Is there a parallel between Kelsier and Taravangian? [Rhythm of War and Secret History]

[+robardin he/him]

No, I don't mean Kelsier as Thaidakar, or even a ruthless schemer... I mean the part where both Ascended to take up a Shard of Adonalsium, after being physically killed.

In Rhythm of War, Ch. 113, Taravangian dies BEFORE Ascending, and does so not while (mentally) in the Physical Realm (where Szeth was), but in a "bubble" of the Cognitive Realm manifesting him, Odium, and somehow also Nightblood:

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Taravangian rammed [Nightblood] up into Odium's chest.

The sword drank greedily of the god's essence, and as it did, Taravangian felt a snap. His body dying. Szeth finishing the job. He knew it immediately. Taravangian was dead. Anger rose in him like he had never known.

Szeth had killed him!

...

The figure that contained Odium's power -- the person who controlled it -- evaporated, taken by the sword. ...

It killed the person holding that power, however, which left a hole. A need. A ... vacuum, like a gemstone suddenly without Stormlight. It reached out, and Taravangian felt a distinct Connection to it. ...

Take me, the power pled, speaking not in words, but in emotion. You are perfect. I am yours.

Meanwhile, in the first chapter of Mistborn: Secret History, the newly slain Kelsier - killed by a backhand blow and then a spear-through by The Lord Ruler - enters the Cognitive Realm and encounters (what's left of) Preservation, who informs him: "Your ties to the Physical Realm have been severed. You're a kite with no string connecting it to the ground."

Is that not the "snap" that Taravangian felt in the Cognitive Realm? The severing of his "string" tying him to the Physical Realm, as his body was killed by Szeth?

Meanwhile, later in Chapter 4 of Secret History, Ruin taunts Kelsier not only for not knowing what he's doing with the power of Preservation, but that he's fundamentally flawed as a Vessel for it as a Cognitive Shadow:

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"Look at you, Kelsier! You haven't form or shape. You're not alive, you're an idea. A memory of a man holding the power will never be as potent as a real one with ties to all three Realms."

Wasn't The Recently Deceased But Definitely Dead Mr. T in the same situation as Ghost Kelsier, then, except that instead of Ghost Kelsier requiring a "Connection bomb" to force the Shard of Preservation to accept him as the Vessel in Ascending, Ghost Taravangian was considered "perfect" by the Shard of Odium?

In counterpoint, we have also seen "the newly dead" get revived with Regrowth or similar Cosmere healing magic, if done quickly enough: Szeth at the end of Words of Radiance - though apparently his soul isn't quite "fully stapled" back to his body - and also with Wax in The Bands of Mourning, where he "died" and had a chat with Harmony in the Cognitive Realm before Marasi pressed the Bands into his "dead" hand, and Harmony gave him a kind of "red pill uplink" to the Physical Realm to allow him to tap the massive goldmind to do a similar instant-mega-healing.

So maybe, Ascending at juuuuust the right time after dying, can still "heal" the death and enable the Vessel to be considered as having "ties to all three Realms."

(Also possible: Ruin was taunting Kelsier with a lie, as he was occasionally known to do. But I must say, that does seem pretty sound logic wrt Realmatic Theory.)

But part of me wonders if that, too, was part of Cultivation's long game. Taravangian internally exulted over her that "you have no idea what you've done", but come on. Culti's been around a LONG time, even before Ascending (she's a DRAGON), and has proven to be both incredibly subtle in her manipulation and extremely deep in her understanding of people's inner natures. She probably foresaw that Taravangian would be "overconfident" as Odium, and making sure he Ascended as a Cognitive Shadow would be an easy way to build in a check on The New Odium, something which he has yet to realize.

Edited December 1, 2021 by robardin

[Eternal Khol he/him]

Im of the mind that picking up the Shard healed him.

