Thoughts on Re-Released Prologue

[agrabes]

Another thing I saw in the Prologue which seemed interesting to me was how the Stormfather talked about BAM.

Quote

She created your parshmen by accident, he said. Long ago, just before the Recreance, Mishram tried to rise up and replace Odium, giving the Voidbringers powers.

“Curious,” Gavilar said. “And then?”

And then… she fell. She was too small a being to uphold an entire people. It all came crashing down, and so some brave Radiants trapped Mishram in a gemstone to prevent her from destroying all of Roshar. A side effect created the parshmen.

This is the basic story we knew, but slightly different.  What we've heard before was that the Radiants captured BAM and hid her away because she was causing a semi-desolation.  Basically, it was part of the war effort and the way to defeat the Voidbringers was to stop the source of their power.

In this line, it implies that BAM had somehow gotten out of control and was risking the destruction of Roshar, so the Radiants sealed her up basically for her own good.  Not because they needed to do it to win the war but because BAM was somehow becoming unstable.  Maybe she was tied to Roshar in some way and was pulling the life force out of the planet?  Draining too much investure?  This was also the time when Honor was going a bit crazy - maybe he was ordering the Radiants to kill her and end the cycle and a few decided that they needed to go a different way.  I suspect we'll learn more about this in WaT because Shallan and Adolin are trying to find her.  

[Subvisual Haze]

"She fell...it all came crashing down" - an analogy in poor taste to the formation of the Shattered Plains?

[Blightsong he/him]

Stormfaker theory makes little sense to me. The main reason being, why would he continue the ruse when Gavilar was 100% dead? GavStormfather also repeats many opinions and lines as DalStormfather.

 

I think Occam’s razor is that the Stormfather is simply more wily and conniving than previously suspected. It makes sense to me that some of his dispositions changed from Gavilar’s death to when he bonded Dalinar.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

It also seems wrong for the Stormfather to feel such pain every time a Herald dies. Are we to believe that all throughout the desolations, Stormfather was crippled by pain every time a Herald died? That doesn't seem right. I suppose it could be the Tanavast connection causing that pain, but it also doesn't make sense to me that Honor himself would be hurt everytime a Herald dies, something he expected them to do repeatedly. 

Perhaps the scream is not "ow ow ow Herald dying hurts" but rather "GOD STORMING DAMMIT CRAP CRAP CRAP"?

8 hours ago, alder24 said:

Anti-light is like Nightblood, a weapon that destroys the soul itself, leaving no traces behind. A weapon so dangerous that Vasher killed his own wife to keep it secret and was carrying Nightblood for more than 300 years to ensure nobody would ever get it.

Keep in mind that anti-Investiture is far more restrictive. Nightblood instantly obliterates anything it scratches even a tiny bit, but unless you're an immortal anti-Light isn't actually much more dangerous than a normal dagger to the heart, and even if you are one it's not an insta-kill. In the future there might be more dangerous ways to use it in technology, but when a Desolation is coming now... (Of course, Vasher doesn't need to know the teensy little fact that Gavilar is trying to cause it in the first place.)

9 hours ago, alder24 said:

Why did he decide to create the very thing he sacrificed so much to hide? This does not really make much sense and it points me to the conclusion that his interaction with Yesteel made him realize that those weapons are needed.

Makes me think of the coin (RoW 21):

Spoiler

"'War is the last option of the state that has failed,’" Adolin said, tapping the side with the divine robed figure. He pushed it to spin it in Kaladin’s fingers, showing the other side. "‘But it is better than having no options.’"

"Huh," Kaladin said.

"Zahel told me," Adolin said, "that he always considered himself a coward for training soldiers. He said that if he truly believed in stopping war, he’d walk away from the sword completely. Then he gave me the disc, and I knew he understood. In a perfect world, no one would have to train for battle. We don’t live in a perfect world."

 

11 hours ago, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Im assuming he did it the same way navani did - with tones - but this has me curious if he needs to do something similar to Stormlight to subsist off of it. Perhaps the tone of Endowment? If so, is he creating breaths, or the breath equivalent of stormlight?

