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[RoW] Odium is Stuck on Roshar


FirstSelector

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Much of the plot of Oathbringer and now Rhythm of War has been driven by Odium's desire to free himself from Honor's shackles and escape to do Odium things in the rest of the cosmere.  His first plan was stopped dead by Cultivation's timely restoration of Dalinar's memory, and his second plan was rudely interrupted by Nightblood.  And now he is bound to an agreement with Dalinar that focuses exclusively on his release.  However, should he win that duel, I think Odium will be rather surprised!

 

THEORY: Odium is too Invested in Roshar to leave, just like any other Shard on their homeworld.  That is to say: he's stuck.

 

Interestingly, this theory also involves the details of the Recreance, of which several more have been revealed.  There was a theory post floating around somewhere that I will try to find and edit the link in where large parts of this were discussed, so this is not entirely my original work.  EDIT: Similar thoughts were noticed here, specifically the ten-centric argument.

 

The two three tones of Roshar

The first and most important step for this theory is an off-hand comment by the Sibling.  In RoW Ch 69, they specifically refer to the two pure tones:

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I haven’t forgotten anything. The defenses no longer work because I don’t have the Light for them. I lost most of my strength when I lost the ability to hear the two pure tones of Roshar.

Obviously, given that this is the Sibling speaking, they are referring to the tones of Honor and Cultivation.  It is not hard to reason that when the Sibling was created, Honor and Cultivation both had become Invested enough in Roshar to start making great works.  This also comes with the necessary perpendicularities, the magic systems, and so on.  And, importantly, until now, they were only aware of the two tones and had no idea Odium was involved at all.

Another aspect of being significantly Invested in a planet is that Shards can't really leave.  I don't have the exact quote for this (I'm looking for it), but WoB tells us that Shards get stuck to their home planets and that their shardpool is actually a manifestation of this.  As it applies to Roshar, it is not hard to see that Honor and Cultivation are stuck.

Then why does the Sibling refer to two tones instead of three?  Well, the natural guess is that Odium was not previously Invested enough in Roshar to cause it to register as "home."

I propose that the introduction of the third tone is what caused the Sibling to forget his original tone, on account of everything shifting in the Spiritual Realm to accommodate the new tone.  This seems like it would be a vastly unpleasant experience in all three Realms, and indeed the Sibilng refers to it as such in RoW Ch 49:

RoW Ch 49:

Quote

I have . . . been wounded. Thousands of years ago, something happened that changed the singers. It hurt me too.
Navani covered her shock. “You’re speaking of the binding of that Unmade, which made the singers lose their forms?”
Yes. That terrible act touched the souls of all who belong to Roshar. Spren too.
“How have no spren mentioned this?”
I don’t know. But I lost the rhythm of my Light that day. The tower stopped working. My father, Honor, should have been able to help me, but he was losing his mind. And he soon died . . .

 

In summary, when Odium was suddenly Connected enough to Roshar to register his own tone, it changed the others enough that the Sibling forgot theirs.  Now, what sort of event would that be?

 

Ba-Ado-Mishram and the Recreance

The previous theory reference above made a rather elegant claim: the Recreance was caused by Melishi doing whatever was necessary to bind BAM into a gem and stop the False Desolation.  The Knights, seeing the damage done to the singers, decided that they could no longer continue on in good faith.  And, as RoW showed us, the spren agreed.  I propose that the damage was much more serious.  The first example of this is in Kalak's epigraphs (RoW Ch 97):

Quote

As one who has suffered for so many centuries . . . as one whom it broke . . . please find Mishram and release her. Not just for her own good. For the good of all spren. For I believe that in confining her, we have caused a greater wound to Roshar than any ever realized.

 

We also know that the Recreance changed something fundamental about spren and the Nahel bond (note the Sibling quote above, and here in RoW Ch 115):

Quote

Some of this, Kelek said, had to do with the nature of deadeyes. Before the Recreance, they had never existed. Kelek said he thought this was why Mraize was hunting him. Something to do with the fall of the singers, and the Knights Radiant, so long ago—and the imprisoning of a specific spren.

 

It's not hard at all to connect the dots here: Melishi imprisoning BAM led to the singers being Disconnected, the Sibling to losing their rhythm, and the creation of deadeyes.

