Stormfather: Shadow of a god

[Jofwu he/him]

I've been sitting on an idea for a few months now, and I figure it's finally time to throw it to the whitespines...

It began even further back, with the Stormlight 5 prologue reading, which left us with one shocking discovery: "The Stormfather could lie?" Many people of course have been interpreting the Stormlight 5 prologue as teasing that "the Stormfather" is not really himself. Some have proposed that the being we see is actually someone else entirely, such as Ishar, somehow pretending to be the Stormfather. Others have supposed that he is being manipulated to some extent. But I'm one of those thinking that we are seeing the real deal. Stormfather in the prologue is the true Stormfather. If the Stormfather that we "know and love" is different, I would submit that it's because his bond with Dalinar has changed him, because the Words of Radiance Stormfather seems entirely compatible with the SA5 Prologue Stormfather to me.

Then in August of this year, on an episode of Intentionally Blank, Brandon did some teasing his plans for the ending of Stormlight 5. Obviously he didn't want to spoil things by getting into specifics, but he said one thing in particular that really wormed it's way into my brain: "When you read it, I think it will recontextualize a ton of important other moments in the series." My brain went into crazy mode trying to think... what would be the craziest thing that could be recontextualized? I came up with a few wild ideas, but with the Stormlight 5 prologue still bouncing around in my head there was one in particular that really latched on.

If the Stormfather could lie... What if Honor has been lying?

About what? Who knows... But wouldn't it be crazy? Maybe it's not even an explicit lie he's told, but simply a withholding of key information. The potential implications are wild. We take his word for granted on so many things. What if, for example, Honor was interested in the "greater war of the cosmere" as well? What if Honor and Odium made a deal to work together to build an army for some purpose and then they had a falling out? Could that have been the underlying cause of the Recreance--people realizing what their god had secretly been planning?

Okay, I'll reign it back in. I just want to give an example of how wild things can quickly get if we consider that Honor didn't give us the whole truth...

I do want to get ahead of the objection that "Surely Honor can't lie?" After all, bad things can happen to Shards who break their promises. But those two aren't the same thing. Can a Shard lie? You bet. Brandon actually just addressed this in the latest spoiler stream! Can Honor promise to tell the truth and then not? No, that would be against his very nature. But if he made no such binding promise... why not? Certain spren may find this difficult to swallow, but then Tanavast is the mind behind Honor and he was no spren.

Brandon has always been careful to leave open the idea that "honor" is not an inherently GOOD THING.

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[...] I don't call the Shards good and evil. There are no good and evil Shards in my opinion, like and so, what's evil and what's not evil- you can totally have spren that are of Honor that you would consider evil.

OdysseyCon 2016 (April 8, 2016)

Odium says as much as well:

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“Honor cared only for bonds. Not the meaning of bonds and oaths, merely that they were kept. Cultivation only wants to see transformation. Growth. It can be good or bad, for all she cares. The pain of men is nothing to her. Only I understand it. Only I care, Dalinar.”

I don’t believe that, Dalinar thought. I can’t believe that.

The old man sighed, then heaved himself to his feet. “If you could see the result of Honor’s influence, you would not be so quick to name me a god of anger. Separate the emotion from men, and you have creatures like Nale and his Skybreakers. That is what Honor would have given you.”

Now, this is Odium speaking and he has is own agenda here. We need to take this with a grain of salt, yes. But I think it would be foolish to completely dismiss his claims outright.

Anyways, I think you get the idea here. If Honor has lied in some way, things could get pretty interesting. Personally, I really like this whole terrifying idea. I particularly like the crazy ideas about how we have been misled by Honor regarding things like the Recreance, the Oathpact, and the Desolations. I'm not going to go too far down into the weeds exploring one of these ideas here. I guess part of me is hoping some of you will be interested enough to do so, because when you start breaking down assumptions around Honor and, well, recontextualizing everything we know about the past... there's a lot of moving pieces!

But there's one other cool idea to dig into first...

Consider THIS particular thing that Honor told us:

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“I am … I was … God. The one you call the Almighty, the creator of mankind.” The figure closed his eyes. “And now I am dead. Odium has killed me. I am sorry.”

I'm not going to try to argue that Tanavast was lying here. We've seen plenty of claims that Honor died from others, and we've seen plenty of evidence that it's true. Both from the books and from Brandon himself. And yet... Death in the cosmere is not necessarily final. And, uh, both Brandon and the books have been screaming at us that Tanavast's death was not final. To be clear: Tanavast died... and he became a Cognitive Shadow that attached itself to Stormfather.

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[...] the Stormfather absorbed... is basically Honor’s Cognitive Shadow, which means he’s got a connection to a lot of different things, so he’s not bound by a lot of the rules that others are.

