Madness of the heralds; cured?

[MerlinArcane]

Do we think the heraldic madness will ever be cured? We know that Ishar’s will at least be attempted, but what about the other? Taln? Why do you think j their madness differs between each person? Is it a reversal of their personality? 

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, MerlinArcane said:

Do we think the heraldic madness will ever be cured? We know that Ishar’s will at least be attempted, but what about the other? Taln?

There are multiple components to the madness of the Heralds;

1. They are super, super, old. As they were originally humans in nature given immortality, they weren't designed to exist that long, so living for 7,000 + years takes a toll because of it.

2. They are suffering from terrible PTSD layered upon itself dozens of times over. That alone would drive someone mad.

Spoiler

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

3. They may also have had their Spiritwebs beaten so badly through trauma and forced to live through it (something no regular human could do) that it causes a part of the more supernatural aspect of their madness.

So if you wanted to fix their madness, you'd need to address all of these problems. You could start by giving them some extra Investiture in some form to enhance their Cognitive Aspects so that they aren't strained so much from their sheer age. This is something that Kalak himself said should be possible, and there is a similar method that Hoid uses to maintain his sanity despite being even older than the Heralds.

Spoiler

"Midius once told me … told me we could use Investiture … to enhance our minds, our memories, so we wouldn’t forget so much." 

RoW chapter 84 epigraph

Spoiler

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/508/#e15862

Questioner

Memory is tied to some level or portion of Spiritual Identity, or else Feruchemists would not be able to store it. So, Hoid lost memories at the end of Rhythm of War in his exchange with Odium. Would that mean part of his soul was stolen and then absorbed into Odium, and if so, what is stopping Odium from doing that with all of his enemies?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, what Odium split off is stuff that Hoid is storing in excess Investiture. (Basically, it was Breaths, in Hoid’s case.) And this sort of thing, where this extra memory… One of the reasons that Hoid is able to function better than, perhaps, some other very long-lived individuals is: he has found out how to keep some of this Identity in, shall we say, SD cards made of Investiture. Imagine that sort of thing. So what Odium was stealing from Hoid was straight out of an SD card. Which means that it’s not nearly as deeply ripping into someone’s soul, and it is also not nearly as noticeable.

But the other thing is: Hoid is directly in violation of certain agreements that have been made, which therefore exposes him to… He is lacking protections. As you’ll notice in the end of Book Three, where he’s like, “I need to be careful, because I am in violation.”

And so, there’s a couple things going on here. Number one, much more easy to access those memories. Number two, Hoid’s in direct violation and under no protections of any sorts of agreements and things like this.

Second, you'd have to address the problems with their more natural aspect of PTSD. This is probably going to be harder to fix through natural methods, as they have so many issues in that department that I don't really see a complete healing for them through natural means. If you could deliberately remove those memories you could probably remove the natural component of their madness though.

Mistborn spoilers

Spoiler

Give them an Unsealed Coppermind to use so they can dump their painful memories and keep the good ones. That should do the trick.

Finally, you have to deal with the worn Spiritweb (which may just be a combination of the previous two issues, but I'll assume it's not for the sake of discussion), which may be even harder to do. Perhaps with the Cognitive Aspect aligned correctly you could forcibly fix it, but to fix all the damage would seem unlikely to me.

We need more information on what causes a Spiritweb to wear out and what could conceivably fix it before I'd be willing to bet on how to cure the Heralds 100% of their madness, but I'd say that you could do a lot to help them.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

I mean, Sanderson gives us a large clue in the interactions between Dalinar and Ishar in RoW.

He becomes completely lucid, and not only that, but is immediately a kinder, empathetic person. He pleads for help, and gives what clues he can and midsentence slips back into madness. There is something above and beyond all of the trauma they have experienced that somehow was negated for a few seconds because of Oaths being sworn. I know many people have waxed extensively on that specifically, so I won't go into it. But yea, there is something (or group of things) that would most likely remove that supernatural form of madness from all of the Heralds, if done.

[Argenti he/him]

12 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

There are multiple components to the madness of the Heralds;

1. They are super, super, old. As they were originally humans in nature given immortality, they weren't designed to exist that long, so living for 7,000 + years takes a toll because of it.

