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Were the desolations planned, the Radiants forseen and what does that mean?


Oltux72

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To put it bluntly I would answer those first two questions with: obviously yes

  1. The Heralds were equipped with weapons
  2. The Surges and their combinations are well suited to forming armies
  3. The Heralds are suspiciously well suited to rebuilding civilizations

Yet, if a god condemned your descendants to endless cycles of war with horrendous losses, why on all possible worlds would you venerate him? And frankly, if so, did Honor betray the Singers?

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2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

To put it bluntly I would answer those first two questions with: obviously yes

  1. The Heralds were equipped with weapons
  2. The Surges and their combinations are well suited to forming armies
  3. The Heralds are suspiciously well suited to rebuilding civilizations

Yet, if a god condemned your descendants to endless cycles of war with horrendous losses, why on all possible worlds would you venerate him? And frankly, if so, did Honor betray the Singers?

Just to check, are you referring to Honour or Odium with the shard condemning people to an endless cycle?

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3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

The Heralds are suspiciously well suited to rebuilding civilizations

I don’t think their well suited to it

Its just that the tought themselves some skills in their thousands of years of life 

everyone took 1 skill it’s not that hard

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5 hours ago, Ixthos said:

Just to check, are you referring to Honour or Odium with the shard condemning people to an endless cycle?

Honor did this. He had the oath pact put in place. It very much looks like the oath pact was designed to be periodically broken. Desolations were built in from the very beginnning.

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1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

Honor did this. He had the oath pact put in place. It very much looks like the oath pact was designed to be periodically broken. Desolations were built in from the very beginnning.

It does seem more like Honour responding to something that they were trying to stop. It isn't like Honour wanted the people to be continually attacked, and it seems, as I recall, that the Heralds actually approached Honour and said "we would like to stop this: empower us to bind the Fuzed on Braize," and Honour obliged. Honour setting up a system to allow them to bind the Fused that then became a cycle seems to be something either the Heralds expected, or an unfortunate side effect.

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9 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

To put it bluntly I would answer those first two questions with: obviously yes

I think if you reversed the descriptors I would answer yes. The Desolations were foreseen (otherwise why make the Heralds functionally immortal) and the Radiants were planned (pretty suspicious that sentient pieces of composite investiture containing admixtures of Honor and Cultivation copied the surge granting properties of the Honorblades). 

Embuing a group of agents with demi-godlike powers to fight on his behalf in a struggle that Honor knows is going to take an indeterminate amount of time is not planning the cycle of Desolations, it's rather forethought and delegation. The Honorblades represent a rather large and direct commitment of Honor's powers to the struggle to keep Odium bound to the Rosharan system, most likely with a concomitant weakening of himself that eventually led to Tanavast's death. With the larger picture in mind, that is honorable. I think Honor foresaw that the Heralds were likely to die, and to die quite a bit in his service, but didn't necessarily forsee the Oathpact, or alternately was so consumed by his Intent that he didn't see any problems with the Oathpact. 

The thing that I think is bonkers is that Ishar designed or at least helped design the Oathpact, that's like seeing a levee giving out and saying, hey guys let's plug up the holes by cramming our heads into the breaches. 

It does make you wonder why the Heralds didn't continue the fight on Braize, instead of playing hide and come torture me. If they were surrounded and it looked like they were about to be captured by the Braize bound Fuzed, why not make their honorblade appear with the point in their own brain instead of submit to unremitting torture? And granted, not every Herald could use their powers to nullify the deathless fused, but you do have two heralds capable of soulcasting, with a direct conduit to Honor's power (basically limitless investiture) seems likely that they could have soulcast the air around the fused into aluminum. Good luck zipping through that Lezian. Not to mention the crazy things Ishar could have done with his Bondsmith powerset. 

The cycle of Desolation is a great story, but so far the explanation for why it has played out this way doesn't add up super well. Like did Honor, when choosing his Heralds, have a contract with explanations of the granted powers in giant letters and the explanation that there's a small chance that they'll be tortured for thousands of years in teeny tiny letters at the bottom after all the boring standard form of contract stuff that no one ever reads? 

I guess how much of the questionable nature of the workings of the Cycle Desolations Honor is responsible for comes down to how good his shardic Futuresight was and how far he had been consumed by his Intent at the time he founded the Heralds. With poor foresight, he's not really culpable and if consumed by his Intent he probably would just have thought that of course they'll suffer eternal torture because that's the honorable thing to do. 

Now Cultivation, she probably saw all of this coming, and her non-intervention to alter the course of the events on Roshar is to my mind tacit acceptance of the terms of this terrible cycle. What is her long term game? 

Edited by Hoiditthroughthegrapevine
Typos, always typos
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@Hoiditthroughthegrapevine RoW spoilers

58 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Honor did this. He had the oath pact put in place. It very much looks like the oath pact was designed to be periodically broken. Desolations were built in from the very beginnning.

Honor didn't believe the Heralds could return.

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Just now, Frustration said:

Returning relied on them breaking oaths

Yes, it does. But Honor gave them the swords that materialize with them and the ability to form new superbodies on Roshar. He knew that they would break their oaths.

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27 minutes ago, Frustration said:

@Hoiditthroughthegrapevine RoW spoilers

Honor didn't believe the Heralds could return.

Yeah, Honor did not see this coming. 

Quote

THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD END THE WAR FOREVER. BUT THEY WERE WRONG. HONOR WAS WRONG.  ...

