Liss is Vedel?

[Toaster Retribution]

Does Liss have to be Chana? I know people (me included) wants to see Chana, but wouldn´t it be more fitting for Vedel, who is loving and healing, to be the assassin? After all, brave and obedient already sounds like a good assassin, no manipulation of divine traits needed. Vedel on the other hand... killing goes directly against healing, and doing it to anyone as long as you get paid goes against loving pretty well. 

Now, I know that the Heralds don´t have to act in direct opposition of their divine traits, but some kinda does (Ash destroys paintings, which goes against being creative). 

So, what do you guys think. Could Liss be Vedel?

[Calderis]

The entire reason I like Liss as Chana is precisely because of the divine attributes. 

An assassin that works like Liss does is arguably not Brave. There's very little risk to self. The entire point is to get close with a shardblade no one knows exists and kill the target before there is ever a chance of a fight. Then slip out. 

And obedient? Obedience doesn't require monetary investment high enough to ensure you're paying more than your competitors. "I will do what you tell me right up until I like what someone else tells me more." 

These are Brave and Obedient in the same way that Nale is Just. 

Edited October 31, 2018 by Calderis

[+Child of Hodor]

I think the idea is she was Brave and Obedient like a guard. She was someone who protects and now she assassinates. Now her allegiance is to whoever pays her the most, in the WoR prologue she'll turn on an employer if Jasnah is able to match the offer, and she disguises herself as a loyal servant of her target in order to sneak attack them. 

She doesn't have to be Chana, but I think it fits. Vedel with Healing would be a fit for Dova, the Herald posing as an Ardent that's helping Taravangian murder the sick in his secret hospital room. Taravangian says that she is Battar and I think Pailiah fits better, but I could be totally off.  

 

[+robardin]

So there are reasons to think Liss is a Herald, but also some details don't make sense if she is.

For one, she has a Shardblade, but it's not an Honorblade: only one is "missing" from the Shin collection, aside from the one given to Szeth as a Truthless, and Taln's that had not been abandoned - the one that Nin reclaimed. It could be an ordinary dead spren Shardblade, but wouldn't a Herald hear the screaming? (Maybe she does, and just ignores it?) Yet it's a Blade is one that she can dismiss and summon, since she's not carrying it around all the time.

I went back to re-read the prologue to WoR and her description doesn't mention her eye color. But she's disguised as a maid, and refers to Jasnah as being "different from other lighteyes" who "turn up their noses" and "sneer and wring their hands" while hiring her services, which suggests she's darkeyed. (Given the expensive, secretive, and exclusive nature of her services I'd think all of her clients are lighteyes, and I doubt a lighteyed assassin would use the phrase "other lighteyes", rather than just "other people")

But wait. So far, the only darkeyed wielders of a Blade that could be dismissed (yet who remained darkeyed, unlike Moash) have been Taln the Herald, and darkeyes like Kaladin who have become Radiants (and revert to being darkeyes after a while).

She had acquired Szeth as a slave at one point, and had even mentioned him to Jasnah prior to their meeting in the prologue in WoR, but soon sold him (to the Parshendi) because she found him creepy. Shortly after the Liss scene, Jasnah unwittingly overhears two Heralds discussing how "that creature carries my lord's own Blade", surely a reference to Szeth. So if Liss were a Herald, you might think she recognized that as well, and not have just sold him as any ordinary slave?

Of course, all of these objections could be explained by the WoB that "all the Heralds are insane". But she has an unidentifiable accent that shifts around ("could be Alethi... Or Veden... Or Bav"), and also deals with Jasnah in a very casual way, not like you'd expect a born and raised Alethi to act around someone of the third dahn, which maybe suggests an off-world origin?

Maybe she's with the Ghostbloods, who had at least one set of Blade and Plate at their disposal, to equip Heluran to go after Amaram, are clearly an organization with off-Roshar members and connections, and eyedrops to disguise light eyes as dark (as Moash needed to do from bonding a dead Blade).

Edited October 31, 2018 by robardin

[Calderis]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

For one, she has a Shardblade

Shouldn't be a problem, Ash openly debates getting one when she appears as Baxil's mistress. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

It could be an ordinary dead spren Shardblade, but wouldn't a Herald hear the screaming?

Unless she has a Nahel bond she shouldn't. It specifically people with a bond that hear the screams. So Nale would, but the others (as far as we know) shouldn't. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

I went back to re-read the prologue to WoR and her description doesn't mention her eye color. But she's disguised as a maid, and refers to Jasnah as being "different from other lighteyes" who "turn up their noses" and "sneer and wring their hands" while hiring her services, which suggests she's darkeyed. (Given the expensive, secretive, and exclusive nature of her services I'd think all of her clients are lighteyes, and I doubt a lighteyed assassin would use the phrase "other lighteyes", rather than just "other people")

But wait. So far, the only darkeyed wielders of a Blade that could be dismissed (yet who remained darkeyed, unlike Moash) have been Taln the Herald, and darkeyes like Kaladin who have become Radiants (and revert to being darkeyes after a while).