 

The Everstorm and Voidbinding

A cosmere scholar might ask at this point: if Odium is now tied inexorably to Roshar, where is his corresponding manifestation?  Shouldn't there be symmetry here?  And the answer is yes, that's the Everstorm.  Honor and Cultivation both are involved in highstorms -- Honor's power and Cultivation's life-giving crem.  Odium, correspondingly, has a storm that allows his Fused to be reborn.  Now, the Everstorm cannot itself be the catalyzing event described above since it is too new, but it's not actually new (as we see in RoW Ch 73):

Quote

Yes. It’s been building in Shadesmar for centuries.

 

What I am proposing, effectively, is that the Everstorm has been building ever since the Knights inadvertently tied him to Roshar.  Actually getting it to cross over into the Physical Realm took time and planning, of course, but it stands to reason that a huge chunk of Investiture like the Everstorm can only exist if the Shard in question is tied down to the planet.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of power employed by the Fused during the war does not appear to be of Odium.  Instead, they are using Voidlight to power Odium's corrupted (i.e., red) version of Surgebinding.  This is obvious from the fact that the Fused are merely imitating the magic system: no spren and access to only one Surge.  Assuming that this was true during true during past Desolations as well, Odium was not using his own Roshar-based Voidbinding.  We know that Voidbinding must be Roshar-based because it has ten levels (and Braize is nine-centric), so its existence means that Odium is Invested in the planet enough to form a magic system.


As an aside, a good question for Brandon is to ask if there is an Odium perpendicularity in the Everstorm.  Given that the Fused come out of the storm and inhabit new bodies, I would say that is is likely.

 

Conclusion

Originally, Odium was fighting a foreign war on Roshar, sending Fused who used Rosharan magic to fight the humans.  He was not originally Invested enough in Roshar to have his own tone or magic system, but this changed during the Recreance.  'Suddenly Odium' was a problem for the spren and specifically the Sibling, but it also means that Odium is too Invested in the planet to leave.

If he hasn't figured this out already, he's in for a rude awakening should he defeat Dalinar.

 

EDIT: Thanks to whichever mod moved this to the appropriate subforum :)

 

 

 

Edited by FirstSelector
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I like that idea! It also explains why we've seen so little (maybe none?) of "Voidbinding" the magic system - because everyone believes it doesn't exist, because they all haven't accepted that Odium is Invested enough in Roshar to have his own 10-based magic system here.

At some point, characters might discover there's a whole new magic system nobody's touched. (Back 5 books, assuming Odium sticks around?)

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There is no evidence to suggest that, as a result of the imprisoning of Ba-Ado-Mishram, Odium was connected to Roshar.

5 hours ago, FirstSelector said:

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of power employed by the Fused during the war does not appear to be of Odium.  Instead, they are using Voidlight to power Odium's corrupted (i.e., red) version of Surgebinding.  This is obvious from the fact that the Fused are merely imitating the magic system: no spren and access to only one Surge.

The way the Fused use surges is different from the way the Radiants use surges. e.g The Deepest One's use of Cohesion is completely different from the Willshaper use of Cohesion. This means that they are using two different magic systems.

 

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I agree, and recently posted a similar theory of my own.

We know that investment in a system will make it harder for a Shard to leave a system. I think Cultivation's endgame might very well be to have either a hidden Tanavast shadow (as I think the Stormfather, who is a Sliver of Honor and highly, is used as decoy by Cultivation to keep Odium from discovering the Cognitive Shadow of the Tanavast the Vessel) take up the Odium shard (and become War) - or to manipulate Odium into leaving Roshar, so she can regrow a new body for Tanavast.

If Odium is tethered to Roshar through investiture, he should be able to gain freedom by destroying those invested - that would mean wiping out the Fused and the Unmade. 

This WoB has some interesting stuff about investiture and Shards - and how investiture isn't simply energy from a particular shard and 'flavored' by it.

 

Quote

 

Oversleep

Wait.

I'm confused.

So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?

Cause the question was a follow up (on this) where you revealed that all Investiture in Cosmere got assigned to a Shard even if it wasn't part of a Shard.

And then you said that the one on First of the Sun is directly associated with one of the Shards (and since later you revealed Patji to be an avatar of Autonomy (also, what are avatars and how do they work?)) we took it to mean that at one point Autonomy Invested in First of the Sun.

But now you're saying it didn't?

