theory [OB] Ba-Ado-Mishram's Location

[ghajan monk]

I find it a bit of that Odium has not released Ba-ado-Mishram yet, perhaps the gem Is able to hide her presence. If the gem that Szeth hid is the same type of container that is holding Neragoul he would be likely to tell Dalinar. Finally does the diagram predict this? I would be interested in seeing Taravingian or one of his advisors bond one of the unmade.

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine]

Just a thought as to one of the most inaccessible spots to hide the bound and captured Bo-Ado-Mishram gem. If BAM was indeed captured in a perfect gem, we know as @Argent pointed out:

On 11/15/2017 at 9:12 PM, Argent said:

Chapter 83: Crimson to Break's epigraph reads the following:

Quote

As the duly appointed keepers of the perfect gems, we of the Elsecallers have taken the burden of protecting the ruby nicknamed Honor’s Drop. Let it be recorded.

So, the elsecallers were the keepers of the Perfect Gems, we have seen in Celibrant that money changers use perfect gems as a basis for their Stormlight/credit exchange economy, so perfect gems can and do exist in Shadesmar. So, my guess as to where BAM is currently located is that an Elsecaller put this most dangerous of contained Gems in another realm, and in the most inaccessible place to reach imaginable, but which could be watched over by Elsecallers, whose special prerogative as Radiants is mastery over transition to the Cognitive Realm.

My guess is that an Elsecaller took the perfect gem holding BAM, and dropped into the deepest most inaccessible pit in all of Roshar's two accessible Realms, namely the nearly bottomless sea of glass beads where the Tower of Urithiru is but in the Cognitive Realm. Imagine how far down that sea of beads would have to go in Shadesmar to match in magnitude the height of the mountain of Urithiru in the physical realm. Really this would be like sinking BAM into a depth a couple of magnitudes greater than the depth of the Marianas trench on earth. It would be difficult in the extreme for any but the most accomplished of Elsecallers to locate and retrieve it from there.

I only think this is an interesting point of speculation, a possibility for the location, not a definitive theory by any stretch.

I have a thread where I talk about another possible reason for the dismantling of Kholinar, that I haven't seen anyone else really talking about.

 

Edited December 15, 2017 by hoiditthroughthegrapevine

[Cenanin]

On 11/14/2017 at 3:38 PM, Windrunner said:

Oathbringer has given us a much more in-depth look at Odium's forces, particularly the Unmade. Unquestionably, one of the most interesting of the Unmade is Ba-Ado-Mishram. 

This is a promising villain. The mindless Unmade are terrifying enough, let alone an Unmade that commanded Odium's troops. Surely she has to be a major villain in this book series. However, a question remains. Where is she?

 

Both of these are possibilities. However, returning to Damnation seems unlikely, the rest of the Unmade seem fairly active. We've seen evidence that Nergaoul, Moelach, and Chemoarish have remained active, if subtle during the Era of Solitude. In fact, we know that it is impossible that Ba-Ado-Mishram was destroyed during Aharietiam or returned to Braize afterward.

 

These epigraphs are from the gemstones left behind in Urithiru, from around the time of its abandonment before the Recreance. So Ba-Ado-Mishram was still alive around the time of the False Desolation, allowing the singers to take on the forms of power and providing Voidlight. A strike team went to go to imprison her, and nothing has been heard of her since. Since the arrival of the Everstorm, she has made no appearance at either Kholinar or the Battle of Thaylen Fields, the two largest direct conflicts so far. So it seems possible that they succeeded. So, if she is imprisoned, where could she be? We know that she is crafty and that she provides Voidlight, which seems to have been entirely absent in Roshar since her imprisonment. With one notable exception.

 

 

Gavilar's dark spheres have long been a subject of discussion. Some have considered the possibility that those spheres contain Unmade. Given what we've seen this book, I consider that to be unlikely. We have at least six of the Unmade accounted for, with only Dai-gonarthis, Chemoarish, and Ba-Ado-Mishram absent. What are the odds that Gavilar happens to have two perfect gems each containing an Unmade and that he values them so little that he's willing to give them away? The most simple explanation is that these spheres are charged with Voidlight. Where could Gavilar have gotten it from? The easiest answer prior to the Everstorm and the new Desolation is that he got it from Ba-Ado-Mishram. Gavilar seems to give additional credence to that idea.