I honestly don't think any of these matter in either direction. If she's a herald, she's old enough that eye color based classes are a construct that wouldn't have pertained to her. 

And the eyedropa to make you darkened are a thing. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

She had acquired Szeth as a slave at one point, and had even mentioned him to Jasnah prior to their meeting in the prologue in WoR, but soon sold him (to the Parshendi) because she found him creepy. Shortly after the Liss scene, Jasnah unwittingly overhears two Heralds discussing how "that creature carries my lord's own Blade", surely a reference to Szeth. So if Liss were a Herald, you might think she recognized that as well, and not have just sold him as any ordinary slave?

If she is a Herald, he presence of the Honorblade itself could both what made him interesting, and creepy. Who knows. 

It's purely speculation, but I'm fond of it. 

Edited October 31, 2018 by Calderis

[+robardin]

24 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Shouldn't be a problem, Ash openly debates getting one when she appears as Baxil's mistress. 

Hmm, that's a good point. So I guess there is nothing to deter a Herald from bonding a dead Blade.

And then there is a WoB mentioning that we've "seen" each of the ten Heralds, isn't there?

[Calderis]

7 minutes ago, robardin said:

Hmm, that's a good point. So I guess there is nothing to deter a Herald from bonding a dead Blade.

And then there is a WoB mentioning that we've "seen" each of the ten Heralds, isn't there?

There's one that we've at seen, at least, references to all 10 in the first two books. 

For Chana specifically, we also have this. 

Quote

Wetlander

Speaking of the other Prologues… I have a looney theory that the assassin Liss is actually the Herald Chana in disguise.

Peter Ahlstrom

Chanaranach has definitely been seen onscreen by at least one character at least one time in the first two books.

source

 

[FirstSelector]

6 hours ago, robardin said:

She had acquired Szeth as a slave at one point, and had even mentioned him to Jasnah prior to their meeting in the prologue in WoR, but soon sold him (to the Parshendi) because she found him creepy.

This is actually a point in favor of her being a Herald, and something that has bugged me for a while.  in fact, I can't believe I'm just now realizing this.

Based on the discussion between Nale and Kalak, it is pretty clear that they arranged the assassination somehow.  Two things about this bugged me:

1) How they managed to position Szeth so perfectly

2) How they knew Gavilar, Eshonai, and the other listeners would behave

The second point I can't yet explain.  It might be foresight, it might be that Gavilar was encouraged by the Heralds somehow, etc.  But the first point is neatly solved by the Heralds making it so that Szeth is given the Honorblade, kicked out, and then they picked him up just before he was necessary.

[+robardin]

Each of the Herald's "madness" is a distorted reflection or reversal of their original attributes, right? Of the Radiant orders they headed?

Like how Nale is become a Skybreaker who selectively enforcing "laws" and meting out "justice" without regard for compassion, Shalash a destroyer instead of a creator of art, Ishar the patron of Bondsmiths is a warlord, Jezrien the King of Heralds and the embodiment of leadership became a mad, filthy beggar, and so on.

So what would be a reversal of Chana (brave, obedient) and Vedel become (loving, healing, training surgeons)? I agree, if Liss is a mad Herald, being an assassin for hire would most reverse what Vedel stood for originally. And Chana, then? She's been "seen" by "at least one character, at least one time" in the first two books, is what we have to go on, is it?

[Scion of the Mists]

26 minutes ago, robardin said:

So what would be a reversal of Chana (brave, obedient) and Vedel become (loving, healing, training surgeons)? I agree, if Liss is a mad Herald, being an assassin for hire would most reverse what Vedel stood for originally. And Chana, then? She's been "seen" by "at least one character, at least one time" in the first two books, is what we have to go on, is it?

I think that torturing/murdering innocent people in a hospital matches Vedel much better.  I don't know that there's a super great connection between Chana and Liss, but we know where most of the other female Heralds are and Liss stands out as being pretty unique.  

[HaloJones]

Sorry to raise a thread from the dead but why do we believe Liss has a Shardblade? We believe it because the Jasnah foreword section refers to her as the Weeper because the ones she kills have their eyes gouged out to disguise that they have burnt-out eyes.

But we also know she has had Szeth who has a Shardblade. Who's to say that the burnt-out eyes are from LIss? Perhaps Szeth was doing the killing? Have we any proof that she was burning out eyes before or after she got Szeth?