Taln and his madness

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

Are there any theories on how Taln could potentially become sane again?   

I feel like Vasher must have a purpose for being on Roshar past feeding his divine breath.  I feel like endowment likely had bigger plans for him.  I liked one theory that said he was going to grant Navani perfect pitch... but could he use the memory trick or even give his divine breath away to restore the crazy Harold? 

Would certain feruchemical options offer potential relief? 

I would be a bit bummed if it was just a regrowth thing or stormlight to fix it... 

Or is it more likely to happen that Taln stays broken and crazy for the entire series?  

[That1Cellist]

44 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Are there any theories on how Taln could potentially become sane again?   

I feel like Vasher must have a purpose for being on Roshar past feeding his divine breath.  I feel like endowment likely had bigger plans for him.  I liked one theory that said he was going to grant Navani perfect pitch... but could he use the memory trick or even give his divine breath away to restore the crazy Harold? 

Would certain feruchemical options offer potential relief? 

I would be a bit bummed if it was just a regrowth thing or stormlight to fix it... 

Or is it more likely to happen that Taln stays broken and crazy for the entire series?  

Since I do not believe we know the natures of the madness the Heralds deal with, I do not think we can guess how to heal it. I think it could be possible that a divine breath could restore it, but it also could just act like swearing oaths near Ishar does. He becomes sane for a little while, and then relapses. If the answer was simply stormlight, the Heralds would be cured of their madness by now, since Nale is both a Knight Radiant, and currently in possession of his Honorblade. (I think) If I had to guess, I would say that the madness will regress at some point, for some reason. (My personal theory is that it has something to do with Ba-Ado-Mishram) But that it will remain, to a degree.

[Little_Dagger]

Maybe therapy sessions with Kaladin would help

[Quantus]

We know theirs is (very specifically) a supernatural thing and not a normal mental illness.  It's related to their ongoing natures as Cognitive Shadows.  Hoid implies that steps like storing their Memories externally could help.  I suspect there other things that could help too, and Feruchemy excels at personal/internal manipulation so it's likely a good bet.  

Vasher has not had the opportunity to complete his Purpose for Returning, so I doubt it's (just) about healing the Heralds, but could be about a related but more pivotal specific moment.    

 

 

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celestialwolf157

By the way, Kaladin's comment on Taln and Shalash's mental health makes me wonder: Are the Ten Fools based on the Heralds after they broke the Oathpact? Having 9 immortal, mentally ill people on Roshar for millenia seems like it'd have spawned some stories that could have eventually become stories of the Ten Fools. Taln wouldn't be included in this, but with Vorinism and the number 10, I imagine they'd have created something to oppose his virtues.

Also, I can't remember if this is confirmed or not, but on the topic of the Heralds' mental health, is it at all supernatural? Taln seemed to recover somewhat when Dalinar summoned the perpendicularity at the end of Oathbringer. So, is it just severe PTSD, or something supernatural is involved?

Brandon Sanderson

I've tried to make it clear in talking about the books that I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health. What they're suffering from is in large part supernatural--and has to do with the way souls (or Cognitive Shadows) work in the cosmere. So you are correct. This doesn't mean that some normal treatments wouldn't help them, but their core problem has a huge supernatural component.

And yes, there IS a relationship between the ten fools and the Heralds, though people on Roshar wouldn't be able to point it out.

mastapsi

Is the Heralds' madness related to and/or the same thing as the Fused's madness? The Stormfather mentions that each time one of the Fused is reborn, their mind is further damaged. Is it the same with the Herald? To many rebirths, possibly compounded by the fact that they not only often died each Desolation, but were tortured until the next one?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, these two things are related. (There are some hints in Rhythm of War at how Hoid has avoided a similar fate.)

Note that the torture--and the many rebirths--are a big part of this. But their age is also a factor.

3DLightweaver

Does this mean that a certain Cognitive Shadow from the Mistborn series is fated to go insane?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on a lot of factors. But the longer a Cognitive Shadow exists, the more likely these problems are.

dce42

Would this affect the Returned as well? What about those with a lot (like 8,000) breaths since they are not cognitive shadows.

Brandon Sanderson

Returned are Cognitive Shadows. In the Cosmere, there is no way to bring someone back to life, other than normal medical resuscitation, without using a Cognitive Shadow.