2. They are suffering from terrible PTSD layered upon itself dozens of times over. That alone would drive someone mad.

  Hide contents

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

3. They may also have had their Spiritwebs beaten so badly through trauma and forced to live through it (something no regular human could do) that it causes a part of the more supernatural aspect of their madness.

So if you wanted to fix their madness, you'd need to address all of these problems. You could start by giving them some extra Investiture in some form to enhance their Cognitive Aspects so that they aren't strained so much from their sheer age. This is something that Kalak himself said should be possible, and there is a similar method that Hoid uses to maintain his sanity despite being even older than the Heralds.

  Hide contents

"Midius once told me … told me we could use Investiture … to enhance our minds, our memories, so we wouldn’t forget so much." 

RoW chapter 84 epigraph

  Reveal hidden contents

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/508/#e15862

Questioner

Memory is tied to some level or portion of Spiritual Identity, or else Feruchemists would not be able to store it. So, Hoid lost memories at the end of Rhythm of War in his exchange with Odium. Would that mean part of his soul was stolen and then absorbed into Odium, and if so, what is stopping Odium from doing that with all of his enemies?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, what Odium split off is stuff that Hoid is storing in excess Investiture. (Basically, it was Breaths, in Hoid’s case.) And this sort of thing, where this extra memory… One of the reasons that Hoid is able to function better than, perhaps, some other very long-lived individuals is: he has found out how to keep some of this Identity in, shall we say, SD cards made of Investiture. Imagine that sort of thing. So what Odium was stealing from Hoid was straight out of an SD card. Which means that it’s not nearly as deeply ripping into someone’s soul, and it is also not nearly as noticeable.

But the other thing is: Hoid is directly in violation of certain agreements that have been made, which therefore exposes him to… He is lacking protections. As you’ll notice in the end of Book Three, where he’s like, “I need to be careful, because I am in violation.”

And so, there’s a couple things going on here. Number one, much more easy to access those memories. Number two, Hoid’s in direct violation and under no protections of any sorts of agreements and things like this.

Second, you'd have to address the problems with their more natural aspect of PTSD. This is probably going to be harder to fix through natural methods, as they have so many issues in that department that I don't really see a complete healing for them through natural means. If you could deliberately remove those memories you could probably remove the natural component of their madness though.

Mistborn spoilers

  Hide contents

Give them an Unsealed Coppermind to use so they can dump their painful memories and keep the good ones. That should do the trick.

Finally, you have to deal with the worn Spiritweb (which may just be a combination of the previous two issues, but I'll assume it's not for the sake of discussion), which may be even harder to do. Perhaps with the Cognitive Aspect aligned correctly you could forcibly fix it, but to fix all the damage would seem unlikely to me.

We need more information on what causes a Spiritweb to wear out and what could conceivably fix it before I'd be willing to bet on how to cure the Heralds 100% of their madness, but I'd say that you could do a lot to help them.

Also, releasing BAM will probably help since the Hearlds are basically Spren, and BAM is the spren of Roshar connected to all of Roshar. They're dead-eye light.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Ookla the Silver

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

21 hours ago, Ookla the Silver said:

Also, releasing BAM will probably help since the Hearlds are basically Spren, and BAM is the spren of Roshar connected to all of Roshar. They're dead-eye light.

That was the bulk of what I was referring to. It's assumed that freeing BAM will have a substantial effect on all of Roshar. I personally am interested in the effects beyond the Heralds and deadeyes, because it seems like there will be some. Sanderson has given a lot of clues about this but also drawn a line of, "Wait for book 5 "(or 6..but hopefully not, as I would have a great deal of struggle waiting that long).

Edited December 8, 2023 by JohnnyKaizen

[ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ Male]

On 12/6/2023 at 9:10 PM, MerlinArcane said:

Do we think the heraldic madness will ever be cured? We know that Ishar’s will at least be attempted, but what about the other? Taln? Why do you think j their madness differs between each person? Is it a reversal of their personality? 

There is also a theory that 

Warbreaker:

Spoiler

Vasher’s reason for returning was to heal Ishar.