Honor on the Shattered Plains

[Crusadeus]

Not sure if this has been discussed before. Here are a couple of thoughts I have regarding Honor and his death.

1. Is it possible that Odium didn't directly kill Honor, but rather, Honor allowed himself to be killed because he knew it needed to happen for the greater good? (Think Obi-wan Kenobi vs. Darth Vader) If yes, why?

2. I believe that Honor's death happened right on the spot that the shattered plains....shattered. We don't know what caused it to branch out and create chasms of symmetrical proportions but the shattering of a shard just might do that.

Thoughts?

[GoWibble]

So there is the famous line (in OB) of "We killed you! WE KILLED YOU!" that Odium says... So I don't really think that option 1 really works. it seems intentional on the part of Odium. 

The second is a possibility. I kind of also think that it could be where the Oathpact was founded.

[Crusadeus]

So, The Song of Wars is one of the songs detailing the oral history of the listeners, detailing the history of listener wars. It mentions that it was not listener gods who made the Shattered Plains

“They blame our people
For the loss of that land
The city that once covered it
Did range the Eastern strand.
The power made known in the tomes of our clan
Our gods were not who shattered these plains. ”

—55th stanza

 

We know that the listener gods are the Fuzed/Unmade/Odium. If this account is true then they did not cause the shattered plains to shatter. So who did? I believe it was Honor who willingly allowed himself to be killed, thus shattering the plains.

 

I do love the line "We killed you! WE KILLED YOU!" but to me, it just goes to show that even Odium didn't know what really happened when Honor was "killed."

[Karger]

From what we understand of shardic combat(which granted is not nearly as much as I would like) battles between shards generally take place primarily in the spiritual realm.  In fact I have a theory that making a shard enter the PR is how you kill them.

Spoiler

 

We have evidence to suggest that a shard's "dead body" lying in a particular place in the PR would definitely be noticeable.

Spoiler

Questioner

So, Sel: Investiture has been pushed into the Cognitive Realm. Threnody: Has it seen something similar?

Brandon Sanderson

It has not seen... Okay. Yes, something similar. It would count. Something similar, yes.

Questioner

If that's the case, what would happen if you were to push Investiture into the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It generally manifests either as a solid, liquid, or gas

Questioner

I thought about that. I was like, "We've seen that," but it seemed like a concentrated form. What if you did for like a whole Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

That would probably have disastrous effects. 

Questioner

That's why I was thinking for Threnody, but if it hasn't been that, then something else happened.

Brandon Sanderson

It hasn't been that. Something else happened.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

Also MB spoilers

Spoiler

Nothing like that happened when Vin killed Ati.

So on the balance I would say that no Honor did not die directly on the shattered plains.

[Crusadeus]

58 minutes ago, Karger said:

From what we understand of shardic combat(which granted is not nearly as much as I would like) battles between shards generally take place primarily in the spiritual realm.  In fact I have a theory that making a shard enter the PR is how you kill them.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

We have evidence to suggest that a shard's "dead body" lying in a particular place in the PR would definitely be noticeable.

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

So, Sel: Investiture has been pushed into the Cognitive Realm. Threnody: Has it seen something similar?

Brandon Sanderson

It has not seen... Okay. Yes, something similar. It would count. Something similar, yes.

Questioner

If that's the case, what would happen if you were to push Investiture into the Physical Realm?

Brandon Sanderson

It generally manifests either as a solid, liquid, or gas

Questioner

I thought about that. I was like, "We've seen that," but it seemed like a concentrated form. What if you did for like a whole Shard?

Brandon Sanderson

That would probably have disastrous effects. 

Questioner

That's why I was thinking for Threnody, but if it hasn't been that, then something else happened.

Brandon Sanderson

It hasn't been that. Something else happened.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

Also MB spoilers

  Reveal hidden contents

Nothing like that happened when Vin killed Ati.

So on the balance I would say that no Honor did not die directly on the shattered plains.

