Bonds Curing Heralds?

[EDPDragon]

There's a trend between the ideals sworn by radiants and the heralds gaining moments of lucidity, if only for brief times. Would a herald that attracts a spren and ascends multiple ideals be able to more permanently heal their madness? I'm no expert, but I would assume it would be especially difficult to get someone who is mad to achieve a bond. The state of relations between heralds and spren might make things difficult as well. Spren might have harsh prejudice toward heralds similar to the honorspren's refusal to risk bonding men. Also to be taken into consideration, Nale has also already bonded a spren and ascended to the most difficult and powerful 5th ideal, and he still appears insane despite getting a bit better in his encounter with lift. It could be possible that personal nahel bonds can make the madness less extreme, but not a complete cure.

[Quantus he/him]

I dont think so, mostly from the example of Nale.  His Herald madness seems to be in full swing, in his case it took his signature traits of Justice and Confidence and he's too self-doubting to trust himself or his own sense of Justice with being the Sworn master/guide of the next generation of Skybreakers, even though he (Stallone Voice) Is the Law.

[EDPDragon]

Yeah Nale is clearly still incredibly unstable, he's the prime evidence that bonding probably wouldn't do much for the Heralds, thank you.

When Ishar was sane for a moment he told Dalinar a radiant swearing oaths nearby may temporarily grant moments of sanity, and as we have seen "temporarily" means at most few sentences worth of sanity before reverting back to madness, so it would in no means be a viable solution for the Heralds.

[CtrlAltDepressed]

I don't think it is the bond specifically. I think it has to do with their Connection to the SR in some way. My evidence for this is that we see that Lift (ofc its Lift) is able to 'break' through Nale's insanity for a long time considering she is just speaking with him and not furthering her bond. This is when he is trying to kill her for being Radiant and she asks him if he feels anything any more. 

 

I think if we see any of the Heralds 'cured' it will be due to either Dalinar using his bondsmithing powers to Connect them to who they used to be / their spiritual self, or BAM's return. 

[alder24]

23 hours ago, EDPDragon said:

There's a trend between the ideals sworn by radiants and the heralds gaining moments of lucidity, if only for brief times. Would a herald that attracts a spren and ascends multiple ideals be able to more permanently heal their madness? I'm no expert, but I would assume it would be especially difficult to get someone who is mad to achieve a bond. The state of relations between heralds and spren might make things difficult as well. Spren might have harsh prejudice toward heralds similar to the honorspren's refusal to risk bonding men. Also to be taken into consideration, Nale has also already bonded a spren and ascended to the most difficult and powerful 5th ideal, and he still appears insane despite getting a bit better in his encounter with lift. It could be possible that personal nahel bonds can make the madness less extreme, but not a complete cure.

The problem with Heralds lies in their soul, which is broken beyond what's humanly possible. They've lived for thousands of years and a human soul isn't made to exist that long, on top of that most of their existence was on Braize, being tortured again and again and again. Something like this is impossible for a human soul to withstand, even a heavily invested one. A spren bond might help brace the soul and mitigate some of those effects of madness, but as seen from Nale that's not really making any difference. A Nahel Bond can also have the opposite effect, it can widen the cracks of their soul, breaking it even more.

To help Heralds you would probably have to deal with their trauma first, but that alone isn't enough. You would need to somehow fix their soul and make it functionally immortal and that's the biggest challenge as a human soul simply isn't made for that.

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.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

WoR Synopsis:

Quote

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves. They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures.

[Dofurion]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

WoR Synopsis:

Quote

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves. They can brace a broken soul; but they can also widen its fissures.

Considering this, could it be that the answer is to find the correct order to cure them?

[alder24]

1 hour ago, Dofurion said:

Considering this, could it be that the answer is to find the correct order to cure them?

No, because that doesn't affect how their soul ages. 

[Quantus he/him]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

No, because that doesn't affect how their soul ages. 

On the other hand, it could prop their spiritweb up in a more complimentary way (not a cure but a more helpful direction for self-development).  Nale Bonded the same Order as his Herald Madness so it makes sense that his would not help or even widen the cracks, but perhaps Ash will have a different experience moving to a completely different Order.  

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Quantus said:

On the other hand, it could prop their spiritweb up in a more complimentary way (not a cure but a more helpful direction for self-development).  Nale Bonded the same Order as his Herald Madness so it makes sense that his would not help or even widen the cracks, but perhaps Ash will have a different experience moving to a completely different Order.  

Yes, I agree, Nahel Bond might help them, but it won't cure them. I did say it might brace their souls. But as you said, bonding a spren will deal only with a part of the problem - their trauma, manifestation of their broken soul, which is their madness, but won't fix their soul. For Ash Dustbringers are an excellent choice as they are all about self-control over their destructive potential and Ash right now struggles to stop herself from even thinking about destroying her religious images. Nale lacks emotions and compassion, Edgedancers might be great in helping him see his flaws - Lift proved this already. I have no idea about Ishar - maybe Lightweavers? He lies to himself about being Almighty, Adonalsium and all this stuff, a healthy dose of truth and self-reflection might be helpful. Taln is beyond the help of Radiant Ideals, he's broken the most. He suffered thrice as much as the remaining nine. He’s now in vegetative state, unable to respond, communicate, or even think. This won’t help him at all, when he can't even say the Words. 

But all of this, while helpful, is treating the symptoms not the disease itself. Their soul is still overburdened by their age, their trauma, layers of PTSD and memories of endless torture on Braize. All of this is beyond what a human soul was made for. A direct Shardic intervention might fix them, a Shard might be able to reinvest them, create another fresh copy of their soul with no cracks, no memories of past torture - basically create a Cognitive Shadow of a Cognitive Shadow. But that would kill them anyway, this time we do like Vasher said, we create a copy of a soul while the real one is fading into the Beyond. This time we all know they are not those people anymore, they are just copies. I don't want to suggest this is the only way of healing Heralds, certainly it can't be, but this is the "easiest" way of doing so - from the perspective of those who aren't Heralds of course as for them there would be no difference in curing the real Heralds, or making a copy of them.