Shadows of Self San Francisco signing (Oct. 9, 2015)

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“I am the one left behind,” the voice said. It wasn’t exactly as he’d heard it in the visions; this voice had a depth to it. A density. “I am the sliver of Him that remains. I saw His corpse, saw Him die when Odium murdered Him. And I . . . I fled. To continue as I always have. The piece of God left in this world, the winds that men must feel.” (Words of Radiance ch 82)

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I am no god. I am but a shadow of one. (Words of Radiance ch 89

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I see what is left out in the storms, and that darkly. I am no god, Dalinar Kholin. No more than your shadow on the wall is you. (Oathbringer ch 16)

Every Cognitive Shadow that we have known retains some sense of its identity, right? The singers who became Fused didn't completely lose their identity. The Heralds certainly didn't. The Returned lose some memories, but their identity is still in there. We've got the Lord of Scars of course... Even the Shades on Threnody seem to retain a piece of their mortal selves. So why should this case be any different?

Well, okay, there is a reason for it to be different... The Stormfather was a powerful spren long before Honor died, with... SOME level of sentience? Perhaps it should be no surprise that if a Cognitive Shadow binds itself to a sentient piece of Investiture then things might not go quite the same as what we've seen elsewhere. But... how can his identity be gone completely? I don't think that's the case.

Yet we continue on like Tanavast has gone to the Beyond. I think the issue here is that... we've never really seen something in Stormfather that we can identify as distinctly Tanavast. (despite the fact that we have no reliable point of comparison and there's evidence that Stormfather wasn't entirely sapient prior to Honor's death) And of course Stormfather has repeatedly denied that he is not the Almighty (because he's mostly not... in a sense).

And of course we can trust Stormfather, right? Right?

So here's what I propose.

The soul of the mortal who held Honor was not killed by Odium and did not go to the Beyond. When Honor was Splintered he attached himself to a Stormfather who was quite different than the one we know. Less sapient. More a force of nature. And his mind is still in there. He's still scheming. He's still got plans. And he will lie to achieve them. We need only look at his interactions with Gavilar in the Stormlight 5 prologue to see this.

As for what happens next, I can only guess. To be clear, I do imagine that Stormfather's own nature greatly colors what we see. We haven't been dealing with "just Tanavast" all along. We've been dealing with a mesh of the two. I only want to argue that Tanavast is much more part of Stormfather than we generally imagine. And he's been lying about some things, and holding some things back. I also think that his bond to Dalinar has changed him--that it is changing him. So it will be interesting to see where that leads.

[Eternal Khol he/him]

Ive been waiting to see what came of this theory 

[Frustration he/him]

I wholeheartedly agree, though I'd say there is a possibility that there is no distinction between Tanavast's CS and the Stormfather.

[+Child of Hodor]

52 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

Then in August of this year, on an episode of Intentionally Blank, Brandon did some teasing his plans for the ending of Stormlight 5. Obviously he didn't want to spoil things by getting into specifics, but he said one thing in particular that really wormed it's way into my brain: "When you read it, I think it will recontextualize a ton of important other moments in the series." My brain w ent into crazy mode trying to think... what would be the craziest thing that could be recontextualized? I came up with a few wild ideas, but with the Stormlight 5 prologue still bouncing around in my head there was one in particular that really latched on.

If the Stormfather could lie... What if Honor has been lying?

About what? Who knows... But wouldn't it be crazy? Maybe it's not even an explicit lie he's told, but simply a withholding of key information. The potential implications are wild. We take his word for granted on so many things. What if, for example, Honor was interested in the "greater war of the cosmere" as well?

So here's what I propose.

The soul of the mortal who held Honor was not killed by Odium and did not go to the Beyond. When Honor was Splintered he attached himself to a Stormfather who was quite different than the one we know. Less sapient. More a force of nature. And his mind is still in there. He's still scheming. He's still got plans. And he will lie to achieve them. We need only look at his interactions with Gavilar in the Stormlight 5 prologue to see this.

Great post!

I don't think Cultivation is as down on humanity as she seems to be (per Wyndle and her dialogue to Dalinar) if her husband is still alive in a meaningful sense. I think he straight up got killed but had a contingency to merge with his Spren making it a super special spren that could carry on his plans. 

I agree with your overall point that a LOT more of Tanavast is still around then we've been led to believe. 

The weirdness we are seeing is that there were two separate entities with separate minds that merged in a way we don't fully understand. My personal theory is that there is one mind in there that is a mashup of the two minds and the Stormfather is taking a different approach with Dalinar, playing dumber than he is. Although, It could very well be that there are separate minds in there and Tanavast has been letting the Spren run the show with Dalinar because Tanavast swore off Kholins after dealing with Gavilar. 

In the SA 5 prologue Stormfather says (hidden for length)

Spoiler

the Stormfather said. I feel...you are not the one that I need. That I decided to find.