This was really awesome. Here is something additional to think about.

The Shattered Plains was originally envisioned as existing on the world of Yolen, Hoid's homeworld and the site of the Shattering of Adonalsium, until Brandon moved it to Roshar in the redrafting of the Way of Kings. (See Way of Kings Annotations for reference)

If Brandon's original idea was that the Shattered Plains was the exact location that Adonalsium was shattered, it might stand to reason that the story remains the same, just on a different planet. I would say it is likely that whether in the Spiritual, Cognitive, or Physical realm, Honor was shattered at the location of the Shattered Plains.

[Yolenlightweaver]

2 hours ago, Crusadeus said:

So, The Song of Wars is one of the songs detailing the oral history of the listeners, detailing the history of listener wars. It mentions that it was not listener gods who made the Shattered Plains

“They blame our people
For the loss of that land
The city that once covered it
Did range the Eastern strand.
The power made known in the tomes of our clan
Our gods were not who shattered these plains. ”

—55th stanza

 

We know that the listener gods are the Fuzed/Unmade/Odium. If this account is true then they did not cause the shattered plains to shatter. So who did? I believe it was Honor who willingly allowed himself to be killed, thus shattering the plains.

 

I do love the line "We killed you! WE KILLED YOU!" but to me, it just goes to show that even Odium didn't know what really happened when Honor was "killed."

I was just thinking about when this song was written. Cultivation and Honor were on Roshar before the humans and Odium supposedly came with them. At this time, is Cultivation/Honor their gods, or is it Fuzed/Unmade/Odium? Just a thought.

[Karger]

4 minutes ago, Yolenlightweaver said:

I was just thinking about when this song was written. Cultivation and Honor were on Roshar before the humans and Odium supposedly came with them. At this time, is Cultivation/Honor their gods, or is it Fuzed/Unmade/Odium? Just a thought.

The songs were composed when the listeners left the fused.  This was after the arrival of Odium.  They composed them specifically so that their dullform selves could remember their history.

[Crusadeus]

We do know that Honor's death was a protracted event just like Preservation. And we also know that shortly after his death he splintered himself. This happened shortly after the Recreance. We know that the shattering of the Plains happened after the Recreance. We know from Kaladin's dream, that something struck the center of the plains and caused a symmetrical shattering outward from that spot. We know that spot was Stormseat.

Either something struck that spot as they say. Or a massive amount of energy/investiture exploded from that spot.

Any more thoughts on this theory?

[Master Silver]

If Honor did rocket into the Shattered plans, his body was likely covered with crem within a couple of years. There is likely still a treasury of honor blades and plate hanging around somewhere too. Could be that Honor's death also sealed those away in an attempt to stop mankind from destroying itself.

[Lightspine]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:39 AM, Crusadeus said:

So, The Song of Wars is one of the songs detailing the oral history of the listeners, detailing the history of listener wars. It mentions that it was not listener gods who made the Shattered Plains

“They blame our people
For the loss of that land
The city that once covered it
Did range the Eastern strand.
The power made known in the tomes of our clan
Our gods were not who shattered these plains. ”

—55th stanza

 

We know that the listener gods are the Fuzed/Unmade/Odium. If this account is true then they did not cause the shattered plains to shatter. So who did? I believe it was Honor who willingly allowed himself to be killed, thus shattering the plains.

 

I do love the line "We killed you! WE KILLED YOU!" but to me, it just goes to show that even Odium didn't know what really happened when Honor was "killed."

My own personal interpretation of that song was that the Singers destroyed the Plains, but not with the help of their gods (Odium). For support, I turn to Kabsal's demonstration of the formation of the Dawncities from sand. They didn't shows us that for nothing, and then imply that the Dawnsingers (the pre-Odium parsh people) built these cities. If you listen to Shallan's interpretation of how the Shattered Plains was formed, it's not a stretch to believe that they are the consequence of the power wielded to form the Dawncities multiplied by a thousand. I believe that the Singers wielded some ancient form of Honor or Cultivation's Power from back when they were the Dawnsingers, which allowed them to sing together and summon an earthquake, much like how stormform allowed them to summon the Everstorm. How this is associated with their escape from Odium's influence isn't clear.

