Implications of the black sphere with respect to Gavilar's condition

[+Oltux72]

I hope I got the title so that it is no spoiler. If not, somebody please speak up

There have been discussions about Gavilar becoming Odium's champion. There is a fundamental problem with that, however. Gavilar knew about anti-Light. I can see no way that Gavilar would serve Odium without Odium learning about anti-Light. And we must conclude from the hasty weapons test we saw at the end of Rhythm of War that antilight was news to Odium himself, not just his troops. I am afraid that is an unsurmountable obstacle.

Does that mean that Gavilar went to the Beyond? Now that is another question. Gavilar wanted to become immortal and presumably not by joining Odium into servitude as a Fused. We do not know how far his preparations had gone. It may have worked. Now, we need to return to another topic. Shallan must have seen portraits of Gavilar. But would she recognize him bald and aged? And Cognitive Shadows have a considerable power to change their physical appearance in Shadesmar. Is Sixteen Gavilar in disguise, who fled because he must not be recognized by his nephew's wife for his plans to work?

[+mdross81]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Is Sixteen Gavilar in disguise, who fled because he must not be recognized by his nephew's wife for his plans to work?

Per a recent WoB, Sixteen is a worldhopper:

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Spriy

Is the guy in Lasting Integrity named Sixteen a worldhopper? (The kandra worldhopper, perhaps?)

Brandon Sanderson

He is a worldhopper, but I won't reveal anything more than that currently.

General Reddit 2021 (June 18, 2021)

Which, I suppose does not completely rule out Gavilar (or someone else from Roshar who has hopped and come back). Brandon could be slyly misdirecting here, going with the questioner’s implication that worldhopper in this context means non-Rosharan.

This passage from OB 105 would certainly take on new meaning if Gavilar was a worldhopper:

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Things had been going better lately. Dalinar had started controlling his vices; he’d confined his drinking to monthly trips away from Kholinar, visiting outer cities. He said the trips were to let Elhokar practice ruling without Dalinar looking over his shoulder, as Gavilar had been spending more and more time abroad.

But idk, it still seems unlikely to me.

[ScadrianTank]

5 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I can see no way that Gavilar would serve Odium without Odium learning about anti-Light. And we must conclude from the hasty weapons test we saw at the end of Rhythm of War that antilight was news to Odium himself, not just his troops.

I assume you mean that the news of mortals having anti-Light is what surprised Odium, not the anti-Light itself. It would be weird if a Shard didn't know something about the fundamentals of the cosmere and Investiture.

[+Oltux72]

7 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I assume you mean that the news of mortals having anti-Light is what surprised Odium, not the anti-Light itself. It would be weird if a Shard didn't know something about the fundamentals of the cosmere and Investiture.

I am afraid the anti-Light itself surprised him. Odium himself hurried to get a test subject for the anti-Voidlight weapon. If Odium knew what anti-Voidlight is, there would be no need to scramble to test a weapon based on it. At most he would replicate Navani's and Raboniel's method and recognize the anti-Light for what it is.

[ScadrianTank]

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

I am afraid the anti-Light itself surprised him. Odium himself hurried to get a test subject for the anti-Voidlight weapon. If Odium knew what anti-Voidlight is, there would be no need to scramble to test a weapon based on it. At most he would replicate Navani's and Raboniel's method and recognize the anti-Light for what it is.

I always assumed that the reason Shards don't give away technology was to prevent people from killing their planets Ashyn-style and becoming disinterested in research and science, like Sazed inadvertently did to the people of the Basin. In Odium's case specifically, he already pushed humans to experiment with magic they already had - and they nuked their planet. Not the best approach to raising an army for galactic conquest, especially when your forces are mentally fragile.

[+Oltux72]

4 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I always assumed that the reason Shards don't give away technology was to prevent people from killing their planets Ashyn-style and becoming disinterested in research and science, like Sazed inadvertently did to the people of the Basin. In Odium's case specifically, he already pushed humans to experiment with magic they already had - and they nuked their planet. Not the best approach to raising an army for galactic conquest, especially when your forces are mentally fragile.

That may be true, but is a separate issue.

Humans clearly now either had anti-Light or they didn't. Nothing Odium did could change that any more. But no, he hastened the return of a Fused to have a weapon tested. A few days really would make no difference at all if that would have been about confirmation of an enemy's breakthrough. The humans have very little Raysium. They are not going to reequip all their armies with anti-Voidlight weapons within days. So he needed to have this weapon tested now for use by his own side. That means

• he needs it very soon
• it was impossible to test up to now

Hence Odium did not know about anti-Light and this weapon is to be used very soon and is important enough to go to the CEO-level. This dagger is to be used either in the duell of champions or in a scheme to avert the duell. Odium had to know now, whether it worked, so that there would have been time for a plan B.

[ScadrianTank]

13 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But no, he hastened the return of a Fused to have a weapon tested.

13 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Hence Odium did not know about anti-Light and this weapon is to be used very soon and is important enough to go to the CEO-level.

A big problem here is that the CEO changed from a man with eons of experience to a new guy. When Navani and Raboniel discovered anti-Light, Rayse didn't do much - but Taravangian did.

14 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Odium had to know now, whether it worked, so that there would have been time for a plan B.

Taravangian might not have gotten the knowledge Rayse had access to at that point.

 

[+mdross81]

There are a couple of passages in RoW that might shed some light (ha) on whether Odium knew about anti-Light prior to Navani's work.

First, Raboniel in Ch. 76:

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"Honor was killed using some process we do not yet understand. I assume, from things I have been told, that some opposite Light was used to tear his power apart."