HONOR LET THE POWER BLIND HIM TO THE TRUTH - THAT WHILE SPREN AND GODS CANNOT BREAK THEIR OATHS, MEN CAN AND WILL.  -OB Ch. 38 Broken People.  Stormfather describing the Oathpact

1 hour ago, Hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

I think if you reversed the descriptors I would answer yes. The Desolations were foreseen (otherwise why make the Heralds functionally immortal)

The Heralds presence on Braize engages the lock. The Heralds needed to be immortal for the Fused to be locked up forever. They were never meant to come back. 

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I think this passage from OB Chapter 38 is relevant to the discussion:

Quote

After each Desolation, the Heralds returned to Damnation, the Stormfather said. If they died in the fighting, they went there automatically and those who survived went back willingly at the end. They had been warned that if any lingered, it could lead to disaster.

Who delivered this warning? I had always assumed it was Honor, but maybe it wasn't? Could have been Ishar or the Stormfather.

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3 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD END THE WAR FOREVER. BUT THEY WERE WRONG. HONOR WAS WRONG.  ...

HONOR LET THE POWER BLIND HIM TO THE TRUTH - THAT WHILE SPREN AND GODS CANNOT BREAK THEIR OATHS, MEN CAN AND WILL.  -OB Ch. 38 Broken People.  Stormfather describing the Oathpact

This line about Honor letting the power blind him to the truth, coupled with the Honorblades and the power they provided, makes me wonder whether Honor simply believed that the Heralds would be so capable/powerful that they could withstand whatever was thrown at them on Braize.

Consider what the Stormfather says next:

Quote

The ten Heralds were sealed upon Damnation, trapping the Voidbringers there. However, if any one of the ten agreed to bend his oath and let Voidbringers past, it opened a flood. They could all return.

That reads to me like the Heralds all did their best Gandalf impersonation; they said "YOU (VOIDBRINGERS) SHALL NOT PASS!" but that there was an understanding from the get-go that if any of them let a Voidbringer pass, the seal would lose its effect. Honor (and apparently the Heralds as well) just didn't think it was likely to happen.

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12 hours ago, mdross81 said:

This line about Honor letting the power blind him to the truth, coupled with the Honorblades and the power they provided, makes me wonder whether Honor simply believed that the Heralds would be so capable/powerful that they could withstand whatever was thrown at them on Braize.

May I offer an alternate, more prosaic interpretation? Honor and Cultivation were less naive than the young Stormfather. Honor would never encourage oathbreaking and he never lied to the Stormfather. Telling him that desolations are happening because men break their oaths is technically absolutely true. It is even true that that disappoints and saddens Honor. The idea that it surprised him, though, is the naive Stormfathers assumption.

12 hours ago, mdross81 said:

Consider what the Stormfather says next:

That reads to me like the Heralds all did their best Gandalf impersonation; they said "YOU (VOIDBRINGERS) SHALL NOT PASS!" but that there was an understanding from the get-go that if any of them let a Voidbringer pass, the seal would lose its effect. Honor (and apparently the Heralds as well) just didn't think it was likely to happen.

So they can reform their bodies just in case? They have weapons on Roshar just in case?

17 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

The Heralds presence on Braize engages the lock. The Heralds needed to be immortal for the Fused to be locked up forever. They were never meant to come back. 

Being immortal is part of the CS package and necessary.
But that is not all they got. They got Blades and supernatural bodies optimized for fighting. Being immortal does not mean having a body, especially for a Cognitive Shadow.

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1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

So they can reform their bodies just in case? They have weapons on Roshar just in case?

Being immortal is part of the CS package and necessary.
But that is not all they got. They got Blades and supernatural bodies optimized for fighting. Being immortal does not mean having a body, especially for a Cognitive Shadow.

you seem to assume that they don't have bodies or their blades on Braize, but we know that they did.

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1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

May I offer an alternate, more prosaic interpretation? Honor and Cultivation were less naive than the young Stormfather. Honor would never encourage oathbreaking and he never lied to the Stormfather. Telling him that desolations are happening because men break their oaths is technically absolutely true. It is even true that that disappoints and saddens Honor. The idea that it surprised him, though, is the naive Stormfathers assumption.

I can get on board with a more nuanced interpretation of “Honor let the power blind him” than what the young Stormfather thought.

And I get your other point about the Heralds having physical bodies and Honorblades when they return to Roshar. You’re saying that Honor knew it was possible - though disappointing - that they would break and so he built in a contingency plan.

But I’m not sure I follow where you come down on the question of whether the Heralds knew going in about the possibility of breaking and what the consequences would be.

Relatedly, I’d be interested in your thoughts on who delivered the warning that if any of the Heralds lingered, instead of voluntarily returning to Braize, that it could cause a disaster.

Kinda wish this post was in the RoW boards because I think there’s some stuff that’s relevant that we can’t go into here. 

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1 hour ago, Harrycrapper said:

He was also said to have been surprised that the Heralds could break their Oath and let the Fused back into Roshar. He also said he isn't good at seeing the future. I kinda believe him considering the state Roshar was and still is in. 

i feel like a lot of important oaths and bonds of Honor's have a few issues with them. the Oathpact (obviously), the Shard agreement about noninterference (even if Honor feels he kept it), the binding of the surges in general to stop Ashyn from happening again (the issue being that this binding seems to be unraveling), the binding of the surges specifically into the Honorblades (the issue being that spren could imitate them), and probably other things i'm forgetting as well. Not all of these are bad things, but I imagine most if not all were not intended by Honor

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