discussion All we know about Nalan's hunt, return of spren, Desolation and Recreance - is Nalan just insane?

[Oversleep]

There's a question to be asked: Why Nalan hunts Surgebinders? Or rather: Why does he believe that Surgebinders may cause Desolation?

Let's get a timeline. I'll be puting quotes in spoiler tags.

• There were no Desolations before humans were on Roshar.
• At first, Heralds were the only Surgebinders.
• At one point, spren figured out what Honor did and started bonding humans which resulted in Surgebinders.
   

  "The Honorblades are what we are based on, Kaladin. Honor gave these to men, and those men gained powers from them. Spren figured out what He’d done, and we imitated it. We’re bits of His power, after all, like this sword." ~Syl

• Heralds became patrons of the Orders, at the same time imposing organisation on them.
   

  "But as for Ishi’Elin, his was the part most important at their inception; he readily understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws."

• We know that between Desolations Radiants fighted with some monsters (Dalinar's vision with Midnight Essence).
• We know that Heralds are sent back to Roshar before Desolation.
• We know that if they stay too long after Desolation ended, another one will start.

Aharietam and Recreance:

• The Last Desolation was 4500 years ago.
• There is a connection between Heralds tortured and Desolation. Kalak seems to believe that if Odium cannot torture them to break them, he can't cause a Desolation.
   

  “They see us as divinities,” Kalak whispered. “They rely upon us, Jezrien. We’re all that they have.”
  “They have the Radiants. That will be enough.”
  Kalak shook his head. “He will not remain bound by this. The enemy. He will find a way around it. You know he will.”

• After Heralds walked away from Oathpact, Knights Radiant did not leave their posts.
• Steel stores physical speed.
• When Recreance happened, one of the soldiers in Feverstone Keep mentioned that Radiants should be fighting devils on the front line. So even after Last Desolation monsters showed up.
• After Recreance there were probably no Surgebinders (or next to none, since spren turned away from humans).
• Honor was Shattered after Recreance (or maybe Tanavast survived Shattering long enough. It is nor clear or known.) since it is in one of the Dalinar's visions

Modern times:

• Taravangian believes that Desolation happens when Heralds break under torture and that spren came back because it was to happen.
   

  "Obviously they are fools The Desolation needs no usher It can and will sit where it wishes and the signs are obvious that the spren anticipate it doing so soon The Ancient of Stones must finally begin to crack It is a wonder that upon his will rested the prosperity and peace of a world for over four millennia" Book of the 2nd Ceiling Rotation: Pattern 1

• Stormfather forbidden spren (or maybe only honorspren) bonding with humans in fear of Recreance happening again. He has to accept Words, though.
• Stormfather sent Dalinar visions as demanded by Tanavast. These visions request Dalinar to refind Knights Radiant
• Spren started bonding humans at least ten years ago (Shallan's childhood)
• Nalan hunts Surgebinders down because he believes that Surgebinding may cause Desolation.
• Voidspren started showing up en masse after "Taln" returned to Roshar. But Venli is suspected to bear stormform earlier.
• True Desolation seems to be triggered by chain reaction: stormspren start hijacking Listeners -> large number of stormform Parshendi exist -> Voidbringers summon Everstorm -> Everstorm circles Roshar carrying more voidspren, triggering more Voidbringers out of formless Parshmen
•  

  
  “What do you know of this storm that the Parshendi unleashed?”
  THE EVERSTORM. IT IS A NEW THING, BUT OLD OF DESIGN. IT ROUNDS THE WORLD NOW, AND CARRIES WITH IT HIS SPREN. ANY OF THE OLD PEOPLE IT TOUCHES WILL TAKE ON THEIR NEW FORMS.
  “Voidbringers.”
  THAT IS ONE TERM FOR THEM.
  “This Everstorm will come again, for certain?”
  REGULARLY, LIKE HIGHSTORMS, THOUGH LESS FREQUENT. YOU ARE DOOMED.
  “And it will transform the parshmen. Is there no way to stop it?”
  NO.