Then, in Ch. 97, after they figure out how to produce anti-Light, and Raboniel uses it to kill her daughter, here's Navani:

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"This is why," Navani said kneeling beside the two. "Your god hinted that anti-Voidlight was possible, and you suspected what it would do. You captured the tower, you imprisoned and pushed me, and possibly delayed the corruption of the Sibling. Because you hoped to find this anti-Voidlight. Not because you wanted a weapon against Odium. Because you wanted to show a mercy to your daughter."

Raboniel doesn't outright contradict Navani,but she does rather abruptly turn her attention toward using Navani's method to create anti-Stormlight, which suggests that was probably her true goal all along and that finding a way to provide a merciful death for her daughter was just a side perk.

It seems from these passages that Odium maybe knew about the existence of anti-Light, but that he either did not know how to produce it himself, or was simply unable to produce it himself. So he needed to lead one of his Fused toward figuring it out.

One other kinda unrelated point on knowledge of anti-Light, I'm reminded of the back-cover text written by the Sleepless:

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There are secrets we have kept for so long. Watching. Sleepless. Eternal. And soon, they will no longer be ours.

…

And the Mother of Machines, most important of them all, dances with liars at a grand ball. She must unmask them, find their hidden truths, and present them to the world. She must admit that the worst lies have been the ones she tells herself.

If she does, our secrets will finally become truths instead.

It sure sounds like they're talking about the discovery of anti-Light right? Could a rogue Sleepless have been the source of Gavilar's sphere of anti-Voidlight?

[Use the Falchion]

3 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

Could a rogue Sleepless have been the source of Gavilar's sphere of anti-Voidlight?

That is a scary thought. I like it! 

[ScadrianTank]

16 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

It seems from these passages that Odium maybe knew about the existence of anti-Light, but that he either did not know how to produce it himself, or was simply unable to produce it himself. So he needed to lead one of his Fused toward figuring it out.

I agree with what you said here, but those quotes don't really confirm it. The fused got the first ideas for anti-Light from Shards telling about antimatter.

From RoW Chapter 65:

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“There are theories,” Raboniel said. “Matter has its opposite: negative axi that destroy positive axi when combined. This is known, and confirmed by the Shards Odium and Honor. So some have thought … is there a negative to light? An anti-light? I had discarded this idea. After all, I assumed that if there was an opposite to Stormlight, it would be Voidlight.”

 

[Halyo_Alex]

8 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I agree with what you said here, but those quotes don't really confirm it. The fused got the first ideas for anti-Light from Shards telling about antimatter.

From RoW Chapter 65:

 

...Just wait until Navani tells Shallan about this and she Soulcasts Antimatter.

[+mdross81]

37 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I agree with what you said here, but those quotes don't really confirm it. The fused got the first ideas for anti-Light from Shards telling about antimatter.

Glad to hear we agree on the overall interpretation.

40 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

 

Quote

“There are theories,” Raboniel said. “Matter has its opposite: negative axi that destroy positive axi when combined. This is known, and confirmed by the Shards Odium and Honor. So some have thought … is there a negative to light? An anti-light? I had discarded this idea. After all, I assumed that if there was an opposite to Stormlight, it would be Voidlight.”

And great catch on this line. I had never interpreted this line from Raboniel as the Shards actually speaking about antimatter. I thought she was just mistakenly assuming that the existence of what she viewed as directly opposing Shards was proof of antimatter. But the italics on the word "and" (which are in the text) changed the way I read it. It really does sound like both Odium and Honor confirmed to her (or some other party who relayed it to her) that negative axi exist.

[AquaRegia]

This is a terrific argument - kudos to everyone, especially @Oltux72 for starting it off.  I'm just finishing my slow careful reread of RoW, and I'm coming up on the discovery of Anti-Light, so I'll watch for hidden clues about who knew what and when.

My first thoughts are mostly in agreement with @mdross81.  It seems very unlikely that any Shards would simply not know about something as important as Anti-Investiture; much more likely is that Odium 1) had no way to produce it himself, and/or 2) had no reason to assume humans would be able to produce it, thus it was not really any kind of priority.

As @Use the Falchion has pointed out in another topic, once Gavilar began the process of seeing Honor's visions and bonding the Stormfather, he would have become obscured from Odium's view to some extent.  I don't think it unreasonable to assume that Gavilar could have acquired his Anti-Light spheres without Odium's knowledge, nor do I see this as compelling evidence refuting the possibility of Gavilar becoming Odium's Champion.

Added 7/13/21:

Just read RoW ch. 86 (p. 961 US hardcover) - Venli and Eshonai discuss Gavilar's Voidlight sphere:

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Ulim had been nervous about Gavilar's sphere.  The little spren said Gavilar hadn't been working with him, or any of Odium's agents - indeed, he'd been hostile to them.  So Ulim had no idea how he'd obtained Odium's Light.

We know Ulim lies easily and frequently to Venli... but this feels like truth to me.  Gavilar and the Sons of Honor may have been planning a return of the Desolations, but they were not working WITH Odium in order to do it.  I think this supports my working hypothesis that Gavilar got Voidlight (and Anti-Light) without Odium's knowledge somehow.  Axindweth, a known Worldhopper, likely Feruchemist, and spy, perhaps?  She was in Gavilar's confidence for some reason, and although Ulim heavily implies she's also an agent of Odium, I don't think we know enough to rule her out as a double or triple agent.

I have no doubt we're going to get a LOT more of Gavilar's story in KoW... both in his Prologue AND after he agrees to be Odium's Champion.

Edited July 13, 2021 by AquaRegia
added text reference