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So the night will reign...


RShara

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The king heaved a final gasp, eyes glazing over. “So the night will reign, for the choice of honor is life . . .”

Taravangian raised an eyebrow. A Death Rattle? Here, now? Blast, and he wasn’t in a position where he could write down the exact phrasing. He’d have to remember it.

 

I wonder if this means that at the end of the fifth book, they manage to revive/speak to Honor (or the Stormfather).  And maybe the only way to stop Odium is for Honor to sacrifice himself, and he refuses.

 

Or a more sinister interpretation:  The First Ideal calls for Life Before Death.  Possibly one of the new KR needs to sacrifice himself, but, unknowingly, chooses to live and so fails.

 

It's also suspicious how it trails off, like there might be more to it.  "The choice of honor is life..." but they chose death?  ...life before death?

 

Ideas?  Am I crazy?

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Yes, yes you are.

The quote is unfortunately extremely ambiguous. Does night refer to the night mother that is conjectured to be cultivation a spren? Is this a future that is being alluded to or a reflection of the past suggesting that Honor sacrificed himself to preserve life? Is it foreshadowing Odium's reign? If we ask Brandon, he will probably say RAFO.

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Aww I heard that as "the Knight will reign" I thought it was something to do with Dalinar bonding honour's spren. One of the dangers of the audiobooks I guess.

Although Teravangian had only audio so how can he be sure it was night. Hmm could we have to go back and reinterpret the death rattles for potential misunderstandings of words than sound the same but are different.

Although the chances that night and knight are homonyms in any other language than English are remote, especially extrasolar planets.

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Have there been any other death rattles that were unfinished? I thought most of them were spoken completely around 30-90 seconds pre-death?

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The highest I saw was 142 seconds pre-death.  There were a lot that were 8 seconds.  Most seemed under 30.  Only one other trailed off:

 

 

“They are aflame. They burn. They bring the darkness when they come, and so all you can see is that their skin is aflame. Burn, burn, burn….”

—Collected on Palahishev, 1172, 21 seconds pre-death. Subject was a baker’s apprentice.

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You are so well researched RShara, its impressive, a well ordered mind. I bet you have a real Sanderson folder on your computer, not like mine which is just a few badly filenamed maps and a cheatsheet with most of the character names spelled wrong, at a glance I have - Rissin, hellocar, calladin, saddeus and nirvahni!

However i must question the reliability of that Death Rattle, can you be sure the Baker's apprentice wasn't talking about overcooked bread? Seems like a false positive to me :P

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lol, yeah maybe he burned himself, too.  That would explain the skin aflame!  *Gasp*  Revelation!  All the death rattles are about baking! :D

 

Actually I just have like, 3 copies of the 2 books-hardback, kindle, and ebook, so searching is really easy.  Although I DO have a Sanderson folder on my desktop...(named BS, don't judge).

 

I think we have to take the death rattles as written, otherwise there's just no way to ever analyze them.  Although the "Odium Rains" thread is quite amusing :D  It wouldn't hurt to ask Brandon (or Peter!), but I'm fairly certain that's what he'd say.

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I'm not familiar with the Odium Rains thread, but just this morning I read the phrase "Odium Reigns" and in my head concocted a little cartoon of Kaladin being rained upon by a dark cloud following him around with the title "Odium Rains" and the caption "I hate this bloody weather!". Going to seek the thread in question and see if i've been mindraped by a timetraveller.

 

On another tangent does anyone know what software was used for the brilliant cartoon on this page http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7275-church-of-the-stick/page-2. I'd really like to get into some form of creation and Sanderson is woefully underrepresented by the artistic world at present.

 

Back to topic.. and then wildly veering from it, if there were 3 bondsmiths in the past, what were they bonded to? If the Nightmother is Cultivation'spren and the Stormfather is Honour'spren, was the third bonded to Odium? because that seems wrong in many ways... 

 

(Also has there been a discussion about the nicknames Stormfather and Nightmother?)

Edited by Maffu17
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I wonder if this means that at the end of the fifth book, they manage to revive/speak to Honor (or the Stormfather).  And maybe the only way to stop Odium is for Honor to sacrifice himself, and he refuses.

 

Or a more sinister interpretation:  The First Ideal calls for Life Before Death.  Possibly one of the new KR needs to sacrifice himself, but, unknowingly, chooses to live and so fails.

 

It's also suspicious how it trails off, like there might be more to it.  "The choice of honor is life..." but they chose death?  ...life before death?

I don't see anything wrong with Honor having to sacrifice himself, it's actually very well into his Intent and we know that the longer Shardholders hold their Shards, the more their personality is shaped into their Shard's intent. Actually, Honor might have already sacrificed himself to keep Odium at bay and he's betting everything on humanity..

Humans, on the other end, don't like being dead. And it's possible that some newfound KR doesn't do as he's supposed to do.

So the night will reign, for the choice of honor is life . . .” This can be interpreted in so many ways. Brandon mastered Aes Sedai way of talking so well. >.>

 

 

The way I see it, the night (probably Voidbringers and Odium) will reign, because the choice/teachings/way of Honor is what helped the night to reign. Or the Night will reign, because Honor(or KR) did something that is purely of his Intent, like choosing life before death, living up to the Ideals.

A good mastermind will always use your best virtues to turn you over and make you stumble. Like Ruin did. I think Rayse is at least as capable as him at manipulation. Which makes me think that the KR will do the best they can, but still they will fail because you can't win against Rayse with honor alone...