“You said that you were charged with this task,” Gavilar said. “By Honor. Finding someone to show the visions, to prevent calamity. You didn’t decide anything. You were instructed to do all of this.”

That is true. I do not speak in human ways. But still, once you are a...Herald, you will need to leave everything you know. You will be given up to torture between Returns. Why is it this doesn’t bother you

The Stormfather is now both the (mind) ghost of the guy who commanded the spren to find a bondsmith AND the spren that was commanded.  

As far as what gets recontextualized or outright lies:

I've always thought the "Unite Them" voice Dalinar hears in his head when he is awake was Tanavast. Mostly because Tanavast says "Unite Them" in every vision. In OB, right before the climax Dalinar hears it in his head and Stormfather is like "I didn't say anything". That's a lie or a half-truth. 

In the final Vision in WoK Tanavast is like "gee without the Dawnshards I dunno if y'all have a chance" which is weird since we know at least one is on the planet, well guarded, but still. That's a weird thing for him to say. 

What's that weird blinding light Dalinar keeps seeing? Is it Honor or something else?

Edited December 6, 2022 by Child of Hodor

[S. Stormy she/her]

On 12/6/2022 at 1:32 PM, Jofwu said:

Now, this is Odium speaking and he has is own agenda here. We need to take this with a grain of salt, yes. But I think it would be foolish to completely dismiss his claims outright.

Good point. My only objection for this part is that when Taravodium Ascends, his first thought that doesn't seem like his own is "to burn! to rage and destroy!" or something like that. Nothing to do with any other emotions... So it seems like the Intent of Odium is just... well, Odium.

[offer]

This is a really intersting idea. 

I am most interested in trying to find out what honor maybe lied about.

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Anyways, I think you get the idea here. If Honor has lied in some way, things could get pretty interesting. Personally, I really like this whole terrifying idea. I particularly like the crazy ideas about how we have been misled by Honor regarding things like the Recreance, the Oathpact, and the Desolations. I'm not going to go too far down into the weeds exploring one of these ideas here. I guess part of me is hoping some of you will be interested enough to do so, because when you start breaking down assumptions around Honor and, well, recontextualizing everything we know about the past... there's a lot of moving pieces!

Lets start!

 

I think that for something like this we need to see some hints, someone that that told has the truth (or parts/hints of it) but we did not understand or did not believe. My first thought was Ishar - so I start looking at exactly what he told Dalinar so we can see if maybe his claim contains hints of truth. I reread chapter 111 of ROW (Dalinar meets Ishar) and I did not find something very usefull. The liitle I find maybe intersting there are Ishar claimng that Dalinar corrupted the spren to have false radiants:

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[Dalinar tells Ishar that Ash sent him to ask Ishar`s counsel and that Jezrien is dead]

"I prepared myself to your lies, champion of Odium," Ishar said. "I had not realized they would be so .... reasonable. Yet you have already done to prove who you are. Taking my holy city. Summoning your evil storm. Sending your minions to torment my people. You have corrputed the spren to your side, so you can have false radiants, but I have discovered your secrets."

The main thing that might contain a hint of truth here is that the spren and the radiants are corrupted and helping Odium`s plan.

Later in the chapter Ishar tries to steals Dalinar connection to the stormfather ("So. The enemy corrupted the stormfather too." [...] " I will take this bond to the stormfather. I will bear it myself.") and feels that Dalinar has connection to Odium and Odium sees Dalinar as the one who will fight against him ("This cannot be right. I will take this bond as well."). 

In Ishar`s moment of sanity he tells Dalinar to come to shinovar where he has a way to "fix the problems that beset us." and to reset the oathpact.

 

So my crazy theory is that the crazy stuff Ishar tells are partially because with his connection abilities he feels events in the past/future and in his madness he can not seperate them from the current reality - So what if he feels Dalinar`s connection to Nohadon and  Nohadon "corrupted" the spren in his time and started the radiants to help (or maybe unintentenally helped) Odium`s plan.

 

 

What do you think? Was Nohadon Odium`s champion? Is there more clues that might support this theory?

Myslef, I think that without more clues it is very unlikely but if it is true it will recontextualize a lot of other stuff.

[duladen he/him]

This is my favorite of the interpretations of the Stormfather’s weird behavior in the SA5 Prologue. Gavilar explicitly states that the entity seems like two different ones at times, which makes me think at this point the shadow and the spren were not so entwined. By the time Dalinar is having the visions, they are - either just due to time or on purpose as a new strategy.

The Last Metal spoilers 

Spoiler

We know for sure that a Shard can lie, as evidenced by Sazed and Kelsier’s chat. I have no problems accepting that Honor can lie as long as it doesn’t break a specific oath.