Jump to content

The secret of the radiants


Steeldancer

Recommended Posts

I've been thinking about the nahel bond a lot. It reminds me a lot of covenants in the LDS church, of which Brandon is a part. One of the things covenants do is to bring you to be more like God. Suddenly I thought what if when the radiants die they've become the literal ideal of their spren? What if, upon death, they BECOME bondspren? And what if, a spren blabbed and because of that the radiants were like NOPE I actually would like to die and not be a spren stuck in the cognitive realm forever. And once the new radiants find out about this... they won't want to be radiants anymore. Which by extension could mean that Syl was once a windrunner. Now this doesn't mean the first radiants' spren were formerly radiants, so there were some bondspren before, but as radiants die the bondspren become more populated. Until they were betrayed. 

Edited by The Flash
Spellcheck failure
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Had this same thing pop into my head a few days ago. It doesnt really account for emotion or nature spren so i qrote it off, but i think the theory does have merit.

 

Another thought i had that i liked more was that becoming a radiant requires a similar connection to what the Heralds have, and that upon death they become a cognitive shadow and are imprisoned on Braize to be tortured. We know that there are cognitive shadows on Braize, but no humans, and this explaination is one im proud of.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't really see how they would be angry enough to essentially kill their spren for that though. The majority of them would come to love their spren over time. I suppose they might be angry that they don't go to the Tranquiline Halls to fight or something but if they become bondspren then they are essentially still helping in that fight and are given near eternal life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Blightsong said:

Had this same thing pop into my head a few days ago. It doesnt really account for emotion or nature spren so i qrote it off, but i think the theory does have merit.

 

Another thought i had that i liked more was that becoming a radiant requires a similar connection to what the Heralds have, and that upon death they become a cognitive shadow and are imprisoned on Braize to be tortured. We know that there are cognitive shadows on Braize, but no humans, and this explaination is one im proud of.

Where has it been said there are cognitive shadows on Braize? I thoughthink it had just been said that it was inhabited by spren.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes I've heard that theory before @Blightsong and aren't spren just simply cognitive shadows? Although I'm just not totally understanding how the bond would cause them to go to braize. Although now that I think about it... there are supposed to be a viewpoint in stormlight from braize. So either that would come from a cognitive shadow (in this theory a dead radiant), a current radiant that died and ended up there, or from odium himself. But any of those three would provide massive insight. Or maybe Jasnah goes there using her transportation ability. 

Edited by The Flash
Spellcheck failure
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, The Flash said:

Yes I've heard that theory before @Blightsong and aren't spren just simply cognitive shadows? Although I'm just not totally understanding how the bond would cause them to go to braize. Although now that I think about it... there are supposed to be a viewpoint in stormlight from braize. So either that would come from a cognitive shadow (in this theory a dead radiant), a current radiant that died and ended up there, or from odium himself. But any of those three would provide massive insight. Or maybe Jasnah goes there using her transportation ability. 

Spren are not cognitive shadows, but both have their souls made of investiture. They are a similar state of being, but they are kind of like different species. My idea is that the bond imitates what ever the happens to the Heralds in forcing them to go to Braize.

 

10 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Where has it been said there are cognitive shadows on Braize? I thoughthink it had just been said that it was inhabited by spren.

Arcanum Unbounded.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I thought it had just been said that it was inhabited by Spren.

This WoB doesn't technically say that, if it's the one you are thinking of.

Quote
Are Odiumspren the only Spren who live on Braize?

Brandon Sanderson

Only Odiumspren are welcome on Braize, but they're different from anything we've seen so far.

Only his Spren are welcome, but that does not mean that they are the sole population. After all, we know the Heralds visit from time to time :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

This WoB doesn't technically say that, if it's the one you are thinking of.