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142 seconds is the longest by a good bit, and that's from the "I will not speak of the truths I see" one, which might not have been a Death Rattle but instead someone telling the Ardents they weren't getting one from him. We've also got one which may be connected to this one:

 

 

“The darkness becomes a palace. Let it rule! Let it rule!”

 

Kakevah 1173, 22 seconds pre-death. A darkeyed Selay man of unknown profession.

 

Unfortunately, that isn't exactly very helpful.

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This is almost definitely foreshadowing for book 5.

 

My bet is that The Champion of Honor (it had better be Kaladin) will be forced to chose between stopping Odium at the cost of a large amount, if not all of, human life on the planet or allowing Odium to "win" this desolation and allow humanity to survive and form a counterattack.

 

That's just my two cents, though.

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Here's my theory: There's a person on Roshar whose death would ensure victory against Odium, either because he's destined to be Odium's champion or some other reason. The new Knights will find out about this, but they will choose not to kill the person because he is innocent (for now).

Due to the following death rattle, I believe this person might still be an infant when the new Knights find him:

“I hold the suckling child in my hands, a knife at his throat, and know that all who live wish me to let the blade slip. Spill its blood upon the ground, over my hands, and with it gain us further breath to draw.”

—Dated Shashanan, 1173, 23 seconds pre-death. Subject: a darkeyed youth of sixteen years. Sample is of particular note.

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I thought it might have to do with the Radiants fighting Taravangian due to disagreements about his methods. He's killed, and it dooms the world to chaos and losing to Odium or something. It doesn't really fit, though...

Nice interpretation by skaa.

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Here's my theory: There's a person on Roshar whose death would ensure victory against Odium, either because he's destined to be Odium's champion or some other reason. The new Knights will find out about this, but they will choose not to kill the person because he is innocent (for now).

Due to the following death rattle, I believe this person might still be an infant when the new Knights find him:

 

 

I was thinking of this exact same death rattle as well. My interpretation was however different. Human physiology in Roshar is distinct and contains equal amounts of Honour and Odium. Every time humans fight each other and kill, it leaches a little bit more power from the Odium shard. That's why killing the child is an extended metaphor. Ironically uniting humans will strengthen Odium and allow him to destroy the world much faster. 

 

The death rattle either refers to the past: i.e. that Tanavast allowed himself to be killed, in order to allow humanity to survive or the future, when Honor's champion recognises this, he will choose the survival of humanity over its unity. 

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So, what if whosit that revives Szeth is a Herald.  Heralds are of Honor.  There is WoB that the Oathpact isn't nearly as broken as the Heralds may think, so they could still be of Honor.  Further, if he's still following his various ideals, even if they don't make sense to us at the time, it could still be seen as honorable.  Szeth gets Nightblood at the end, and it seems like it's going to be capable of doing some quite remarkable things...perhaps dominating on such a level as to be considered 'reign'ing.  So, Heraldguy chose to save Szeth, and Nightblood's reign of terror begins in Book 3.

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All the death rattles refer to something that hasn't happened as of the time they were given.  I think there was a WoB on that.

 

Would you mind looking this up? I know I've been wondering why people are so confident in asserting that all the death rattles are future predictions, and I haven't found a WoB that seems to corroborate this assertion.

 

The speculation may be from the Chapter 82 epigraph

There is one you will watch. Though all of them have some relevance to precognition, Moelach is one of the most powerful in this regard. His touch seeps into a soul as it breaks apart from the body, creating manifestations powered by the spark of death itself.

However I don't think this means we can say that all the manifestations are precognitive. They're just more likely to be precognitive than the work of the other unmade.

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I've been thinking about Valam's death rattle and the suckling child rattle coming up with a slightly different interpretation.  Every time someone is killed unnecessarily it advances Odium's cause, for the choice of Honor is life.  Life before death, etc.  

 

Examples: Redin killing Valam, Taravangian sowing chaos, Amaram killing Kaladin's men, etc. 

 

Taravangian using the sick and unnoticed to ferret out the death rattles is a perfect example of choosing death before life.  Odium makes this so tempting via the Unmade (Moelach specifically). 

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Would you mind looking this up? I know I've been wondering why people are so confident in asserting that all the death rattles are future predictions, and I haven't found a WoB that seems to corroborate this assertion.

 

The speculation may be from the Chapter 82 epigraph

 

 

However I don't think this means we can say that all the manifestations are precognitive. They're just more likely to be precognitive than the work of the other unmade.

 

I don't believe we have specific confirmation. However, I think it's pretty well-founded from that epigraph. The Death Rattles are the only detectable effect of Moelach, who is particularly associated with precongition. Precognition is also the central ability of Voidbinding. So I think it's pretty likely that all of them are prophetic. We don't have any that verifiably refer to prior events, to my knowledge, while we've got several that have been matched up to subsequent events with a fair degree of confidence.

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I don't believe we have specific confirmation. However, I think it's pretty well-founded from that epigraph. The Death Rattles are the only detectable effect of Moelach, who is particularly associated with precongition. Precognition is also the central ability of Voidbinding. So I think it's pretty likely that all of them are prophetic. We don't have any that verifiably refer to prior events, to my knowledge, while we've got several that have been matched up to subsequent events with a fair degree of confidence.

 

There are references to the breaking of the Oathpact in at least one of them.

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This is about the death rattle: "The darkness becomes a palace.  Let it rule!  Let it rule!"

 

Is it possible that this is related to Dalinar's purelake vision?

 

He sees a giant obsidian castle that doesn't exist in the present, and could not have been built by human hands.

 

Perhaps it's a sort of anti-Urithiru?  Or a voidbringer ark, similar to Urithiru which is a human ark?

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