•  

  The storm has come already? The parshmen have transformed?”
  “Yes and no,” Wit said. “The storm should hit Shinovar tonight, then work its way across the land. I believe that the storm will bring the transformation.”
  Jasnah stopped in place. “That’s not how it happened in the past. I have learned things on the other side.”
  “You are correct. It is different this time.”
  She licked her lips, but otherwise did a good job containing her anxiety. “If it’s not happening as it did before, then everything I know could be false. The words of the highspren could be inaccurate. The records I seek could be meaningless.”
  He nodded.

But Radiants existed for a long time after the Last Desolation, until Recreance.
When Heralds abandoned Oathpact Jezrien said "There is a chance we might end the cycle of Desolations." But that wasn't their intention, they wanted to get free of the torture. They seem to consider End of Desolations as a side effect, not the primary goal. They know that Odium is somehow bound by their torture and they're afraid he will find a way around them not returning to the Damnation.

True Desolation seems to be different to the regular Desolations, but we do not know why.
The question is, why would Nalan hunt Surgebinders since they existed before without triggering Desolation?
Why is the True Desolation different from the previous Desolation? How is it different?

What is the exact connection between Herald's torture and breaking under it, their return, release of voidspren and start of Desolation? Do spren sense Herald's coming near to point of breaking?

Discuss, provide more quotes and WoBs you find relevant.

Edited November 17, 2016 by Oversleep

[geralt]

"Why is the True Desolation different from the previous Desolation? How is it different?"

Well, the desolation that's about to occur will be the first one following the breaking of the Oathpact, so it's likely that once Odium is free there's no way to bind him again unlike before. This is also the first desolation in which Honor's dead, so it's sort of a definitive battle at this point.

[Zea mays]

In Jasnah's last quote she mentions the Highspren as her source of information. Highspren are, I believe, though cannot recal absolute confirmation, the spren that bond to Skybreakers. Nalan's order.

Does Nalan "know" what the Highspren "know", things that were true before, but no longer hold?

Not precisely mad, just failed to keep up with recent unheralded changes to the mystical laws that govern his universe.

[Patrick Star]

Nalan's most definitely insane.  However, he's not JUST insane.

 

He's cold, calculating, and thanks to his millennia of experience with odium, likely has a far more intimate knowledge of what's going to happen than any character except for (and possibly including) Taravangian.

[Oversleep]

In Jasnah's last quote she mentions the Highspren as her source of information. Highspren are, I believe, though cannot recal absolute confirmation, the spren that bond to Skybreakers. Nalan's order.

Does Nalan "know" what the Highspren "know", things that were true before, but no longer hold?

Not precisely mad, just failed to keep up with recent unheralded changes to the mystical laws that govern his universe.

But Hoid agrees with her. Unless he's lying (I see no reason why) Jasnah is indeed correct.

Nalan's most definitely insane.  However, he's not JUST insane.

 

He's cold, calculating, and thanks to his millennia of experience with odium, likely has a far more intimate knowledge of what's going to happen than any character except for (and possibly including) Taravangian.

Yeah, I know he's insane, but the question is whether he is just insane or insane AND crazy?

...

I hope you understand what I mean.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Oversleep

[Zea mays]

I was being unclear. Jasnah is correct, Nalan is the one who clings to mis-information.

[Oversleep]

I was being unclear. Jasnah is correct, Nalan is the one who clings to mis-information.

Right, right, I mixed up your comment with the Patrick Star's.

But if Nalan follows a previous version of "cosmere laws" (I doubt existence of such a thing), then why did he only recently started murdering Radiants? If back then Radiants were causing Desolations, he surely would have said something like "People, stop bonding with spren!". He is Herald of Almighty, people thought of them as deities, they would have listened.

[StormWrath]

"why would Nalan hunt Surgebinders since they existed before without

triggering Desolation?"

One of the reasons the parshendi changed to stormform and summoned the everstorm was because they saw kaladin fighting with stormlight which would imply that spren have started bonding with humans again,so they thought they needed to do whatever necessary (even transforming to stormform) to defeat the alethi before they started bringing in surgebinders to the field,in which case the parshendi will horribly be at a disadvantage.

Right, right, I mixed up your comment with the Patrick Star's.