Only his Spren are welcome, but that does not mean that they are the sole population. After all, we know the Heralds visit from time to time :)

I thought that in AU it had said something different.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lets look at what we know:

  • The Radiants who abandoned their oaths during the Recreance were disgruntled (they sort of acted like jerks in Dalinar's flashback of the Recreance) by something (a secret they hadn't been aware of according to mr. T) and in relatively short-order reached widespread consensus that they should quit being Radiants.
  • According to WoB, in general, the Radiants loved their spren and regarded them as dear friends and confidants.
  • People, even very bad, greedy, corrupt, or mean-spirited people, tend to avoid knowingly doing things that would result in the deaths of their loved ones, even if they face great personal cost.
  • Almost all of the bondspren "died," meaning that very few, if any, Radiants chose to kill themselves or seek natural deaths rather than give up their oaths.  I feel like, if faced with a "you need to kill your best friend" scenario, a statistically significant number of people would opt for suicide or complete inaction unless thoroughly coerced to do otherwise, but this is an opinion.

From this, I speculate the following:

  • Once whatever the horrible secret was became widespread knowledge among the orders and their spren, the spren, out of love for their humans, insisted that the Radiants release their oaths because keeping them would either cause something terrible to happen or ultimately result in unfathomably awful consequences for the Radiants and/or the spren. (IE: worse than death)
  • The spren and Radiants had really good reasons to believe that the secret that they learned was true.  If it was questionable in origin or interpretation at all many would probably have opted for denial due to lack of compelling evidence.
  • The consequences for either or both the spren and Radiants, and/or mankind at large, for continuing to maintain the Nahel bond were perceived to be significantly worse than death by the spren, and perceived as being worse than being forced to kill one's best friend by the Radiants.

What the secret was/is is still speculative.  I like the hypothesis that Radiants who die with their oaths intact get sent to Braize for eternal torture (this is covered more in older threads) and have defended it before because, in my opinion, it fits the above list of bullet points pretty well.  However, due to a lack of supporting evidence, I think it's a bit of a stretch to classify it as a full-blown theory; it's just one possible explanation.

TLDR;

Given what we know about the Recreance, the secret of the Radiants is most likely something extremely awful.  Something so awful that the Radiants more-or-less unanimously agreed that murdering their most beloved companions was a better idea than continuing to participate in the Nahel bond.  I like OP's theory on the basis of flavor, but I don't think it quite fits with what we've learned so far.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership

And don't forget, after killing their spren many of these Radiants were also killed by the men who saw them lay down their weapons. They must have guessed this could happen with such a public 'betrayal' and seemingly let themselves be killed rather than fight or explain themselves (because If anyone could fight off a person with a shardblade it would have been a Radiant).

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, hwiles said:

Lets look at what we know:

  • The Radiants who abandoned their oaths during the Recreance were disgruntled (they sort of acted like jerks in Dalinar's flashback of the Recreance) by something (a secret they hadn't been aware of according to mr. T) and in relatively short-order reached widespread consensus that they should quit being Radiants.
  • According to WoB, in general, the Radiants loved their spren and regarded them as dear friends and confidants.
  • People, even very bad, greedy, corrupt, or mean-spirited people, tend to avoid knowingly doing things that would result in the deaths of their loved ones, even if they face great personal cost.
  • Almost all of the bondspren "died," meaning that very few, if any, Radiants chose to kill themselves or seek natural deaths rather than give up their oaths.  I feel like, if faced with a "you need to kill your best friend" scenario, a statistically significant number of people would opt for suicide or complete inaction unless thoroughly coerced to do otherwise, but this is an opinion.

From this, I speculate the following:

  • Once whatever the horrible secret was became widespread knowledge among the orders and their spren, the spren, out of love for their humans, insisted that the Radiants release their oaths because keeping them would either cause something terrible to happen or ultimately result in unfathomably awful consequences for the Radiants and/or the spren. (IE: worse than death)
  • The spren and Radiants had really good reasons to believe that the secret that they learned was true.  If it was questionable in origin or interpretation at all many would probably have opted for denial due to lack of compelling evidence.
  • The consequences for either or both the spren and Radiants, and/or mankind at large, for continuing to maintain the Nahel bond were perceived to be significantly worse than death by the spren, and perceived as being worse than being forced to kill one's best friend by the Radiants.