Stromeng

What about Dalinar? I thought he has had textbook PTSD, but the screams he continued to hear turned out to be magic.

Brandon Sanderson

Dalinar has a whole host of issues, not easily defined by a single definition. Assume, though, that his mental state is a normal response to, in part, supernatural occurrences.

The different for the Heralds is that they have conditions which could only truly exist in the cosmere, even if some of the manifestations and symptoms are similar to what could happen on Earth.

Stonewalker16

So is that implying that Hoid is a Cognitive Shadow, or is that just an effect of being really really old? Also does Vasher know about/how to avoid these effects? Probably an RAFO, but...

Brandon Sanderson

Come back to that question in about a month or so.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As (Sept. 8, 2020)

 

 

[Returned]

I suspect that the problems Taln suffers from are much deeper and more intricate than a discrete case of "madness" that can simply "be cured". There are almost certainly many methods which could bring him much closer to his "normal" function, but those seem likely to be more like dealing with death by making someone into a cognitive shadow. They're still alive, in some sense, and so death is kind of elided, but the death itself continues to have taken place and be relevant.

We can separate out the supernatural elements of Taln's problems from the more mundane ones, but we don't know the exact mix he suffers from. I think it's an almost sure bet that the source of the supernatural part of his condition will be fixed, but that won't be specific to Taln (i.e., Taln's recovery will be an effect of that action, which will also help Nale and the others, provided they survive to that point). While the mechanism of that fix may be simple I think that putting it into motion will be difficult and expensive, and probably not the result of a trick we've already seen (like Vasher giving up his divine breath). And he'd still have mental and spiritual problems to deal with, so may not be as improved as we're thinking.

SA's magic is getting bigger and bigger, with more and more spectacular effects as we go on. I don't think we'll see a character as important as Vasher do something as simple and direct as granting perfect pitch or healing someone significant, both because we've seen those things might be accomplished more easily and cheaply in other ways and also because we've already seen that exact solution to a similar problem. If Taln and company recover, which may not happen at all, it will be down to something we haven't seen before.

[cometaryorbit]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:21 PM, Returned said:

We can separate out the supernatural elements of Taln's problems from the more mundane ones

I'm not sure. Can we? Is there even a distinction for a Cognitive Shadow since their whole existence is supernatural?

Although while embodied he presumably does have brain chemistry -- still, anything that persists between reincarnations (so all the Fused issues) I'd think would have to be purely non-Physical.

Edited August 18, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Returned]

14 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I'm not sure. Can we? Is there even a distinction for a Cognitive Shadow since their whole existence is supernatural?

Although while embodied he presumably does have brain chemistry -- still, anything that persists between reincarnations (so all the Fused issues) I'd think would have to be purely non-Physical.

Well, yes, we can, as Brandon has explicitly said as much. Quoted from upthread:

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Brandon Sanderson

I've tried to make it clear in talking about the books that I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health. What they're suffering from is in large part supernatural--and has to do with the way souls (or Cognitive Shadows) work in the cosmere

It's the "large part" comment that indicates there are non-supernatural components involved, though I think you're wise to be cautious of over-interpreting it.

My main basis for the argument is that literal millennia of torture is all but guaranteed to have an impact on Taln's mental state regardless of anything else that's going on, and not a positive one. I think that it is unreasonable to suggest that all of that is "wiped clean" upon reincarnation or death. More detail in future Cosmere works will probably clarify in one direction or another.

Psychological problems are varied and far from well understood, but at least some seem like they can be non-physical (like a trauma-linked phobia). Many mental disorders are diagnosed by observation and impact on "normal" function: if you prefer being in your house to going out, that's not necessarily any kind of mental disorder, but if you have paralyzing anxiety at the thought of going out of your house you might be diagnosed with agoraphobia.

"Madness" is a maddeningly imprecise term, and both the nature of Taln's problems and the mechanics of his reincarnation are mostly unknown. So it's hard to draw a clean line. If he has a "mundane" mental disorder that is 100% attributable to brain chemistry, and his reincarnation into a new body exactly reproduces that brain chemistry, would you say that the disorder is supernatural? For comparison, if Taln picks up a rock and sets it down elsewhere would you say that he moved the rock via some supernatural mechanism just because he himself is a cognitive shadow?

