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Could Nohadon have bonded Ba-Ado-Mishram?


Ripheus23

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Let's start with Wit's little sermon about gobbledygook names and people being ripped apart. I would've just stuck with, "He's talking about Adonalsium," but I noticed some stuff people were saying about how BAM's name is the most complex name for an Unmade. Also, the imprisoning of BAM seems to thematically resonate with the Shattering, like it was morally similar in the eyes of those involved. So maybe Wit was talking about Adonalsium AND the Unmade.

But I was also rereading that section of book 2, where Pattern is incredulous at Shallan's explanation for why Nohadon got that name, since it was supposed to be more symmetrical than his original name. Given all that, why didn't they just change his original name to be more symmetrical without being an effectively different name? But note the first syllables of the first name: "Ba"; then the next one is Noh-adon, maybe, like "ado," or if it's No-hadon, still, you've got "hado." Ba-hado-... you catch my drift.

So, random guess, the Hierocrats didn't like that Nohadon bonded an Unmade and retconned his name and stuff on account of that. Because of that bond, and because of BAM's apparently key role in the Rosharan magical ecology, his Cognitive Shadow/Spiritual remnant became imprinted on BAM's aura, transmitted into Dalinar's dreams later.

Worse theory: BAM is "Unity," no less, and though we were presuming that the Unmade really were direct or indirect servants of Odium by the by, BAM actually wasn't. She was able to set up the whole False Desolation without tipping the Heralds or anyone else off in advance, at least no one in a position of power who could have thwarted her. Also we find out that Odium's tone became integrated into Roshar's when BAM was imprisoned. Odium wants the humans more for his future war, he was the god of the humans first, yadayadayada so it never looks like the Shards physically fight each other during their millennial world building/unbuilding projects, even Ruin vs. Vin was a very unusual event, so I could see the way that Odium fought Honor was by infecting the moral cognition of people on Roshar, especially that of the humans. Then BAM's imprisonment was able to represent a distinct victory for Odium, in part in terms of his prioritizing humans over singers. So anyway, BAM was, as an Unmade, under Odium's power, but we see in Sja-anat that this doesn't translate to outright servitude all the time. And so Odium saw a "we" in his own will, and the will of the humans (the Radiants, incl. Melishi) who imprisoned her, so that when she was able to reach out to Dalinar during the confrontation in book 3, she portrayed herself as "Unity." (Weakness: why "killed you" then, not "banished you" or something? unless BAM became a deadeye inside the gemstone, on account of her bond with the entire singer people being negated? and the honorspren are surprised when Maya speaks, e.g. when deadeyes speak, it tends to be surprising...)

Sidenote: Ishar's mad grasp

One of the WOR epigraphs suggests that it is contingent that the number of Bondsmiths is only three at most, and that those who wanted the number to be more were considered menacing. What if there are various unusual spren, like Cusicesh, who at some point were involved in attempts to generate Bondsmiths without using the natural/known godspren? Alternatively, of course, it could be that the menace was in the idea of multiple people bonding one godspren, but otherwise, I do wonder if Ishar, who was the one who compelled the foundation of the Radiants under exacting strictures, had some sense that unique spren could be "manufactured" in the relevant manner, and if this then has anything to do with his dire experiments. In this vein, BAM and other Unmade might have been such irregular spren, formed in some prior phase of history (maybe even before the singers knew Honor and Cultivation, unless Adonalsium's Shattering predated the establishment of religion, and hence religious spren, on Roshar?).

Also, this might be why Odium thinks Rosharan humans are especially suited to its plot: an army of Bondsmiths would pose an extraordinarily powerful danger compared to armies composed mainly of other apex-type magic-users in other systems. I at first thought maybe it was because of the Dawnshards, because it seemed weird that they'd use those to break Adonalsium, but then Odium wasn't using them to attack the other Shards (at least, I don't know that that's been indicated clearly or not), and if for some reason they were concentrated in the Rosharan system, IDK... So instead, I thought maybe Odium was trying to figure out how to create new Dawnshards, using the magical ecology that Adonalsium had graced Roshar and its solar system with.

If you think about it, Honor and Cultivation usurped Adonalsium, in the Rosharan system. One wonders whether Odium ever feels like the other Shards are being preposterously self-righteous in overseeing the religious affairs of various worlds, including worlds like Roshar. Granted, in the Nalthis case for example, the local Shard isn't clearly recognized by the religious majorities of her world, so until we learn more about why Adonalsium's Shattering took place, it remains that accusing the Shards of being merely power-hungry is not necessary. However, at the time Rayse and Odium in parallel even now could've easily lied to themselves about the other Shards to motivate the decision to attack. It remains that Roshar's religious history, in the form of its spren no less, seems to have been peculiar for Adonalsium to have established as it did, so even the Honor/Cultivation godspren don't seem to be the only possible original such "unique" spren, sufficient in order to the Bondsmiths.

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