Heralds Age??

[Aon Tia]

In OB, when Moash kills Jezerien, on a recent reread of OB, i noticed that ShallAsh cries out, OH GOD! OH ADONALSIUM!

This makes me wonder, why would a herald cry out in the name of Adonalsium? not Honour? or Almighty? even Cultivation may be. But Adonalsium?

Did the Heralds worship Adonalsium? Does that mean they followed a pre-shattering religion? or could it mean that they were alive pre-shattering?

How old exactly were these heralds at the time of forming the Oathpact? How much time was there between shattering and forming the Oathpact? It can not be within a single lifetime. Even human exodus from Ashyn and settlement on Roshar and then first desolation, forming of fused by odium and forming of Oathpact with honor, all these events in totality, should have taken a long time, atleast a 100 years if not more, but still we know from wobs, that heralds came from Ashyn. 

Again, how old were these heralds?

I always thought that they became Immortal after the oathpact, since they are basically cognitive shadows, but now i am wondering if they were already immortal when they came from Ashyn? Because that could explain a lot here. Were they surgebinders who destroyed the planet? hence, they were made to leave? So had that surgebinding granted immortality too? I am all too confused here.

any thoughts guys, please share... 

 

[Karger]

31 minutes ago, The traveller said:

Did the Heralds worship Adonalsium

Maybe.  We actually don't know that much about the Herald's when they were alive.  Just some speculation.  However they probably know that Honor is not a deity.  They are on conversational terms with him.

32 minutes ago, The traveller said:

or could it mean that they were alive pre-shattering

They were almost certainly not.  They only became Heralds to stop a problem created by Rayse who was not Odium pre shattering.  They also brought Odium with them from Ashyn according to the Eila Stele.  So they were probably not alive pre shattering.

35 minutes ago, The traveller said:

How old exactly were these heralds at the time of forming the Oathpact

They were not immortal then so I am going to say as old as they look.  Ash was the youngest.  I think Ishar was the oldest.

37 minutes ago, The traveller said:

Even human exodus from Ashyn and settlement on Roshar and then first desolation, forming of fused by odium and forming of Oathpact with honor, all these events in totality, should have taken a long time, atleast a 100 years if not more

Most of the Heralds were actually born on Ashyn so those events only took a few decades.

37 minutes ago, The traveller said:

I always thought that they became Immortal after the oathpact, since they are basically cognitive shadows, but now i am wondering if they were already immortal when they came from Ashyn

I suppose it is technically possible but I very much doubt it.

38 minutes ago, The traveller said:

. Were they surgebinders who destroyed the planet? hence, they were made to leave? So had that surgebinding granted immortality too? I am all too confused here.

They fled their planet because it was mostly destroyed.  We know basically nothing about pre exodus Ashyn's magic system.

[bxcnch]

43 minutes ago, The traveller said:

In OB, when Moash kills Jezerien, on a recent reread of OB, i noticed that ShallAsh cries out, OH GOD! OH ADONALSIUM!

This makes me wonder, why would a herald cry out in the name of Adonalsium? not Honour? or Almighty? even Cultivation may be. But Adonalsium?

Did the Heralds worship Adonalsium? Does that mean they followed a pre-shattering religion? or could it mean that they were alive pre-shattering? (...)

We do know that Honor and Cultivation were on Roshar before humanity and that humanity arrived about the same time as Odium did. So we have a species that migrates onto an alien planet and finds out that this planet is ruled by two literal gods, something that Ashyn, as far as we know, didn't have. I am sure that this sparked at least some curiosity in many humans. We also know that the humans of Ashyn did have enough realmatic knowledge and technology to somehow travel from Ashyn to Roshar, and  while what BS has said about the Ashyn Exodus sounds like they weren't quite using the same tricks that the worldhoppers we know use, it still suggest that the humans of Ashyn had at least a little more cosmere-awareness than they do now. I think it's very possible that they either knew of Adonalsium already, or had the ressources and connections to figure out about him.