[cometaryorbit]

1 hour ago, Returned said:

Well, yes, we can, as Brandon has explicitly said as much. Quoted from upthread:

It's the "large part" comment that indicates there are non-supernatural components involved, though I think you're wise to be cautious of over-interpreting it.

I actually find that WoB ambiguous - "in large part" implies not 100%, but "I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health" implies they do not have normal human issues.

1 hour ago, Returned said:

My main basis for the argument is that literal millennia of torture is all but guaranteed to have an impact on Taln's mental state regardless of anything else that's going on, and not a positive one.

Well, thing is, I think the Heralds' torture is while they are dead on Braize. So this is not normal human pain - there's no physical body involved. I think it is direct harm to the Cognitive Shadow itself, a different process from psychological trauma deriving from physical harm to the body in regular humans.

1 hour ago, Returned said:

If he has a "mundane" mental disorder that is 100% attributable to brain chemistry, and his reincarnation into a new body exactly reproduces that brain chemistry, would you say that the disorder is supernatural?

No, I wouldn't... but if we say the torture is a big part of it, in the state he's in during that torture he has no brain chemistry (and no brain).

Now, its possible that the reincarnation process creates a brain with chemistry that imitates the effects of that Cognitive damage. But while the ongoing symptoms while Taln is in physical form might be 'ordinary', their cause/origin is not.

EDIT: it may be blurry because we see in Secret History that

Spoiler

Kelsier's cognitive shadow with no physical body still perceives himself as he was before. So the effects of Cognitive harm that feels like physical harm may mimic what a physical human would have. But I think that's "high level" - the underlying processes are not similar even if the high level effects are. It's kind of like running software on an emulator.

So Taln's case may mimic human PTSD broadly but in detail be something quite different.

Edited August 18, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Returned]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

I actually find that WoB ambiguous - "in large part" implies not 100%, but "I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health" implies they do not have normal human issues

I'll certainly agree that it implies they have other issues as well; I don't see that it suggests they have no issues of any type which a mundane human might experience. There are definitely different elements to the Heralds' madness (Taln's seems different from and more intense than the others', but the others have gotten worse as well despite not returning to Braize for four thousand years).

55 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

No, I wouldn't... but if we say the torture is a big part of it, in the state he's in during that torture he has no brain chemistry (and no brain).

Now, its possible that the reincarnation process creates a brain with chemistry that imitates the effects of that Cognitive damage. But while the ongoing symptoms while Taln is in physical form might be 'ordinary', their cause/origin is not.

This is the sticking point, then, and one that we probably aren't going to resolve. I'll absolutely agree that there is an inescapably supernatural element in the Heralds dying and returning. Disembodied cognitive shadows also have at least the potential to experience physical pain differently from a corporeal entity, but that's a function of the shadow's mind and perceptions and I don't think we've seen one behave differently from one that has become corporeal. As described in Secret Histories:

Spoiler

Quote

"This is a lesson," Drifter said, though it was difficult to hear the words through the pain. "But not the one you might think it is. You don't have a body, and I don't have the inclination to actually injure your soul. That pain is caused by your mind; it's thinking about what should be happening to you, and responding." (Secret Histories, part two, chapter 1).

 

There is perfect continuity of identity, knowledge, and experience at all points (as far as we know), and the torture is largely if not entirely physical and imposed on bodies that perceive it physically (Kelek describes hooks tearing flesh, melting fat, etc.). Despite all their knowledge of the workings of the Cosmere the Heralds never got past experiencing pain as pain and responding normally. There is nothing which suggests that Taln experiences the torment on Braize any differently than he would a purely physical form of it, and his mind is continuous across both states.

The distinction you're drawing is akin to saying that if Kaladin stabbed someone with a knife it would be a mundane physical wound, but that if he lashed a knife such that it fell into someone and stabbed them in the exact same way the wound would be supernatural, even if the wound is identical in both cases. The wound isn't supernatural at all nor does it differ between the two cases, even though the ultimate mechanism of stabbing is magical in one case but not the other.

[cometaryorbit]

23 minutes ago, Returned said:

I'll certainly agree that it implies they have other issues as well; I don't see that it suggests they have no issues of any type which a mundane human might experience.