My guess is he was trying to do this but the process didn't work to recode it to another Shard (since as alder pointed out he hasn't worked out how to Awaken with Stormlight yet), and from there he ended up working out anti-Investiture as almost an accident.

6 hours ago, agrabes said:

In this line, it implies that BAM had somehow gotten out of control and was risking the destruction of Roshar, so the Radiants sealed her up basically for her own good.  Not because they needed to do it to win the war but because BAM was somehow becoming unstable.  Maybe she was tied to Roshar in some way and was pulling the life force out of the planet?  Draining too much investure?

Crack theory: When she realized she wasn't strong enough on her own she began to seek out the Dawnshards, which is why Honor was raving about them and what she was pushing toward Feverstone for, so Kalak and Nale decided she needed to be stopped before Ashyn 2.0 happened. Perhaps she approached them for help (since they might know where the Ashynite ones went) and they pretended to agree but then went to the Radiants, hence why Kalak says they betrayed her?

[teknopathetic he/him]

7 hours ago, Blightsong said:

Stormfaker theory makes little sense to me. The main reason being, why would he continue the ruse when Gavilar was 100% dead? GavStormfather also repeats many opinions and lines as DalStormfather.

 

I think Occam’s razor is that the Stormfather is simply more wily and conniving than previously suspected. It makes sense to me that some of his dispositions changed from Gavilar’s death to when he bonded Dalinar.

Well. There is no ruse to continue. Ishar or Ba Ado Mishram stoped splicing into the signal that the Stormfather was using. 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

9 hours ago, agrabes said:

In this line, it implies that BAM had somehow gotten out of control and was risking the destruction of Roshar, so the Radiants sealed her up basically for her own good.  Not because they needed to do it to win the war but because BAM was somehow becoming unstable.  Maybe she was tied to Roshar in some way and was pulling the life force out of the planet?  Draining too much investure?  This was also the time when Honor was going a bit crazy - maybe he was ordering the Radiants to kill her and end the cycle and a few decided that they needed to go a different way.  I suspect we'll learn more about this in WaT because Shallan and Adolin are trying to find her.  

We have to answer a basic conundrum. The Radiants found out that capturing BAM caused something so bad that they risked the Recreance to prevent it. Why did they not just release her. If that would have been even worse, they would have had a logical reason. This may be the explanation.

That raises a terrible question. Does Kalak know the whole story? What will happen if Shallan finds BAM?

3 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Keep in mind that anti-Investiture is far more restrictive. Nightblood instantly obliterates anything it scratches even a tiny bit, but unless you're an immortal anti-Light isn't actually much more dangerous than a normal dagger to the heart, and even if you are one it's not an insta-kill. In the future there might be more dangerous ways to use it in technology, but when a Desolation is coming now... (Of course, Vasher doesn't need to know the teensy little fact that Gavilar is trying to cause it in the first place.)

You are raising a question. How much did Vasher do?

It read to me like the transport boxes were made with Axindweth's help. And that raises the question whom she is with. Silverlight?

[LewsTherinTelescope]

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

It read to me like the transport boxes were made with Axindweth's help. And that raises the question whom she is with. Silverlight?

I doubt anyone outside the Rosharan system with an ounce of sanity is sending agents to help Odium, so that limits our options to people without. My best guess right now is the Set, because Autonomy not only has worked with (or perhaps worked for) him in the past but has expressed approval in the present ("Rayse is contained, and we care not for his prison. Indeed, we admire his initiative."), and Axindweth seems to be a Feruchemist.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

25 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I doubt anyone outside the Rosharan system with an ounce of sanity is sending agents to help Odium, so that limits our options to people without. My best guess right now is the Set, because Autonomy not only has worked with (or perhaps worked for) him in the past but has expressed approval in the present ("Rayse is contained, and we care not for his prison. Indeed, we admire his initiative."), and Axindweth seems to be a Feruchemist.

The sending would have been done to help Gavilar Kholin. He would conventionally be seen on Odium's side.

But why does the Set show extreme interest in a Southern airship if they have access to Harmony's perpendicularity?

[BinarySecond]

The updates were *mwah* chefs kiss.

 

Still a Stormfaker die hard - He just behaves so completely differently I cannot fathom it being Him.