We know that if done fast enough, after death you can be healed and return to your body and still be alive/yourself and not be a Shadow(Wax as you pointed out)

It makes sense. Regular methods of healing and medecine(and what not) apply to/work in the Cosmere too. Its not like the only way to bring someone back is through magic/Investiture or that theyll end up a Shadow or just be off, like Szeth. If someones heart just stopped, regular methods like CPR should work too if done fast enough(not letting the body die from lack of oxygen, etc...)

 My point is... that after someone dies there should be a few minute or so window that they can be brought back and still be fully alive with ties to all 3 realms and not be a Shadow or anything.

We also know that time moves differently in the place(visions and what not) that Taravangian was when he died and Ascended. While in the Vision, those events(his "death" and Ascension) happened within a minute of each other. Which in the Physical realm wouldve most likely been just a few seconds(or even just a second).  Thats just a few seconds(well within the few minute window) from the time Taravangians heart stopped beating to the time that he was infused with an "infinite" source of Investiture(which i assume would naturally heal him and his VERY recent loss of Connection to the physical realm)

 

also, Taravangian didnt leave a body behind in the Physical Realm but Rayse did...?

 Nightblood only feeds on the user if he's not getting enough Investiture elsewhere. Im certain(with what weve seen)that the Vessel of a Shard is more than enough to keep Nightblood from feeding on his user. So Taravangians body missing couldnt really be explained by being eated by Nightblood

Nightblood also didnt even eat all of Rayse(his corpse/skeleton was left behind), so i doubt he wouldve ate Taravangians body and left nothing behind. 
 

where is Taravangians body then, you ask?

its with him.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Eternal Khol

[+robardin he/him]

Yes, if Taravangian had "got better from being mostly dead" just in time, a la Wax and Szeth, via the power of Ascension, his healed body would now be the Vessel in... Wherever it is that Shards carry their Vessel until it's disgorged upon releasing it/dying.

At the same time, the two are not logically equivalent ("if p -> q" does not equate to "if q -> p"), so there not being a Taravangian corpse next to Rayse's could still have a third explanation... For example, Harmony was able to heal Vin and Elend's body physically but they lacked that "restored string" to the Physical Realm (because they both had wanted to "move on"); a healed body doesn't mean there is a restored tie to it.

...But it's still a clear break in the parallel with Kelsier, whose corpse definitely remained behind while he was Ascended as a Shadowy Vessel, to be used by OreSeur and TenSoon to mimic him. It's not like a shadow that Ascends "slurps up" their former body to put in Shard Vessel Storage as a side effect.

I guess plot-wise, Taravangian being killed by Szeth served not only as a way for Szeth later to believe the disfigured body he found upon regaining consciousness(?) from the explosion(?) but also to add the critical "anger" element to his emotional stew of Passion to Connect to Odium.

That part is not yet clear - what it seemed like from Szeth's POV. He pushed Taravangian up against a wall and said this time, he was killing of his own volition and the life he was taking was Taravangian's, and stabbed him not with NB but his side knife... Then we see Taravangian, after Ascending, perceiving that Szeth "had climbed to his feet and sheathed Nightblood" and assumed Rayse's unrecognizable remains were those of Taravangian from him having "somehow" drawn the blade.

He'd know that getting cut/stabbed by NB wouldn't (typically) leave any remains at all, and that drawing the Blade without enough Investiture to feed it would "eat" the wielder (he could feel it almost happening to him at Thaylen Fields), but he's never seen that happen to someone, so, it's plausible for him to assume that that's what it would look like.

But what happened to make Szeth loose his footing? Was there an explosive force pushing out and a burst of light from the Ascension, like when Kaladin swore the Second Ideal while rescuing Dalinar?

That's for a different thread, I suppose.

[Serack he/him]

Here’s my writeup on this topic

 

 

[+robardin he/him]

1 hour ago, Serack said:

Here’s my writeup on this topic

 

 

Haha, I'm almost exactly a year late to have the same thoughts, LOL