I guess it depends on how much you agree with Zahel/Vasher's "spren masquerading as men" idea in RoW. I think there's an argument to be made that the Heralds are now distinct enough from human that even if their problems have similar symptoms, they can't be the same problems because the underlying processes are too different. Is an embodied Cognitive Shadow actually thinking with its brain, or thinking the same way it did as a disembodied Shadow?

23 minutes ago, Returned said:

and the torture is largely if not entirely physical and imposed on bodies that perceive it physically (Kelek describes hooks tearing flesh, melting fat, etc.).

[...]

The distinction you're drawing is akin to saying that if Kaladin stabbed someone with a knife it would be a mundane physical wound, but that if he lashed a knife such that it fell into someone and stabbed them in the exact same way the wound would be supernatural, even if the wound is identical in both cases.

Hmmm, so are you suggesting the Heralds are Physically embodied on Braize? Possible, I guess ... though capturing & holding someone with a Shardblade, Surges, and unlimited Stormlight feed from Honor seems pretty unworkable.

--

No, not at all- that's still harm to the physical body. I think its more analogous to knife wounds vs Shardblade cuts or anti-Investiture soul damage (Raboniel comments that anti-Voidlight damage could cause her to be reborn mad).

I think the Heralds and Fused are literally losing bits of their Cognitive selves or Shadows.

Edited August 18, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Returned]

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

I guess it depends on how much you agree with Zahel/Vasher's "spren masquerading as men" idea in RoW. I think there's an argument to be made that the Heralds are now distinct enough from human that even if their problems have similar symptoms, they can't be the same problems because the underlying processes are too different. Is an embodied Cognitive Shadow actually thinking with its brain, or thinking the same way it did as a disembodied Shadow?

You're right that there is an argument to be made. I simply don't find it persuasive. We don't really have any examples of a non-corporeal cognitive shadow that thinks or acts differently from one that is corporeal, and a couple which suggest they are precisely similar. But if a mind thinks and behaves in the exact same patterns, reaching the same conclusions from the same inputs, etc., does it matter if the underlying mechanisms differ? What if, for example, a cognitive shadow has a brain with the same physical structure and mechanisms as it had in life, but they're just composed of Investiture instead of ordinary matter? If literally the only difference between them is that you want to label one "supernatural" and the other "normal" it strikes me as a distinction without a difference.

It is 100% possible that the Heralds are so radically different from ordinary humans in ways relevant to this discussion that they cannot experience any human problems. But I've not seen any evidence that that is actually the case, so I'm not ready to accept that conclusion.

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmmm, so are you suggesting the Heralds are Physically embodied on Braize? Possible, I guess ... though capturing & holding someone with a Shardblade, Surges, and unlimited Stormlight feed from Honor seems pretty unworkable.

I'm not suggesting anything-- this is Kalak's narration in the prologue of Way of Kings:

Quote

"Centuries, perhaps millennia, of torture. It was so hard to keep track. Those fires, those hooks, digging into his flesh anew each day. Searing the skin off his arm, then burning the fat, then driving to the bone. He could smell it. Almighty, he could smell it!" (Way of Kings, page 16).

No wiggle room there. Given the above quote, it seems irrelevant if the Heralds are physically embodied on Braize or not. If they are embodied then the position you've advanced is moot. If they're not embodied, Kalak's description about what happens to them there is still accurate. Details like it seeming hard to capture and hold Heralds don't matter when it's a reported fact that those things are always accomplished, eventually. This example strongly suggests that the form of a cognitive shadow in the cognitive realm is different from, say, a spren's-- there is no particular reason to think that they wouldn't have a form precisely analogous to their physical body's, even if the cognitive body is made purely of Investiture rather than matter. They still have skin to sear, fat to melt, etc.

1 hour ago, cometaryorbit said:

No, not at all- that's still harm to the physical body. I think its more analogous to knife wounds vs Shardblade cuts or anti-Investiture soul damage (Raboniel comments that anti-Voidlight damage could cause her to be reborn mad).

I think the Heralds and Fused are literally losing bits of their Cognitive selves or Shadows.