Besides, we haven't seen that many shardworlds yet, so we cannot really tell how common knowledge of Adonalsium is - or at least was. Roshar and Scadrial both had hugely devastating events that resulted in, among others, a loss of knowledge, and the other worlds have barely had any real shardic activity in the last centuries. Also, many religions we have seen so far do worship shards, for example, Austrism almost certainly is connected either to Endowment or to Adonalsium, the Passions in Thaylenah are based on Odium and his unmade and Vorinism is based on Honor. And yet Vorinism draws little to no distinction between Jezrien, the Stormfather and the Almighty - something that probably was not true when the Radiants were still around. Over the centuries, the culture and knowledge on Roshar has changed so much that they today think of them as the same being. What humanity used to believe and know has grown very corrupted and stylised over the centuries - but the Heralds lived before all of that. It's possible that when the Ashyn Exodus took place, everybody knew about Adonalsium.

[+Invocation]

The Heralds have some interesting stuff going on with regards to age. It's pretty wacky in general, honestly, and I don't think we'll get a solid answer until the books that have Ash and Taln flashbacks, which are years off yet.

Quote

Questioner

Hypothetically speaking, if some of the main Radiants were to die at the end of book 5, go to Braize and then spend the time in between 5 and 6 there, would they age?

Brandon Sanderson

There are lots of problems with that question. If a Radiant dies, they don't go to Braize. A Herald would, but a Herald is a Cognitive Shadow, so there's inherent problems in there. When you're a Cognitive Shadow, aging is different there, because you're basically a ghost. Even if you've been stapled to a body, it happens weirdly. So there's all kinds of flaws in that question.

Orem signing (Dec. 21, 2017)

Quote

Willshaper Wallar

...Were the Heralds alive for the human exodus from Ashyn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They were not Heralds then, but they all made that trip. I believe. My timeline-- You can't nail me down on that one, because it's possible that Ash was born after, but I don't think so.

Skyward Denver signing (Nov. 15, 2018)

 

[Aon Tia]

Yes I agree. It will be very helpful to have more povs from heralds in the meanwhile. I just find it very intriguing. It really seems to me that heralds were not randomly chosen by honor for oathpact. May be there was something special about them to begin with. 

 

[Gilphon]

Hmm...

What if containing the Fused wasn't the original purpose of the Oathpact? What if it was only about the Voidspren at first? Like, maybe Honor wanted to accept the human refugees, but didn't want to give Odium a foothold, so he required them to help him contain Odium and his spren on Braize in exchange for giving them Shinovar. 

And then later, when things went bad between the humans and singers, Cognitive Shadows with lots of Odium-investiture were close enough to being Voidspren that they got snared by the Oathpact as well, and that gives us the present state of affairs. 

Which in turn could mean that the Heralds weren't being eternally tortured at first; perhaps that only became a thing once the Fused entered the equation. 

[RShara]

13 minutes ago, Gilphon said:

Hmm...

What if containing the Fused wasn't the original purpose of the Oathpact? What if it was only about the Voidspren at first? Like, maybe Honor wanted to accept the human refugees, but didn't want to give Odium a foothold, so he required them to help him contain Odium and his spren on Braize in exchange for giving them Shinovar. 

And then later, when things went bad between the humans and singers, Cognitive Shadows with lots of Odium-investiture were close enough to being Voidspren that they got snared by the Oathpact as well, and that gives us the present state of affairs. 

Which in turn could mean that the Heralds weren't being eternally tortured at first; perhaps that only became a thing once the Fused entered the equation. 

The Stormfather has confirmed that the Oathpact was to bind the Fused to Braize. Odium being bound was before that.

[Gilphon]

/finds the relevant section.

Stormfather does indeed say that. That's a shame. I really thought I figured it out of a second there. Can't see a way of wiggling out of it that doesn't require a malicious amount of misreading Stormfather's lines, either.

But, really, the way he describes it makes the timeline seem even crazier- he makes it sound like the Oathpact was formed a good while after the Fused became a thing; long enough that Honor had given up on trying to end the war any other way. Which really sounds like it should've taken at least few decades by itself. And the Fused shouldn't have became a thing until a good while after the humans settled in- like, the humans must've been Odium-aligned long enough for 'Voidbringer' to become a permanent part of the common lexicon- indeed, long enough that meaning shifted from 'people who brought the void with them' to 'people aligned with the void', and the Fused can only come after that. 

It seems... super unlikely to me that this all happened within a single generation. 