But if Nalan follows a previous version of "cosmere laws" (I doubt existence of such a thing), then why did he only recently started murdering Radiants? If back then Radiants were causing Desolations, he surely would have said something like "People, stop bonding with spren!". He is Herald of Almighty, people thought of them as deities, they would have listened.

Well,you see,nalan couldn't just come out of hiding and start telling people to stop bonding with spren,don't forget that this was after the shattering of the oathpact and the heralds were living a life of hiding and declaring themselves as heralds plus that guilt that they had for lying to the people that they had won and that there wouldn't be any more desolations,doing that will compromise the other heralds preferable life of living anonymously,and if they come out people might start worshiping them and I don't think the other heralds will like that giving that they never declared themselves for the past 4500 years.

Edited February 28, 2016 by StormWrath

[King's Twit]

Note that pretty much the entirety of this post is based on a theory that as of yet I have not fully fleshed out.

 

I think that Nale's actions are well-intentioned and at least based in rational thought, but I do think that he is misguided.

 

I believe that Nale is working off of what might now be outdated information pertaining to the Oathpact. I think that part of the agreement between Honor and Odium was that Odium, at least between desolations, was only allowed field as many splinters and as much influence on Roshar as Honor did. So for every spren that formed the Nahel bond with a human, Odium was allowed to release another of his spren onto Roshar. I think this is how the first of the odiumspren that cause stormform came to Roshar, and it was only after Talenel returned to Roshar and triggered the start of the desolation that Odium was able to "open the floodgates" and release enough stormspren to turn most of the Pashendi nation into stormform, probably along with all of the parshmen on Roshar, unless the Everstorm is returning other forms of power as well.

 

One day I hope to have my thoughts on this organized enough to present as a full theory, but today is not that day.

[Oversleep]

Well,you see,nalan couldn't just come out of hiding and start telling people to stop bonding with spren,don't forget that this was after the shattering of the oathpact and the heralds were living a life of hiding and declaring themselves as heralds plus that guilt that they had for lying to the people that they had won and that there wouldn't be any more desolations,doing that will compromise the other heralds preferable life of living anonymously,and if they come out people might start worshiping them and I don't think the other heralds will like that giving that they never declared themselves for the past 4500 years.

 But if Radiants were making Desolations worse (more voidspren) then they would have had this influence even before Aharietam. So after a few Desolations after Surgebinders came to be Herlads return to Roshar with that knowledge and forbid bonding spren.

 

I believe that Nale is working off of what might now be outdated information pertaining to the Oathpact. I think that part of the agreement between Honor and Odium was that Odium, at least between desolations, was only allowed field as many splinters and as much influence on Roshar as Honor did. So for every spren that formed the Nahel bond with a human, Odium was allowed to release another of his spren onto Roshar. I think this is how the first of the odiumspren that cause stormform came to Roshar, and it was only after Talenel returned to Roshar and triggered the start of the desolation that Odium was able to "open the floodgates" and release enough stormspren to turn most of the Pashendi nation into stormform, probably along with all of the parshmen on Roshar, unless the Everstorm is returning other forms of power as well.

"Then the emergence of Radiants would be inconsequential because there would be increase in Voidbringers as well. But there is no evidence that Radiants had no impact and there is some evidence that Knights Radiant were helpful in battling Desolations. They wouldn't be helpful if number of enemies growed to match them. Besides, rise from 10 Surgebinders to thousands of them would strenghten Desolations several hundred times. They did grow worse, but that worse? I don't think so."

[King's Twit]

"Then the emergence of Radiants would be inconsequential because there would be increase in Voidbringers as well. But there is no evidence that Radiants had no impact and there is some evidence that Knights Radiant were helpful in battling Desolations. They wouldn't be helpful if number of enemies growed to match them. Besides, rise from 10 Surgebinders to thousands of them would strenghten Desolations several hundred times. They did grow worse, but that worse? I don't think so."

 

If the desolations went from having 10 magical people fighting for humanity to having thousands, without a roughly parallel increase in Odium's forces, then the desolations would have become little more than inconvenience for humanity, a minor conflict they have to engage in every few decades/centuries, but that does not seem to be the case.