What the secret was/is is still speculative.  I like the hypothesis that Radiants who die with their oaths intact get sent to Braize for eternal torture (this is covered more in older threads) and have defended it before because, in my opinion, it fits the above list of bullet points pretty well.  However, due to a lack of supporting evidence, I think it's a bit of a stretch to classify it as a full-blown theory; it's just one possible explanation.

TLDR;

Given what we know about the Recreance, the secret of the Radiants is most likely something extremely awful.  Something so awful that the Radiants more-or-less unanimously agreed that murdering their most beloved companions was a better idea than continuing to participate in the Nahel bond.  I like OP's theory on the basis of flavor, but I don't think it quite fits with what we've learned so far.

Being tortured for millennia sounds pretty terrible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It does, but we are talking about a group who have completely devoted their lives to protecting, to caring, and to watching over their fellow human beings. For hundreds of utterly devoted knights to unanimously decide this for the sole reason that they will have extra sacrifice? It doesn't fit. 

As hwiles says, I think it's more likely that something about their bond, in the big picture, is causing more harm than good.

To me, the most likely canditiates for the Recreance cause in no particular order:

1. The Radiants find out the Heralds lied to them and broke the Oathpact, so they got pissed and quit. Again, this doesn't jive with the whole unanimous decision thing. Even if this happened, surely some Radiants would see that their cause was still good and shouldn't be abandoned?

2. The nahel bond, by its nature, opens the door for Voidbringers to exist on Roshar. I'm not sure on this, because there were Voidbringers before Radiants existed. What changed once the orders were established that made Voidbringers only exist when Radiants were around?

3. A deal was made between the Radiants and the Voidbringers/Listeners ("...the devils on the front line"). In exchange for the Voidbringers returning the Listeners to their sprenless forms, the Radiants would give up their Oaths, and abandon their shards. Odium of course orchestrated this, with his precognition abilities telling him that normal people would use the shards to war amongst themselves, opening themselves up to the Thrill and presumably his influence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Jaconis said:

It does, but we are talking about a group who have completely devoted their lives to protecting, to caring, and to watching over their fellow human beings. For hundreds of utterly devoted knights to unanimously decide this for the sole reason that they will have extra sacrifice? It doesn't fit. 

As hwiles says, I think it's more likely that something about their bond, in the big picture, is causing more harm than good.

To me, the most likely canditiates for the Recreance cause in no particular order:

1. The Radiants find out the Heralds lied to them and broke the Oathpact, so they got pissed and quit. Again, this doesn't jive with the whole unanimous decision thing. Even if this happened, surely some Radiants would see that their cause was still good and shouldn't be abandoned?

2. The nahel bond, by its nature, opens the door for Voidbringers to exist on Roshar. I'm not sure on this, because there were Voidbringers before Radiants existed. What changed once the orders were established that made Voidbringers only exist when Radiants were around?

3. A deal was made between the Radiants and the Voidbringers/Listeners ("...the devils on the front line"). In exchange for the Voidbringers returning the Listeners to their sprenless forms, the Radiants would give up their Oaths, and abandon their shards. Odium of course orchestrated this, with his precognition abilities telling him that normal people would use the shards to war amongst themselves, opening themselves up to the Thrill and presumably his influence.

The radiants are generally good, sacrificing people but they are still people. Them keeping the bond wasnt necessary to humanity, they believed they had been successful in keeping bacl Odium.

 

Yes they had to kill their spren, but in the face of literally an eternity of endless and unrelenting torture, I dont think its too outlandish to think that this could be the case.

 

Just look at the heralds. They decided to abandon humanity, and they had reason to believe that doing so could end in the end of humanity. I think the thought of endless torture is more of a motivator than you think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I'll point out that the Radiants were noted to have become more corrupt and less helpful overy the course of time following the Last Desolation.

Also, I would've thoughthe that the Listeners became sprenless at the end of the Last Desolation, not centuries later.

We can't really trust the histories that say they became corrupt. Everything about that was modified in the Hierocracy. 

What makes you say the Listeners became sprenless at the end of the Last Desolation? Something in book or your gut feeling? Not trying to contradict you, I'm just wondering if there's something I missed. 

1 hour ago, Blightsong said:

The radiants are generally good, sacrificing people but they are still people. Them keeping the bond wasnt necessary to humanity, they believed they had been successful in keeping bacl Odium.

