The Oathpact’s Effect on the Unmade’s bonds to Odium

[+mdross81]

I’m working through my RoW re-read and I just finished the Sja-anat interlude, which is just jam-packed with juicy lore for such a brief chapter.

After discussing how some of the Unmade were practically mindless while others were crafty and conniving, Sja-anat thinks:

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Sja-anat was a little like both. During the long millennia before this Return, she’d mostly slumbered. Without her bond to Odium she had trouble thinking. The Everstorm appearing in Shadesmar – long before it had emerged into the Physical Realm – had revitalized her. Had let her begin planning again.

There are some interesting parallels here to Radiant spren. She has troubling thinking without her bond to Odium, just like how Radiant spren have trouble thinking in the Physical Realm without a bond. Presumably Sja-anat has this problem because, as she notes earlier in the interlude, she exists partially in the Physical Realm. Indeed, we learn that all of the Unmade are trapped by Odium in a halfway existence between the Physical and Cognitive Realms. It’s also interesting that, just as Radiant spren in Shadesmar are revitalized by the passing of a highstorm, she was revitalized by the appearance of the Everstorm in Shadesmar.

The part I’m really interested in here, though, is the concept of her bond to Odium and how it was severed. Seems to me there are two possibilities for the millennia-long absence of a bond to Odium. One is that it is a result of the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram. Several times in RoW we hear characters positing that the imprisonment had an even bigger impact on Roshar than just tearing out the Singers’ Connection and Identity. Perhaps it also disrupted the Unmade’s Connection to Odium.

The other, and I think more likely, possibility is that the Unmade’s bonds to Odium were severed as a result of the Oathpact. Specifically, I think the bonds were severed for the duration of each Isolation (which we have now learned is the term for the period of time between the Heralds’ return to Braize and the start of a Return).

I believe that this is an aspect of the Oathpact that we have not previously known about. We knew that, although the Oathpact prevented the Fused from returning to Roshar to inhabit new Singer bodies, it did not seal away the Unmade. They remained subtly active. I think we now know the reason why – it has to do with the fact the Unmade exist partially in the Cognitive Realm and partially in the Physical.

The Oathpact likely interfered with the Unmade’s bonds to Odium because of their partial existence in the Cognitive Realm (the pact blocks the Fused, who are cognitive shadows, from leaving Braize). But it wouldn’t affect the portion of them that exists in the Physical. The magnitude of the impact on any particular Unmade is likely a function of where the Unmade falls on the mindless-to-crafty scale. Losing a Cognitive bond to Odium wouldn’t have that big an impact on Nergaoul, Ashertmarn, or Moelach, but would, I think, be a big deal for one like Ba-Ado-Mishram.

Bonus theory: I’m now thinking that the appearance of the Everstorm in Shadesmar likely restored enough of Ba-Ado-Mishram’s bond to Odium to allow her to Connect to the Singers and provide them forms of power during the False Desolation.