That's where the leap is. Your position seems to be that non-supernatural damage to the mind can only be expressed as physical damage to the physical structure of or operation of the brain. So pain in the physical realm is one thing, and pain in the cognitive realm (for a cognitive shadow) is something altogether different, even though we know the latter to be a product of the cognitive shadow's cognitive processes (which precisely mirror the physical effects we would expect in the physical realm).

The reasoning you've presented would mean that Kelsier's persuasion of Fuzz in Secret History is a supernatural persuasion, and his anger at Elend being crowned is a supernatural anger. If you watched a scary movie in the CR as a cognitive shadow and became scared of clowns, that would be supernatural fear of clowns because it happened to your cognitive body's mind in the CR. If you were then reincarnated and still felt scared of clowns, it would still be a supernatural fear. Meanwhile, if you did the same thing in the physical realm throughout it would be a completely mundane fear of clowns.

That's the part where I think that conclusion is way too strong. If applying the same stimuli in the same way produces the same outcomes in either the physical realm or the cognitive, and we have no examples of differences at any point, I'm not willing to assert a difference exists at all. Certainly not a consequential one.

We explicitly know that a cognitive shadow's soul can be directly damaged, and just as explicitly know that this is a different process from "physical" harm inducing "physical" reactions and sensations. Cognitive shadows (and, really, anyone) absolutely can suffer spiritual damage in the Cosmere, and I agree that Heralds and Fused alike are suffering from that. But that doesn't mean that that's the only type of damage they can experience.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Returned

[cometaryorbit]

 

4 hours ago, Returned said:

You're right that there is an argument to be made. I simply don't find it persuasive. We don't really have any examples of a non-corporeal cognitive shadow that thinks or acts differently from one that is corporeal, and a couple which suggest they are precisely similar. But if a mind thinks and behaves in the exact same patterns, reaching the same conclusions from the same inputs, etc., does it matter if the underlying mechanisms differ?

Matter for what purpose? For everyday interactions, maybe it's a distinction without a difference. But the question that started this thread was how Taln could be cured, and for that purpose, I think the underlying mechanisms matter.

When the Cosmere gets that far technologically, I don't think psychiatric medications could do anything for a Fused or Herald. But I think Realmatic methods could.

In that case- or if Kelsier starts looking for ways to stay sane on future technological Scadrial - it definitely would matter.

4 hours ago, Returned said:

We don't really have any examples of a non-corporeal cognitive shadow that thinks or acts differently from one that is corporeal 

There's a - somewhat ambiguous - example in Secret History: Kelsier in the Ire fortress. He starts becoming infused with Dor power when climbing the fortress wall, and very quickly starts accepting the weird and alien (to an Era-1 Scadrian) visions of a green world as 'normal'. I think this is an example of a disembodied Cognitive Shadow's mindset being directly altered by ambient Investiture, since he's- in this state- basically "made of Investiture" and thus easily influenced by new Investiture. "You are what you eat."

I don't think this is in any way definitive - but it is part of where I got my ideas of how Cognitive Shadows work. (Along with Vasher's analogy of a fossil - the soul being replaced by Investiture in the image of the original - in RoW.

--

We're also told -- I think in RoW -- that spren can be reduced to a deadeye-like state by sufficient violence (in the Cognitive), but can be healed by Stormlight (unlike true deadeyes). I think this is the closest analogy we've seen to what happened to the Heralds. Direct bodily harm to a Cognitive being in the Cognitive leading to a non-functional Cognitive being. So more Investiture could possibly heal the Heralds.

--

"Supernatural" was probably a poor word choice on my part - not least because it's poorly defined even in RL, and Investiture is quantifiable and measurable in the cosmere. To another Cognitive being, a Cognitive Shadow isn't supernatural, but they would seem so to us. I probably should have said 'disconnected from Physical Realm processes'.

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Returned]

@cometaryorbit I've made my points, and if I haven't persuaded you by now I'm not going to, so we'll have to leave it here until we get some more text to work with. We might get more details from any series, but we may be left uncertain until as late as the back half of SA (which feels like it's forever away!).

Edited August 19, 2022 by Returned

[cometaryorbit]

Yeah, we probably need to wait until at least book 5 (Kaladin's attempt to restore Ishar might explain things) and maybe even back half.