 

Yes they had to kill their spren, but in the face of literally an eternity of endless and unrelenting torture, I dont think its too outlandish to think that this could be the case.

 

Just look at the heralds. They decided to abandon humanity, and they had reason to believe that doing so could end in the end of humanity. I think the thought of endless torture is more of a motivator than you think.

I don't disagree that there would definitely be at least some that endless torture would make them lose devotion. I just don't think it would be as unanimous as it appears to have been. That in particular is true when you consider the two orders we have seen abandon their oaths: the Windrunners, who's primary objective is to protect others even at their own expense, and the Stonewards, whose Second Ideal is about standing when others fall. Both of these orders are utterly devoted to self-sacrifice for the good of others.

The Heralds aren't really a fair comparison. They knew what they were in for with the torture; they'd experienced it several times. He Radiants didn't have this experience to dread and eat at them the same way the Heralds did. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Jaconis said:

We can't really trust the histories that say they became corrupt. Everything about that was modified in the Hierocracy. 

What makes you say the Listeners became sprenless at the end of the Last Desolation? Something in book or your gut feeling? Not trying to contradict you, I'm just wondering if there's something I missed. 

I don't disagree that there would definitely be at least some that endless torture would make them lose devotion. I just don't think it would be as unanimous as it appears to have been. That in particular is true when you consider the two orders we have seen abandon their oaths: the Windrunners, who's primary objective is to protect others even at their own expense, and the Stonewards, whose Second Ideal is about standing when others fall. Both of these orders are utterly devoted to self-sacrifice for the good of others.

The Heralds aren't really a fair comparison. They knew what they were in for with the torture; they'd experienced it several times. He Radiants didn't have this experience to dread and eat at them the same way the Heralds did. 

It wasnt unanimous we know via epigraphs that one of the orders didnt abandon their bond.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Jaconis said:

The Radiants find out the Heralds lied to them and broke the Oathpact, so they got pissed and quit

I'm glad that you don't put much stock in this theory, because Brandon has straight up told us no.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

The Radiants did NOT abandon their post as a response to the Heralds.
2 hours ago, Jaconis said:

2. The Nahel Bond, by its nature, opens the door for Voidbringers to exist on Roshar. I'm not sure on this, because there were Voidbringers before Radiants existed.

I agree with you, Odium's forces existed before the Radiants became a thing. That doesn't mean that it's completely off the hook, but odds seem against it.

I always took "...the devils on the front line" to be a reference to Aimians, but who knows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Something to keep in mind also is that mr. T seems to believe that the secret, whatever it is, could be used to break up the Knights Radiant again if necessary.  I think this mostly rules out Odium having made a deal with the Radiants to orchestrate the Recreance.

@Jaconis We aren't necessarily arguing that the Radiants would all choose to break their oaths if faced with endless torture on Braize (doubtless some would be undaunted), but rather, that their spren might insist that the price was too great and require them to break their oaths.

We know from WoB that bondspren and Radiants weren't all necessarily virtuous and moral in the same sense; yes they were, in general, "good," but they did have flaws and disagreements.  He gives an example that while an honorspren would always have difficulty lying or being dishonest, its fundamental nature doesn't do much to stop it from being cruel or vindictive.  Kaladin orchestrates a psychological attack against the Parshendi by using the mutilated corpses of their fallen soldiers as armor; his intentions were good and honest and don't seem to upset Syl, but...that's still pretty messed up and cruel.  Considering the oaths we've encountered so far, I could see an edgedancer having a serious problem with Kaladin's pragmatic corpse butchering.

My point is that it's difficult to imagine a personal price or consequence great enough to cause 9/10 orders to break their oaths when those orders are made up of such a diverse collection of people holding diverse morals and values.  However, it's easier to imagine so many Radiants being willing to break their oaths if they were either compelled by their spren to do so (for whatever reason), or thought that not doing so would be even worse for their spren in the long run.