(original post from 2016 here:)

That was, however, my theory before Oathbringer, when we thought that Sesemalex Dar (which is built in trenches in the ground) was a Dawncity for some reason. I think people agree now that the Dawncities are actually the 10 cities where Oathgates are located, aka the seats of the Silver Kingdoms, which aren't all built into the ground. This could completely mess up my theory because above-ground cities don't really fit the Kabsal sand-in-a-plate thing.

Edit: Forgot to mention problems with the timeline of Honor's death. Honor survived Ahareitiam and died some unknown time after, perhaps around the time of the Recreance. Stormseat, meanwhile, is said to have been shattered during Ahareitiam, although the accuracy of this statement is disputed.
I just looked it up on Coppermind, the page for Stormseat says this:

Quote

At some point, Stormseat was destroyed by the same event that transformed the Natan interior into the Shattered Plains. There is some disagreement as to when this happened. Human sources place the destruction of Stormseat at Aharietiam, the last of the old Desolations.^[6] Listeners, however, put it significantly earlier, as according to their stories, by the time the Last Legion was sent into the area, the Shattered Plains already existed. Whichever is the case, humans blamed the destruction on the listener gods (either the Fused or the Unmade), though the Song of Wars is confident that this wasn't their doing.^[1]

Link: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Stormseat
I realize this punches a hole into my theory as well, although I still find it likely that the shattering of Stormseat was caused by Dawnsigner power, those who did it are not the same as the Listeners who later inhabited the Shattered Plains.
Either way, however, this unequivocally places the shattering of the Plains and the death of Honor at two wildly different points in time.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Lightspine
Added timeline corrections

[Frustration]

On 7/2/2020 at 0:13 PM, Karger said:

Also MB spoilers

  Reveal hidden contents

Nothing like that happened when Vin killed Ati.

So on the balance I would say that no Honor did not die directly on the shattered plains.

but

Spoiler

Ruin wasn't shattered, we know that it can have that effect.

 

[Karger]

7 minutes ago, Frustration said:

but

Do we?  What is your example?

[Frustration]

33 minutes ago, Karger said:

Do we?  What is your example?

Spoiler

Questioner

So I wanted to know if the asteroid belts around some planets are because of Splintering of a Shard there?

Brandon Sanderson

Okay, one more time. If the what?

Questioner

Asteroids belts around some planets.

Brandon Sanderson

Are caused by the Splintering of Shards? So the Splintering of Shards has had cosmological effects; you should not assume that most asteroid belts are caused by the Splintering of a Shard.

Questioner

Yeah, you know most of the planets, I think all of the planets where the Shards were Splintered have asteroid belts. So is it like the physical manifestation of the Splintering?

Brandon Sanderson

You should not assume that all planets that have that are the result of a Splintering of a Shard but the Splintering of a Shard can have such an effect.

Prague Signing (Oct. 26, 2019)

That WoB answer your question?

[thejopen27]

On 7/2/2020 at 3:21 PM, Crusadeus said:

If Brandon's original idea was that the Shattered Plains was the exact location that Adonalsium was shattered, it might stand to reason that the story remains the same, just on a different planet. I would say it is likely that whether in the Spiritual, Cognitive, or Physical realm, Honor was shattered at the location of the Shattered Plains.

I believe the shattered plains on Yolen weren't truly shattered, they were caused by erosion I thought and just had a shattered appearance. 

[thejopen27]

6 hours ago, Karger said:

Do we?  What is your example?

The death of Devotion caused the great fissure to open up in Sel didn't it?

[Darkfinder]

3 minutes ago, thejopen27 said:

The death of Devotion caused the great fissure to open up in Sel didn't it?