 

The spren he refers to must be Ba-Ado-Mishram. How does he know about this? He's presumably seeing the same visions that Dalinar did (I'm making the assumption that he bonded the Stormfather because there is no evidence so far of a connection between Gavilar and the Nightwatcher and the Sibling remains elusive). Dalinar knows nothing about the capture of Ba-Ado-Mishram from his visions, so how does Gavilar? Gavilar has long seemed to know things he shouldn't. He even mentions a new storm here, something that did not appear in Dalinar's visions (one may make an argument about the destruction of Kholinar vision, but that doesn't match the description of the Everstorm, more like a metaphorical wave of destruction in my opinion). Gavilar has also taken the Stormfather's visions in a much darker direction than Dalinar, trying to trigger the Desolation to unite Roshar rather than prevent it in the first place. It has long seemed to me that he may have been in contact with some sort of nefarious force that was manipulating him to its own ends. The fact that Gavilar has Voidlight, implies that he was at some point in contact with Ba-Ado-Mishram, who has the ability to provide Voidlight. Even if Gavilar was not being manipulated, he must have come in contact with Ba-Ado-Mishram to gain the Voidlight and perhaps learn about how she was imprisoned. So the question remains, where is she?

 

 

The Fused are destroying a portion of the palace for a specific reason. I believe that the reason is that Ba-Ado-Mishram is imprisoned somewhere within or below the palace in Kholinar. Gavilar as a budding Bondsmith came into contact with her somehow and she spoke to him and gave him Voidlight. Gavilar may have intended to release her to trigger the Desolation or he may have been following her instructions to start it some other way. The question remains, why was she imprisoned beneath the palace? Well, when the ancient Radiants captured her, they needed to put her somewhere. Urirthiru is the obvious choice, however the city was failing by that point. The Radiants were abandoning it in droves. Where else could they put the prison? Perhaps in the capital city of Alethela, the ancestral homeland of the Radiants? Where else could have been better defended? When the Radiants fell, this knowledge was lost and the location of Ba-Ado-Mishram's prison was forgotten. The Fused focused on taking Kholinar first to ensure the return of their finest leader, who will become a real problem for humankind in the next few books.

I think you're spot on here. It all lines up. I want to add that I seem to remember another of the "ten perfect teardrop gems" or something like that, I can't remember the one that captured Nergaoul's name. But I seem to remember one of the perfect gems(there's some dialogue of all of them being part of one super perfect gem maybe?) was thought to reside in Kholinar, and if your theory is right, which I think it very well could be, then that's probably Bado's prison.

[Cenanin]

On 11/15/2017 at 9:12 PM, Argent said:

Good theory, I like it.

If I may, I think I can add a little bit of extra evidence towards it, though it's minor and speculative.

Chapter 83: Crimson to Break's epigraph reads the following:

Later, Dalinar imprisons Nergaoul inside the King's Drop, a large ruby that hasn't leaked Stormlight in over 2,000 thousand years - a pretty good candidate for a perfect gem, and a pretty good candidate for Honor's Drop (whose name got lost in time).

I find it likely that another perfect gemstone was used to trap Ba-Ado-Mishram. And if they are as rare and precious to warrant storage in Thaylen City's reserve, then it's entirely possible that Kholinar's own reserve has had another one. Probably not an emerald though, as there were no mentions of anything weird in the emerald reserve Kaladin & co. were lugging around.

 

The perfect gemstones. There's one for each unmade, the ones that we haven't seen are probably trapped in them. They could be hidden anywhere in the Cosmere. Why wouldn't the elsecallers take them offworld? The Heralds knew Midius(Wit on Yolen), or at least knew of him, and the whole Cosmere picture. It's likely a lot of the Roshar mythology relates to the big picture and not the Rosharan system. Are there any references to gemstones elsewhere in the Cosmere?

[aemetha]

5 minutes ago, Cenanin said:

Why wouldn't the elsecallers take them offworld?