 

Vasher still at it enabling war crimes, good job buddy. Bump those rookie numbers.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

53 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But why does the Set show extreme interest in a Southern airship if they have access to Harmony's perpendicularity?

That's fair. Honestly, there are a lot of similar open questions around the Set. For one, how did they bring the Investiture for the perpendicularity to the Physical Realm without, you know, a perpendicularity to bring it through? Where is trellium coming from? How did Autonomy reach them to begin with? Right now the best I've got is "clearly someone in the Set is doing offworld stuff in a way the rest of the group can't", so perhaps Axindweth is involved there.

[listerfeend]

4 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

We have to answer a basic conundrum. The Radiants found out that capturing BAM caused something so bad that they risked the Recreance to prevent it. Why did they not just release her. If that would have been even worse, they would have had a logical reason. This may be the explanation.

I think this is conflating a couple of things. That line does imply that sealing BAM away was "for her own good" a little bit, but the fact still remains that she was providing forms of power, and they needed to stop that from happening as well. However, to the best of our knowledge, based on what we've gleaned from multiple sources, but mainly from the trial in Lasting Integrity, they didn't know they were "risking" anything with Recreance. Now, we've been given a lot of story about how the Radiants at the time had found out that Ashyn was destroyed with Surgebinding, and how this had come up repeatedly in the past, but Tanavast had always been able to convince everyone that it was gonna be fine and that they could continue Surgebinding and they weren't going to destroy the planet. But, at this time, Tanavast was raving mad about it and couldn't smooth it over. 

All of that to say, they didn't know the Recreance was going to cause the Deadeyes, and we don't know for sure that they knew there was a deeper issue with trapping BAM, so they wouldn't "just release her". So far, the Recreance and her trapping are only related in the fact that trapping her is what created the issue with broken Oaths causing Deadeyes. The Recreance itself was a sacrifice made by the Radiants and their spren to prevent THEM (Radiants) from destroying the planet. Just like trapping BAM was ALSO to prevent her from destroying the planet... I think 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

17 minutes ago, listerfeend said:

I think this is conflating a couple of things. That line does imply that sealing BAM away was "for her own good" a little bit, but the fact still remains that she was providing forms of power, and they needed to stop that from happening as well. However, to the best of our knowledge, based on what we've gleaned from multiple sources, but mainly from the trial in Lasting Integrity, they didn't know they were "risking" anything with Recreance.

Aside from personal hardship, they of course risked their capabilities. Even if the spren immediately proceeded to bond other people, the Knights Radiant would have no members of higher oaths for quite some time. Had Odium's side found a way to continue the False Desolation or start a real Desolation at that time, the Radiants would have faced a real problem.

 

20 minutes ago, listerfeend said:

Now, we've been given a lot of story about how the Radiants at the time had found out that Ashyn was destroyed with Surgebinding, and how this had come up repeatedly in the past, but Tanavast had always been able to convince everyone that it was gonna be fine and that they could continue Surgebinding and they weren't going to destroy the planet. But, at this time, Tanavast was raving mad about it and couldn't smooth it over.

I am sorry, but that always looked like a contrived justification to me. If they just wanted to stop surgebinding, the literally would have to do nothing, that is stop bonding people. Problem solved.

22 minutes ago, listerfeend said:

All of that to say, they didn't know the Recreance was going to cause the Deadeyes, and we don't know for sure that they knew there was a deeper issue with trapping BAM, so they wouldn't "just release her".

No, I am sorry, but there are those lines about the Skybreakers choosing an even worse fate. That makes no sense if they didn't know.

Also organizing a concerted dropping of the shards still implies that they knew something is wrong. If they really decided that Surgebinding needed to end at that time, they could have let a few volunteers break their bonds first.

[The Stick]

A few things:

Stormfather: This prologue V2 makes me far more convinced of a real Stormfather, just by how Brandon changed the language in the Stormfather interactions. However, what really convinced me was when Gavilar looked into the Stormfather's eyes and saw all the crazy stuff with infinite storms that made the world seem frail. I would say that power is not something Ishar could replicate. Lastly, I would say that the interaction with Kelsier when Gavilar asks if he was Radiant would suggest that it was the Stormfather. This is because I don't think that Ishar knows how mistborn work, but the knowledge of Tanavast would allow he Stormfather to know.