I don't think the timeline matches up but I am not completly sure whether or not this is true.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Darkfinder
Spelling

[Karger]

5 hours ago, thejopen27 said:

The death of Devotion caused the great fissure to open up in Sel didn't it?

No.  Devotion died during Sel's prehistory.

[Crusadeus]

In rereading Words of Radiance, I came across this nugget. It is from Frost’s letter to Hoid:

“Whether this was Tanavast’s design or not, millennia have passed without Rayse taking the life of another of the sixteen. While I mourn for the great suffering Rayse has caused, I do not believe we could hope for a better outcome than this.“

It sounds like even to Frost, the possibility that Honor allowed himself to be shattered because it was part of a wiser design is a very real possibility. 

[+Child of Hodor]

On 7/2/2020 at 2:39 PM, Yolenlightweaver said:

I was just thinking about when this song was written. Cultivation and Honor were on Roshar before the humans and Odium supposedly came with them. At this time, is Cultivation/Honor their gods, or is it Fuzed/Unmade/Odium? Just a thought.

The entities that the Listeners referred to as “Gods” ended up being The Fused. Cognitive shadows who gain a new body after being killed.

The Heralds are the humans equivalent to the Fused and were created to counter the Fused. The Heralds are even worshipped as gods in parts of Roshar. Shinovar for one. 

I interpret the song as “it wasn’t our gods that did it. It was yours.” The Heralds. 

Brandon has stated that at least 9 of the 10 Heralds were alive on Ashyn during the Cataclysm that wrecked most of the surface of that planet.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13442

The Heralds may know how to wreck shop on a massive scale and shattered the plains. Perhaps Stormseat was occupied by Singers and Fused. The Heralds didn’t want to waste lives with a siege to take it back, so they broke it. 

[Weltall]

On 7/2/2020 at 0:21 PM, Crusadeus said:

The Shattered Plains was originally envisioned as existing on the world of Yolen, Hoid's homeworld and the site of the Shattering of Adonalsium, until Brandon moved it to Roshar in the redrafting of the Way of Kings. (See Way of Kings Annotations for reference)

If Brandon's original idea was that the Shattered Plains was the exact location that Adonalsium was shattered, it might stand to reason that the story remains the same, just on a different planet. I would say it is likely that whether in the Spiritual, Cognitive, or Physical realm, Honor was shattered at the location of the Shattered Plains.

Adonalsium wasn't shattered at the time we see the Shattered Plains in Dragonsteel Prime, ergo the Plains' existence doesn't really serve as a link between the death of Adonalsium and the death of Honor. And the Plains aren't really 'shattered' in Dragonsteel Prime, they just look that way.

On 7/5/2020 at 3:09 PM, Master Silver said:

If Honor did rocket into the Shattered plans, his body was likely covered with crem within a couple of years. There is likely still a treasury of honor blades and plate hanging around somewhere too. Could be that Honor's death also sealed those away in an attempt to stop mankind from destroying itself.

Shardblades, not Honorblades. The latter are completely accounted for, with the Shin originally having custody of nine of them and Taln retaining his. At some point Nale reclaimed his, and Jezrien's Blade has ping-ponged around between owners.

As for the huge number of Blades and Plate abandoned at the Recreance, some have probably been lost through natural causes (anything left out through a few highstorms unprotected is going to build up enough crem that it becomes effectively indistinguishable from the surroundings) and some other number may be held in secret by groups like the Diagram or by individuals like Liss. There's a lot of theories that a large cache of the shards is out there somewhere but there's no reason to think that it has anything to do with Honor's death.

And as noted, a Shard being forced into the Physical Realm would have 'disastrous effects'. Given the comparison in Karger's WoB to an event in Shadows for Silence (which wasn't a Shard being forced into the PR and yet had continent-wide repercussions) I'm pretty sure that Honor being killed in the Physical would have done a lot more than just destroy one city and the surrounding environment. Like, Earth-shattering kaboom stuff. xD

On 7/10/2020 at 4:47 AM, thejopen27 said:

I believe the shattered plains on Yolen weren't truly shattered, they were caused by erosion I thought and just had a shattered appearance. 