Edited October 4, 2019 by Gilphon

[Karger]

18 minutes ago, Gilphon said:

But, really, the way he describes it makes the timeline seem even crazier- he makes it sound like the Oathpact was formed a good while after the Fused became a thing; long enough that Honor had given up on trying to end the war any other way. Which really sounds like it should've taken at least few decades by itself. And the Fused shouldn't have became a thing until a good while after the humans settled in- like, the humans must've been Odium-aligned long enough for 'Voidbringer' to become a permanent part of the common lexicon- indeed, long enough that meaning shifted from 'people who brought the void with them' to 'people aligned with the void', and the Fused can only come after that. 

It seems... super unlikely to me that this all happened within a single generation. 

The English settlers in the US started King Philip's war within a generation despite having a relatively peaceful coexistence prior to then.

Edited October 4, 2019 by Karger

[Gilphon]

That's only vaguely comparable; war broke out 50 years after the settlers first arrived there- so by analogy the younger non-Ash Heralds are gonna be in their sixties by that point- and then the war itself was confined to New England rather than the entire continent and was officially over after only three years, whereas what happened on Roshar was much larger in scale and lasted long enough for there to no longer be hope of peace-resolution, which let's low-ball and say it was 20 years.

The Heralds do not appear to be in their eighties. 

[RShara]

Just now, Gilphon said:

That's only vaguely comparable; war broke out 50 years after the settlers first arrived there- so by analogy the younger non-Ash Heralds are gonna be in their sixties by that point- and then the war itself was confined to New England rather than the entire continent and was officially over after only three years, whereas what happened on Roshar was much larger in scale and lasted long enough for there to no longer be hope of peace-resolution, which let's low-ball and say it was 20 years.

The Heralds do not appear to be in their eighties. 

They're Cognitive Shadows stapled into bodies, so similarly to others who are in that state, they likely have some control over their appearance, and appear as how they see themselves.

[Gilphon]

I mean, I suppose that's theoretically possible, but it seems highly unlikely- they don't appear to be idealized versions of themselves like we've seen elsewhere- Like, Ishar is grey-haired and balding and Jezrien appears to be middle-aged. To my eyes, at least, it looks a lot more like they're just frozen as they were when the Oathpact was formed. 

It also gives us the rather strange scenario where the people chosen for this duty were a bunch of elders, except that one of them brought his daughter, and also a random equally elderly solder who nobody thought much of and wasn't supposed to be there (Taln) somehow snuck his way in. 

[Aon Tia]

10 hours ago, RShara said:

They're Cognitive Shadows stapled into bodies, so similarly to others who are in that state, they likely have some control over their appearance, and appear as how they see themselves.

Taln defies this, don’t you think? He is plenty broken but still comes across as tall, masculine etc. whereas I doubt at the time his spiritual ideal fits the way he looks... 

same with ash too. She looks gorgeous n all but I don’t think she feels that way about her! 

So I think that there bodies are In a fixed state

[RShara]

30 minutes ago, The traveller said:

Taln defies this, don’t you think? He is plenty broken but still comes across as tall, masculine etc. whereas I doubt at the time his spiritual ideal fits the way he looks... 

same with ash too. She looks gorgeous n all but I don’t think she feels that way about her! 

So I think that there bodies are In a fixed state

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here? It's pretty hard to change your self image, whether you consider yourself attractive or not.

[Aon Tia]

For instance at the court of god’s, they had a lot of control over how they looked based on how they perceived themselves

like allmother looked older and then later she started looking even more older 

they have this control coz they are cognitive shadows but I don’t feel like heralds have a similar kind of control over how they look. 

I feel that they had lived long enough before becoming heralds so they should be older looking. But what if they were already immortal to begin with. That would explain a lot of timeline issues that I have, seeing as heralds except ash may be had come directly from Ashyn!

[RShara]

@The traveller You'll want to spoiler the Warbreaker stuff since this is the SA forum.

I think it's more likely that the Heralds work the same way as the other Cognitive Shadows stapled to bodies behave. For instance, Leshwi, when she came back and got a new singer body, because of her self-perception, the skin patterns were exactly the same in both bodies.