If there was no Shard ever on First of the Sun but Patji is a Shard/avatar of a Shard then where is Patji, actually?

Could you please clarify all that?

Brandon Sanderson

So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?"

The reason I have so much trouble answering these questions (and you'll see me struggling to get an answer in the 10-15 seconds I have when someone asks me in a signing line) is because this isn't an either or. Is this computer I'm using matter associated with Earth, the Big Bang, or such-and-such star that went supernova long ago? Well, it's probably all three.

When people ask, "What Shard is this Investiture associated with" it gets very complicated. Shards influence and tweak certain Investiture, giving it a kind of spin or magnetism, but all Investiture ever predates the Shattering--and in the cosmere matter, energy, and Investiture are one thing.

I always imagine Investiture having certain states, certain magnetisms if you will, associated with certain aspects of Adonalsium. So it's all "assigned" to a Shard--because it's always been associated with that Shard. To Investiture, Adonalsium's Shattering meant everything and nothing at the same time.

We generally mean the term "Invested" to mean a Shard has taken permanent residence in a location, a kind of base of operations--but at the same time, this is meaningless, since distance has no meaning on the Spiritual Realm, where most Shards are. So imprisonment of a Shard like Ruin or Odium is a crude expression--but the best we have.

Autonomy never "Invested" on First of the Sun. But even answering (as someone else asked) if they created an avatar without visiting is a difficult thing to explain--because even explaining how a Shard travels (when motion is irrelevant) is difficult to manage. It's a subject that I intend to be up for debate, discussion, and argument by in-world philosophers and arcanists.

You can see why I have such troubles explaining these things at signings--and why I fail when I try to, considering the time limitations and (often) fatigue limitations placed upon me. These are concepts I intend to spend entire, lengthy epic volumes explaining and exploring.

Let's say you were Autonomy, and you have--through expanding and exploring your understanding--found a gathering of Investiture that has always been there, you always knew about, but still didn't actually recognize until the moment you considered and explored it. (Because even though your power is infinite, accessing and using that infinity is beyond your reach.) Were you "Invested" there? No, no more than you're Invested on Roshar, where parts of what were Adonalsium still exist that are associated with you (in the very fabric of mater and existence.) But suddenly, you have a chance to tweak, influence, and do things that were always possible, but which you never could do because you knew, but didn't know, at the same time.

And...I'm already into WAY more than I want to be typing this out right now. If it's confusing, it's because it's practically impossible for me to explain these things in a short span of time.

I'm going to leave it here, understanding that no, I haven't fully explained your question. (I didn't even get into what avatars are, what Patji was, and what happened to Patji the being--and how that relates to Patji the island.) But hopefully this kind of starts to point the right direction, though I probably should have just left this question alone because I bet this post is going to raise more questions than it answers...

General Reddit 2018 (March 18, 2018)

 

To me this indicates that Odium could be using investiture in different way than other Shards. Considering his intent - it seems possible that he interacts with investiture by "super-charging"/"polarizing" existing investiture, rather than how other Shards seem to manipulate their own investiture and build a system on it. Odium doesn't have a system - he just breaks that of other Shards.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Shards he splintered in other systems don't exist in an "Odium-corrupted" state. I think by interacting with investiture he ties himself to a system. I might speculate his modus operandi is to corrupt during the fight, then once victory is achieved, he destroys whatever he touched, and moves on. The cycle of desolations on Roshar, and his failure to achieve victory, may have prolonged this for so long that the investiture he's corrupted has gained more power and agency than he expected or wanted. His splinters and minions essentially repeating his behavior on a smaller scale (BAM, Raboniel, Sja-Anat). He does seem to have a preference for freshly corrupted minions. Perhaps to avoid a cascade of investment that is trouble to clean up afterwards.

Consider Odium heading into Roshar to wreck Honor (and maybe Cultivation - he seems to care less about her) - he'd want to splinter Honor and then move on. If Honor lives in the hearts of men then he wouldn't want to exterminate all humans on Roshar as that might un-splinter Honor. He doesn't want to permanently corrupt everything, as that would tie him to Roshar. I think his endgame is to exterminate the Singers and Fused once he tricks/browbeats a child/champion of Honor into releasing him from Roshar. 

TL;DR - I think being 'marked' / corrupted / invested by Odium is a death-sentence, since he wants clean up any such ties to a system before moving on.

 

 
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