Per the excerpts, this is indeed the case and since Frost is the person telling us this I think it's safe to assume he knows what he's talking about.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Weltall

[Master Silver]

Yeah I definitely meant shard blades not honor blades

[GudThymes]

On 7/17/2020 at 6:13 AM, Crusadeus said:

Whether this was Tanavast’s design or not, millennia have passed without Rayse taking the life of another of the sixteen. While I mourn for the great suffering Rayse has caused, I do not believe we could hope for a better outcome than this

I always assumed that this was referencing the Oathpact, which is designed to keep Odium in the Rosharian system.

 

Do we know explicitly that Rayze killed Tanavast? Is it possible that Tanavast gave up his shard in such a way that Splintered it, then became mortal again? Could that also explain why the Stormfather calls Kal "child of Tanavast". Did Tanavast give up godhood in order to have children and thus set a plan in motion that is culminating in the current events?

[Weltall]

5 hours ago, GudThymes said:

I always assumed that this was referencing the Oathpact, which is designed to keep Odium in the Rosharian system.

The Oathpact has to do with the Heralds and keeps the Fused bound to Braize between Desolations. The Stormfather even states straight out that it's similar to (but by definition different from) what's keeping Odium bound to the Rosharan System. Here's the relevant line:

Quote

As Odium is sealed by the powers of Honor and Cultivation, your Heralds sealed the spren of the dead into the place you call Damnation.

The Oathpact is involved, but indirectly.

Quote

Do we know explicitly that Rayze killed Tanavast? Is it possible that Tanavast gave up his shard in such a way that Splintered it, then became mortal again? Could that also explain why the Stormfather calls Kal "child of Tanavast". Did Tanavast give up godhood in order to have children and thus set a plan in motion that is culminating in the current events?

Yes, we do. The Stormfather repeatedly says that Tanavast is dead, moreover he merged with the latter's Cognitive Shadow which could only happen if Tanavast was definitely deceased and Brandon confirmed this long before Oathbringer made a big point of it.

There is something significant about Kaladin being called Child of Tanavast instead of just Child of Honor but we don't know what it is. Tanavast's definitely dead though. He's pushing up daisies. He's shuffled off his mortal coil and joined the choir invisible. He is an EX-PERSON!

Edited July 31, 2020 by Weltall

[GudThymes]

12 hours ago, Weltall said:

Yes, we do. The Stormfather repeatedly says that Tanavast is dead, moreover he merged with the latter's Cognitive Shadow which could only happen if Tanavast was definitely deceased and Brandon confirmed this long before Oathbringer made a big point of it.

Right, sorry. I'm not saying that Tanavast isn't dead. Just what if he descended from being Honor and became allowed himself to be mortal. Then he had children (Kal's ancestors, then died a natural death). I think this could answer some other information about Honor's death (it being a protracted event like Leras'), dying of old age is definitely protracted. 

 

With regards to the Stormfather argument. It's not the cause of your death that allows you to become a Cognitive Shadow, it's how invested you were in the Phyiscal.

Spoiler

(or given investiture hence Returned)

I'm not fully convinced that this isn't an option.

[Dracnor]

On 24/07/2020 at 1:49 AM, Child of Hodor said:

The entities that the Listeners referred to as “Gods” ended up being The Fused. Cognitive shadows who gain a new body after being killed.

This. It all comes to that, the song does not refer to Shards. It could be the Heralds, but iirc in oathrbinger Kaladin is described as a god by the singers (when Moash asks why some singers are doing slave labours, he's answered that they let an ennemy god in), so I'm inclined to believe that the gods are Radiants. Skybreakers or Dustbringers/Releasers are obvious culprits, if a whole bunch of them uses Division in the center of then-Natanatan (for example during the Recreance), the Shattered plains could be created.