[Duxredux]

I'll pitch in with a thought on the Heralds' insanity. I think we may be looking too much at the mechanics of Cognitive Shadows and not enough at what is unique to the Heralds, the Oathpact. As we learn from Jezrien's death and Kalak's explanation, it is specifically the Oathpact's Connection that sustains the Heralds as Cognitive Shadows.

Quote

"The bond is what keeps us alive. You sever that, and we will slowly decompose into ordinary souls—with no valid Connection to the Physical or Spiritual Realms. Capture one of us with your knives, and you won’t be left with a spren in a jar, foolish ones. You’ll be left with a being that eventually fades away into the Beyond. "I felt it happen to Jezrien. You think you captured him, but our god is Splintered, our Oathpact severed. He faded over the weeks, and is gone now. Beyond your touch at long last.

From the Stormfather we also learn that they could share pain through their bond on Braize. There may be a small disparity between Kalak and the Stormfather's description of the Oathpact, one calls it broken and severed, the other calls it (I think) weakened nearly to annihilation.

So from this a few things that I could see a few possibilities, not sure if any could be confirmed:

Idea 1: the effects of Taln's torture was to a lesser extent transferred to the other nine, and while Taln suffered most, the others' minds were still affected by the Connection that sustained them.

Idea 2: perhaps there are more consequences to the Heralds for shirking the Oathpact than we've seen and that Honor's Light cannot sustain their minds. We see what near broken Oaths did to Kaladin and Syl, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar consequence to the Heralds. 

Idea 3: Taln may have unique strain on his mind and soul as the entire Oathpact that was designed to be upheld by ten became the burden of one. We know that the Heralds were captured and tortured on Braize and that all but Taln eventually let the Fused escape, so it's not a physical location to be defended, nor a targetting of the Heralds with access to Transportation, but some aspect of how any and all Heralds could enforce the binding that kept the Fused on Braize, but only Taln was there to hold it this last time.

There's probably some components to the insanity related to their nature as Cognitive Shadows who got tortured, but I suspect the solution will be centered on the Oathpact and possible BAM.

I think the why Brandon is trying to indicate what components of the Heralds' insanity is magical in nature is so that he can give a magical solution. I think he's been careful that people who read his books don't come away just wishing that they had a magical solution to their depression/PTSD/anxiety/etc., but if he needs these tortured functionally immortal beings to become lucid contributors to the story, he needs a magical circumstance that no one has experienced to get away with a magic fix. I'd be fine if Brandon gives a magic solution to Cognitive Shadow torture with sufficient jargon-jargon-realmatic-theory explanation for why it doesn't work for Physical Realm torture if it lets him tell the story he wants to tell.

Also, considering how hyped up Brandon is making Taln, how he is a viewpoint in the second half, how he was the undisputed greatest fighter of all the Heralds, how he was the one that never broke, there would be soooooo much disappointment if we never get to see him in action in full fighting capacity. Sure we could see that in a flashback, but it wouldn't be nearly as cool to see Taln thrashing an army and I'd bet that Brandon would err on the side of what is most awesome.

[cometaryorbit]

I do think Taln is a different case from the other nine.

The other nine have spent 4500 years avoiding fulfilling the Oath their existence is basically built around, while suffused with Honor Investiture- thus they've become twisted.

Taln I think is simply worn away, eroded. His goals haven't changed, unlike Nale or Ishar - he's just not very functional any more.

I kind of think the solution is something Connection based, since the way they improve near a Radiant Oath or Dalinar's perpendicularity makes me think nearness or Connection to the Spiritual Realm helps.

(Mistborn)

Spoiler

I wonder if a Kandra Blessing would help?

 

[teknopathetic]

I don't know, but I got the impression Taln was more insane because of torture than insane because of being a cognitive shadow. I am sure it is both, but Talk seems more ruined than insane. His rambling seems way more trauma-based than cognitive-shadow based. Gibbering in the corner seems a lot different than destroying statues. I wouldn't be surprised if Taln ends up being the most sane spiritually because his experience on Braize was so prolonged. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by teknopathetic

[Casual Ati Enjoyer]

I would be surprised if Taln wasn't somehow healed, since Brandon has said he's going to have a book in the back half. Even though Eshonai had her own book after dying, RoW still had Venli to sort of carry her arc forward. So far, every book's flashback character has focused on them more than the other PoVs. It would be a pretty boring book if it was all flashbacks, then insane muttering.