these Shards were definitely not from Roshar initially, though the two that aren't Odium predating humans is likely. Odium was busy killing Dominion and Devotion on Sel. And I think one more guy.

Edited June 13, 2015 by natc

[kaellok]

Hello!

 

I enjoyed reading your theory so much that decided to take the time to demolish it.  That's because I ruin everything (not like Ruin, though.)  Because text can be funny, I'm absolutely serious when I say that I enjoyed reading it.  There are some neat/interesting/good thoughts in there, and some of them might even be true.

 

1&6.  The original people involved in the Oathpact are specifically Heralds and Honor.  Pertinent WoB below:

Now this is a theory that is mostly based on speculation but I wanted to see what other people think of it. Warning mindless rambling may happen at times, just stay with me.

 

Now lets get to it.

 

 

The Oathpact. We don't know much about it but I will quickly summarize what we do know.

 

It is an oath by the Heralds that returns them to Roshar with each desolation

1. Whenever the heralds are not on Roshar they are tortured
2. It has been in effect for a long time- "Centuries, perhaps millennia"
3. The Oathpact was broken
4. The enemy who is most likely Odium was bound by it
5. Honor is the one who most likely initiated it

 

1&6.  The Heralds and Honor are the only original participants of the Oathpact.  Others (such as Radiants) may have come to it later, but we don't know that.  Answers from Sanderson (frequently abbreviated as WoB) are hidden behind spoiler tags.

 

Q: How many parties were there to the original Oathpact?

A: The Heralds and Honor. They thought that by walking away from their oaths, that it would break the Oathpact. They're going to find out that it's not quite as broken as they had previously thought (meaning the Heralds).

 

 

2-4.  Pertinent WoB below:

WoB: Q: Is a Desolation caused when a Herald breaks under torture? A: This person is asking the right kinds of questions.) (WoB: Q: What caused a Desolation to end? Was it just the defeat of Odium's forces? Because the Desolations start when the Heralds break under torture. A: Because the Heralds can no longer be in existence. There is a certain period of time that they can be there, and after that, if they're there, they will start a new one. So the Heralds do need to leave for a Desolation to end. Q: Oh. So they've got a time limit. A: They do. Otherwise the Desolation will start again. What they discovered is not all of them have to. As long as one remains, the Desolation will not start again. Q: So, by the nine leaving, did that actually break the Oathpact for them? Did it change the cycle of Desolations? A: They have not completely broken the Oathpact, despite what they may think.

 

5.  Almost definitely done to contain Odium

 

 

Now I'll start with a simple explanation of how the Heralds are important in the oathpact: I believe that they may have become bound to Odium. Now this would explain why they are tortured, after all what else would an entity literally named Hatred do to it's enemy's? Now the reason I was lead to this conclusion was in part because of the fact that shards tend to behave according to the principle of intent. (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/369-theory-the-principle-of-intent/)

 

I find this thought to be particularly intriguing and interesting.  Forcing a Bond of sorts on Odium to contain him?  And, as a result, likely fueling the immortality that the Heralds possess.  Also brings all kinds of interesting thoughts, like, "Oh, so that's why an Honorblade just gives you the access to Surges, rather than requiring you to Bond a Splinter."  I mean, the how of that is still up in the air, but having a shard of Honor attacking Odium from the inside?  That's a pretty awesome plan.

 

 

 

Maple Duke, on 12 Jun 2015 - 8:30 PM, said:

 

Now all of this ties into highstorms because when Odium returned the first time Honor needed a weapon to fight back with. So give the heralds the ability to access surges(the spren) and give them readily available fuel to power those surges(stormlight). 

 

My point is Cultivation and Honor wouldn't put something as vulnerable as Humans on a land where everything is constantly buffeted by storms that are as big as a continent and as powerful as, well huricane times ten. 

 

Therefore Highstorms must come after humanity and since the Heralds were the first of humanity... well you get the point.

 

 

Unfortunately, this is probably not true.  There is a WoB that seems to say that Highstorms predate Honor/Cultivation's arrival:

 

Q: Do highstorms get weaker as they move west because of normal meteorological reasons the same way a hurricane gets weaker over land or is it because they slowly drain investiture as they infuse spheres over the whole continent?

A: Both. He said that anything like that will be affected by both normal science as well as the magic, but then he added that the highstorms are a natural occurring phenomenon that were on the planet before stuff started going down. I didn't get this confirmed, but I think he meant the stormlight part of the storm was added later, I'm assuming by a Shard.

 

The wobbly nature of the latter part of that answer gives some room for error, but seems strongly on the "Highstorms predate Honor/Cultivation." I thought there was a better WoB than this, but failed at finding it.  And it turns out that Honor/Cultivation either have less care with people than you'd think, or had less choice in destination than they wanted.

 

Edit: Stupid spoiler and quote tags were destroying me.  Apparently although they may be in a relationship, they currently need their space.

Edited June 13, 2015 by kaellok

[DreamEternal]

To add on the "Storms predate the Shards" the letter in WoR, an answer to the one in WoK, tells the author of the first letter, most likely Hoid, that the worlds he now threads "bear the touch and design of Adobalsium himself", showing that Adonalsium messed with more worlds than just Yolen, home of the original humans.

Plus, the Stormfather calls the Listeners the ancient ones, hinting that they predate humanity, and it is quite unlikely that the Listeners predate highstorms, since they need their investiture to bond spren. This also hints that the Stormfather may have been a spren of Adonalsium that got hijacked by Honor somehow, since the Listener interludes don't even hint about a time with highstorms but no Rider of Storms.

[hoser]

Just to increment the quote-dump and refresh the general 17th Shard information base.

Now this is a theory ...

What if Honor, Cultivation, and Odium were all originally on Roshar?...

There is WoB (quote available on request) that Adonalsium was on Roshar and left significant investiture. 

There is WoB that Honor and Cultivation were on Roshar before Odium.

Zas

People have been thrown by you saying that Odium is not native to Roshar.

Brandon

Odium is not native, that's the thing. Are any of them native? So if you dig the deeper question, are any of them native, ehhh, none of them are native to the planets you've seen so far. What I probably should've said to be more precise is that Honor and Cultivation were there long before Odium showed up.