Maybe there was some risk involved in that. Spren find it hard to travel off world, which might be seen as some kind of pull toward their native worlds. If you added that force to the spren's own desire to escape its confinement, perhaps there was a risk of them escaping? I'm just spitballing though, so don't take that as anything more.

[Cenanin]

8 minutes ago, aemetha said:

Maybe there was some risk involved in that. Spren find it hard to travel off world, which might be seen as some kind of pull toward their native worlds. If you added that force to the spren's own desire to escape its confinement, perhaps there was a risk of them escaping? I'm just spitballing though, so don't take that as anything more.

Maybe, but I'm positive SA is going in the direction of the "bigger picture" which is going to involve a lot more than the Rosharan system. I mean it's only book 3 and it already has. The Heralds are aware of the bigger picture 100%, and I don't see any reason they wouldn't have told humanity about everything. It's just been lost to legend, the mythology and legends can be applied to the greater Cosmere, not just the Rosharan system. We've seen maybe 3 of the perfect gems? One in Secret History(maybe?), one in the Cognitive realm in Celebrant, and the Ruby drop currently holding Nergaoul? We must have hints of the others. SOmewhere that we're missing. I suspect.

[Obstkuchen]

I think it very unlikely that BAM has been taken offworld. For one thing, when you get hold of something this dangerous (and being able to start a desolation without an actual desolation falls into that category) you tend to keep it close. I don't think the Elsecallers would have just given the gem out of hand and - to be honest - as sprens are native to Roshar and Surgebinders don't seem to be ageless it would be seemingly impossible to maintain an Elsecaller exclave somewhere offworld (except maybe on .Ashyn, idk if there are spren there, do we have a WOB on that?)

Another thing left unanswered would be Gavilar's access to Voidlight. We have from the Queen that Gavilar had discovered an Unmade but never learned to bond it. Since Yelig-nar doesn't seem to be very secretive with his method, I think it must have been another Unmade. Keeping with the pattern that the other Unmade stayed in hiding until the Desolation started it seems most likely to be BAM or (keeping in mind his very uncertain true motives) Sja-anat, though i think BAM a lot more likely considering the surrounding lore being filled with references to her providing Voidlight and the ability for parsh to bond with Voidspren, an ability Gavilar almost outright promises the Parshendi.

Edit/Note (in case that wasn't considered canon already):
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/175/#e8400
basically confirms that MAB was captured during the False Desolation

Edited December 15, 2017 by Obstkuchen

[.S.A.M.K.M]

Say the unmade was in the sphere gavilar had. He likely got it due to his connection to the sons of honor, in their efforts to restore the Knights and void ringers, who knows what they had unknowingly uncovered. So far as that group knows, the king had the sphere in the palace. The Parshendi believed the king had it last. Only the Assasin is aware of where it is now as he hid it.

[Vortaan]

If Gavilar's perfect gem was something he had made, how could BAM have gotten into it? I find it more likely she was trapped beforehand and the perfect gem Gavilar had made was A) not the sphere he gave to Szeth and B ) something he made to trap BAM again after he'd gotten the Heralds to come out of hiding.

[Reckless Disregard]

Was just reading in the Arcanum that moving Sprenger across lines in Shadesmar is very difficult, so doubtful they are off planet. 

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/36/#e1538

Gavilar didn't bond Stormfather, but certainly used the visions (for his misguided purposes).

I think Gavilar handing over the parish sphere was void light only. He wanted them to power up, but not unleash the unmade at that point in time. He and the GB's wanted to return Roshar to Radiant fighting form. If they unleashed the Unmade at that stage they would get slaughtered. He needed to awaken (..too punny?) his Radiants and train them first before engaging in all out war.

 

[.S.A.M.K.M]

The thing is thing is the king was specificly saying that with the right gem, you could trap even one of their gods. If it was void light, why was he speaking about gods and not their power.

[blueshard]

I don't know if someone mentioned it already but it said somewhere that Dalinar was the first person in hundreds of years to bond the Stormfather. So Galivar couldn't bonded the Stormfather. But other, really interesting theory. Have an upvote.