My suspicion is that the Recreance was carried out by the Radiants and endorsed/encouraged by their spren either in a desperate act of love or a sincere sense of duty.  If not, I have difficulty imagining why more of them wouldn't have just...not broken their oaths.  Like, if they were just upset or fed up with the system, many would probably have chosen to live in isolation and not kill their spren rather than totally give up their powers (or maybe just stop summoning their armor and blade and get a job in a city as a regular person, whatever).  We know that didn't happen because we know most of the bondspren were killed.

Hope that helps clarify more than it convolutes...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Blightsong said:

It wasnt unanimous we know via epigraphs that one of the orders didnt abandon their bond.

It was unanimous among a given order, which especially among the two I mentioned above I have difficulty believing this is the reason. 

17 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

It wasn't a history work that said they were becoming corrupt; it was a personal autobiography.

Which personal autobiography? Can you point me to the quote? Regardless, the subject of the book doesn't really matter; nearly everything was modified during the Hierocracy. 

 

3 minutes ago, hwiles said:

Something to keep in mind also is that mr. T seems to believe that the secret, whatever it is, could be used to break up the Knights Radiant again if necessary.  I think this mostly rules out Odium having made a deal with the Radiants to orchestrate the Recreance.

 

I thought of that. This is an admittedly weak counter argument, but we know that it was the sight of Kaladin surgebinding that caused the Parshendi to accept stormform. Perhaps this is what Mr T was trying to avoid? Again, it's weak, but it's the best I got at the moment. 

The rest of your post makes good arguments; looking mostly through Kaladin at all this makes it easy to forget that the other orders don't prioritize the same things, and that what's "right", even by these virtuous knights, isn't always easy to define. 

An argument against the point that this was the spren's request; in his vision, Dalinar feels an immense sense of betrayal as he walks amongst the abandoned shards. This may be the Stormfather uncontrollably projecting his thoughts on the matter, but I got the sense it came from the spren themselves. If so, I think it unlikely the spren were behind this. 

I should point out, I don't actually think we have enough information to know one way or another what the reason for the Recreance was, and the above were just the ideas I found most plausible. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jaconis

Check Way of Kings Epigraphs, the ones from Jasnah's notes. One of the last ones, it had a complaint about the tariffs required to travel via the oathgates and how the Radiants were becoming to show their true selves.  A fair complaint, but I don't think it's a reason to immediately dismiss everything out of hand. Also, it was noted that the excerpt had surviving a burning, giving reasonable proof that it hadn't been tampered with. 

Edited by Spoolofwhool
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

@Jaconis

Check Way of Kings Epigraphs, the ones from Jasnah's notes. One of the last ones, it had a complaint about the tariffs required to travel via the oathgates and how the Radiants were becoming to show their true selves.  A fair complaint, but I don't think it's a reason to immediately dismiss everything out of hand. Also, it was noted that the excerpt had surviving a burning, giving reasonable proof that it hadn't been tampered with. 

That is a good point, though the fact that it survived a burning has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was tampered with. Here's the description. 

Quote

Following the firing of the original Palanaeum, only one page of Terxim’s autobiography remained, and this is the only line of any use to me.

We don't know when this fire occurred. It could have been before or after the Hierocracy. There's no reason this page couldn't have been tampered with either before or after fire, regardless. 

It may have been untampered, and thus some proof that the Radiants were indeed corrupted. We have no way of knowing one way or the other, however. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Jaconis said:

That is a good point, though the fact that it survived a burning has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was tampered with. Here's the description. 

We don't know when this fire occurred. It could have been before or after the Hierocracy. There's no reason this page couldn't have been tampered with either before or after fire, regardless. 

It may have been untampered, and thus some proof that the Radiants were indeed corrupted. We have no way of knowing one way or the other, however. 

Fair enough. My thoughts were that it survived a firing that was intended to remove undesired texts. As such, they wouldn't have rewritten parts of the book if they were just going to burn it afterwards. Also, the wording of firing does imply a deliberate fire, versus an accidental one.

Overall, I think this has some merit to truth, more reason than not to accept it. Unless I have some substantial reason to believe it is tampered with, I'll interpret it as not being so. I don't think know Brandon would throw a meaningless epigraph, though it could of course be a red herring. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...