+Oltux72 he/him Posted September 18, 2023 Report Share Posted September 18, 2023 9 hours ago, Letryx13 said: Todium is definitely not interested in winning the contest. Even if he wins, he's still stuck on Roshar. I have no clue what Rayse would have been planning to try and eventually free himself from Roshar, but Taravangian is convinced he can manipulate the situation to free himself from Honor's restrictions. The only way he'd want to win is if it somehow could be used to release him, which makes no sense, as the terms explicitly state Odium remains bound to the system even if he wins. So that leaves two options, if you look at it from a very abstract point of view. Odium gets an outcome without consequences that leaves him to pursue another strategy Odium drives the other side to violating the contract The second outcome is better for him, but probably riskier. Strategically speaking his opponents have a fatal weakness. Jasnah and Hoid are at a certain leve antagonists. Hoid wants to keep Odium bound, if need be at the cost of sacrificing Roshar. Jasnah and presumably Dalinar want to preserve Roshar. It seems to me that if all else fails Odium could go to a strategy of terror to pressure Jasnah and Dalinar into freeing him in exchange for the lives of the people of Roshar. In case of Rayse I would have been sure that he would pick option #2 out of vanity. Taravangian on the other hand is a pragmatist. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Letryx13 Posted September 18, 2023 Report Share Posted September 18, 2023 4 hours ago, Oltux72 said: So that leaves two options, if you look at it from a very abstract point of view. Odium gets an outcome without consequences that leaves him to pursue another strategy Odium drives the other side to violating the contract The second outcome is better for him, but probably riskier. Strategically speaking his opponents have a fatal weakness. Jasnah and Hoid are at a certain leve antagonists. Hoid wants to keep Odium bound, if need be at the cost of sacrificing Roshar. Jasnah and presumably Dalinar want to preserve Roshar. It seems to me that if all else fails Odium could go to a strategy of terror to pressure Jasnah and Dalinar into freeing him in exchange for the lives of the people of Roshar. In case of Rayse I would have been sure that he would pick option #2 out of vanity. Taravangian on the other hand is a pragmatist. I actually had the opposite impression. Rayse seemed way more cautious to me. Most of what he did was through long term planning that limited his exposure, and only took risks when he was either desperate or certain of victory. He never wanted to deal with Taravangian until Dalinar refused him. And he was only willing to gamble on Dalinar when he was absolutely convinced he could break him, or when it started to look like all his plans were falling apart. Hoid even said that Rayse wouldn't agree to a contest unless he was frightened and only if it limited his losses. Taravangian, on the other hand, is so proud that he seems to think that he can handle anything. Trying to become king of all Roshar, then later the coalition of monarchs, were both huge gambles. Yes, he made the deal with Rayse to preserve Kharbranth in the first place partly because he believed any other option was ludicrous, but I still think that played to his ego as much as anything. He wanted to prove he was the only one who could save Roshar. On the other hand, telling Dalinar what he knew about NightBlood and how it could be used to kill Odium (instead of orchestrating an elaborate plan to do the job himself) would have been far more practical, but again, Taravangian's ego got in the way. Yes, he considered working with Dalinar to be a risk to Kharbranth, but he also admitted that those were lies, and that he just didn't want to give up the glory of defeating Odium to Dalinar. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him Posted September 18, 2023 Report Share Posted September 18, 2023 16 hours ago, Letryx13 said: Unfortunately, that sounds exactly like the sort of idea that Todium would come up with. Since there's no real explicit idea of what the contest has to be, it could very well be a hide and seek situation, where one champion runs away to try and and drag out the conflict. Since it's a contest to the death, it will only end when one of the champions dies LOL - Monty Python's Olympic Hide & Seek - COSMERE edition! https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/The_Olympic_Hide-and-Seek_Final 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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