[Aon Tia]

That is a good point

[Nymeros]

On 10/4/2019 at 8:40 AM, The traveller said:

Even human exodus from Ashyn and settlement on Roshar and then first desolation, forming of fused by odium and forming of Oathpact with honor, all these events in totality, should have taken a long time, atleast a 100 years if not more,

Why would that take 100 years?

The Alethi found the Parshendi, negotiated with them, warred with them, backed them into the corner, and forced them to join hands with Odium over what, 8 years?

Edited October 6, 2019 by Nymeros

[Aon Tia]

So you think humans came to Roshar promised that they will stay in shinovar with the intention to conquer all of roshar

[Gilphon]

That's a false parallel- one is a nation's worth of Alethi against a city's worth of Parshendi, and the other is a nation's worth of Humans against a continent's worth of Singers. And the human wouldn't have had any established supply lines or infrastructure to speak of. 

Like, if they were capable of quickly winning a war under those circumstances, and had zero intention of ever sticking to Shinovar, why even bother with the pretence? 

[+Invocation]

10 minutes ago, Gilphon said:

That's a false parallel- one is a nation's worth of Alethi against a city's worth of Parshendi, and the other is a nation's worth of Humans against a continent's worth of Singers. And the human wouldn't have had any established supply lines or infrastructure to speak of. 

The singers probably wouldn't have had any supply lines either. I doubt they would have reacted the way they did upon the invasion if they were as wrathful as humans can be.

11 minutes ago, Gilphon said:

Like, if they were capable of quickly winning a war under those circumstances, and had zero intention of ever sticking to Shinovar, why even bother with the pretence? 

Why bother with the pretence? Because they had pseudo-deities looking over their shoulders.

[Gilphon]

Of course the Singers would've had supply lines- they had a continent spanning civilization which would've included trade routes and all that good stuff. Maybe not ones set up for war, but it would still be much better than anything the humans would've had. 

And, like, if they were worried about what Honor and Cultivation might do, I don't see how making a token effort at appearing peaceful is gonna change much. Surely an instant betrayal is just gonna make them angrier at you. Whereas what actually happened with that Honor and Odium for switched sides for some reason.

[Nymeros]

8 hours ago, The traveller said:

So you think humans came to Roshar promised that they will stay in shinovar with the intention to conquer all of roshar

Not really....just saying that an exodus and war doesnt have to take a hundred years. That said:

Beware the otherworlders. The traitors. Those with tongues of sweetness, but with minds that lust for blood.

So....maybe.

1 hour ago, Gilphon said:

That's a false parallel- one is a nation's worth of Alethi against a city's worth of Parshendi, and the other is a nation's worth of Humans against a continent's worth of Singers. And the human wouldn't have had any established supply lines or infrastructure to speak of. 

False parallel? How so? We dont know the numbers of either group, or the specific events of the war, or what lands were seized, and when the fused we're raised, yada, yada, yada. Just saying, it didnt need to take a hundred years.....BUT, Jezrien looks 30 but had an adult daughter born on Roshar, sooooo

 

Maybe the Heralds were actually pretty old but were given bodies in their physical prime or which matched their personal ideals. I believe that Sanderson confirmed that their bodies are custom made for their rebirths?

[Gilphon]

It's a false parallel because the two conflicts don't really have anything in common other than the species involved. And that's not a relevant similarity because the differences between the species didn't play a significant role the reasons why the latter war went as badly as it did for the Parshendi. 

And more importantly, because subjugating a city and conquering an entire continent are completely different beasts on a logistical level. 8 years is a super long time to spend doing the former, and the most direct historical precedent I'm aware of for the latter happening at all took ~200 years.

[Aon Tia]

Exactly @Gilphon

i agree. It just does not seem plausible that humans came, settled then decided no it is not enough, we want more and started moving out at first probably in uninhabited area then came to parsh people area, started fighting, fighting escalated up to continent level, singers went to odium started coming back, humans happened that fighting is pointless if they keep coming back, they started losing I would say, then went to honor to form oathpact

all of this can not happen in 8 years

i also don’t think that alone shinovar ‘s human population was able to challenge singers continent wide. That means they would have had to spread out and thrived, increased population etc 

roughly 100-200 years. 

Edited October 7, 2019 by The traveller