[Ari]

I like to think that Nalan has correlation confused with causation. He's noticed that always there's a burst of new radiants before the desolations. He thinks maybe that by killing them off he can prevent this one. He's never actually realised that the new Radiants are a reaction to the desolation, not the other way around.

 

Oh, and yeah, he's got some issues to boot.

[DreamEternal]

But, being who he is, he should know Desolations come when a Herald breaks down. I doubt it is something so simple as he being insane and making such a big logical mistake.

[Kelek's Breath]

"Then the emergence of Radiants would be inconsequential because there would be increase in Voidbringers as well. But there is no evidence that Radiants had no impact and there is some evidence that Knights Radiant were helpful in battling Desolations. They wouldn't be helpful if number of enemies growed to match them. Besides, rise from 10 Surgebinders to thousands of them would strenghten Desolations several hundred times. They did grow worse, but that worse? I don't think so."

I don't have the book handy, so can't get the exact wording of this, but there is a quote, possibly by Tanavast in a vision, that the Radiants were a way for humanity to recover and rebuild, to help preserve knowledge after/between the Desolations. So their primary function may have been that and a secondary function was fighting.

 

Also, after Tanavast's death, there is a WoB that there are more honorspren around since the shard was splintered. So, there is more of a chance for someone to become a Radiant if all those spren come through.

 

As an aside, Nalan is shown hunting 2 surgebinders with what would be catalogued as Cultivation spren. So maybe he is only concerned about half of the Radiant orders (doesn't explain why he hasn't hunted Jasnah or Shallan though)? Or just Edgedancers?

[Farnsworth]

Nalan has shown himself to obsessed with pure justice, so I think he is still blaming the Radiants for betraying humanity. Long shot?

[Vander]

That is likely a PART of it. Still wouldn't explain the whole "Surgebinding = Desolation" thing. Well, unless the Old Radiants were more important than we think...

[Farnsworth]

The Radiants might be coming back because the voidbringers are coming back, or it might be the other way around. Or, maybe Nalan thinks that it's the other way around. Either way, the desolation would be blamed on them, and Nalan would want to kill them.

[Vander]

I feel as if Nin's supposed insanity is something different. He definitely seems coherent, and his goals never vary- there's something much more calculated there than insanity or even fanaticism. 

 

I doubt it's the "Nin adopts the current views on the KR" thing; he may be the Herald of Justice, but I find that a lacking reason- he is also human, and was trusted by the Almighty for- presumably- thousands of years.

[Oversleep]

I've added this information:
 

EHyde

Were there Desolations before there were humans on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

No.
source

Edited March 19, 2016 by Oversleep

[echaozh]

As an aside, Nalan is shown hunting 2 surgebinders with what would be catalogued as Cultivation spren. So maybe he is only concerned about half of the Radiant orders (doesn't explain why he hasn't hunted Jasnah or Shallan though)? Or just Edgedancers?

 

If Nalan is only hunting KRs on the Cultivation side, will it be possible that he blames Cultivation for the death of Honor, or even the Oathpact and the tortures in the first place?

[Oversleep]

I recall that in Eshonai's Interlude somebody said that the Listeners have made a great sacrifice to escape from thei gods. That probably is the source of parshmen, formless Listeners. This in turn indicates that back then all Listeners had Forms - compare to the modern day when almost all Listeners are without a spren, what probably lets in voidspren more easily.

[kenod]

• Steel stores physical speed.

 

We indeed know this, but I'm not sure if it is relevant.

[Oversleep]

We indeed know this, but I'm not sure if it is relevant.

Long I waited for somebody to point this out XD

I still feel like my list is missing some info, though. Anybody knows what I may have left out?

[Vissy]

Steel stores physical speed.

 

+1 for the OP!

[kaladamSB]

I always felt that the Skybreakers being so obsessed with the law would make them candidates for a type of military police for the Knights Radiant. This is why I felt Nalan only kills surgebinders who he knows have broken the law. He must have been watching Kaladin vs Szeth to be able to revive Szeth, and we saw no evidence of him trying to or wanting to attack and kill Kaladin.

This obviously does not explain the surgebinders and desolations link, but I feel like it's something to ponder.