 

Vasher: With Vasher, I really have a few different problems. The first is that Brandon probably knew about Vasher giving Gavilar anti light pre RoW, so he had all of the WoB's saying Vasher was busy elsewhere, otherwise, he could have just helped Navani along. However, he only added Vasher in this version of the prologue, which would make it seem like he had not fully decided earlier. A continuation of this is storming why Vasher did not reveal how to make anti-voidlight to the people at Urithiru, considering he was willing to give it to a crazy tyrannical dictator who was trying to start a desolation.

This ties in with Vasher's conversation with Kaladin at the start of RoW when he hints that anti-voidlight exists, but just leaves Kaladin hanging. To me, the only thing that makes sense is Brandon just didn't have Vasher hand over the secrets to give Navani her whole arc.

My final point on Vasher is that I think that he should have assumed his ardent persona as Zahel by that time to have trained Adolin, but I would have to look seriously at the timeline to see that.

[Lord Spirit he/him]

26 minutes ago, The Stick said:

he only added Vasher in this version of the prologue, which would make it seem like he had not fully decided earlier

Or maybe he did have it planned, but chose to skip over that part with first reading, so that we wouldn’t spend 2 years theorizing about Vasher 

[Nesh he/him]

So, what do people think about the removal of the mention of Chana's hair?  I don't think it deconfirms Chana Davar, Brandon's likely trying to make it less obvious, but I don't think he can put that genie back in the bottle.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 hour ago, Nesh said:

So, what do people think about the removal of the mention of Chana's hair?  I don't think it deconfirms Chana Davar, Brandon's likely trying to make it less obvious, but I don't think he can put that genie back in the bottle.

IMO it's just that the sentence didn't make any logical sense at that point in the conversation. Looking at the Blade and bringing up her nature as a soldier flows naturally, but why is he asking about her hair color?

[Nesh he/him]

10 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

IMO it's just that the sentence didn't make any logical sense at that point in the conversation. Looking at the Blade and bringing up her nature as a soldier flows naturally, but why is he asking about her hair color?

That's a fair point.

[Master Silver]

So for me, the Stormfather information was the most interesting part of the new prologue. The Stormfather is not acting very much like he did during the rest of the book. Perhaps that is because this was more Honor's cognitive shadow before he gave fully merged with the Stormfather. So we have a spren that is mostly behaving like Tanavast. The heralds breaking the oath pact might possible hurt Honor a little bit every time, there is a chance that this last breaking of the oath pact further injured what was left of him so he had to merge completely with the Stormfather and give up the control he had. This spren says things like I need a champion, whereas the Stormfather says, things like tanavast made me do such and such. Finally, if part of this spren or cognative shadow broke off and caused Syl to wake up and handpicked Kaladin, it would make sense why the Stormfather calls Kaladin Son of Tanavast.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

17 hours ago, The Stick said:

A few things:

Stormfather: This prologue V2 makes me far more convinced of a real Stormfather, just by how Brandon changed the language in the Stormfather interactions. However, what really convinced me was when Gavilar looked into the Stormfather's eyes and saw all the crazy stuff with infinite storms that made the world seem frail. I would say that power is not something Ishar could replicate. Lastly, I would say that the interaction with Kelsier when Gavilar asks if he was Radiant would suggest that it was the Stormfather. This is because I don't think that Ishar knows how mistborn work, but the knowledge of Tanavast would allow he Stormfather to know.

Making your cloak vanish, respectively creating the illusion of a cloak is not an allomantic ability.

[GudThymes he/him]

So I recall feeling from the original prologue that there was something significant in the way that the stormfather talks to Gavilar, how it is almost always in italics rather than the all caps font. Re-reading it now with the changes I feel more strongly about the stormfaker theory and want to put forward (if others haven't already) that the faker is Ash.

 

We already know that she was in the palace that evening and I feel that everything Gavilar experiences while awake could be attributed to a light weaving. When Dalinar spoke in his visions it was a language that contemporary Rosharans didn't know but Ash would be able to and then be able to respond directly to Gavilar. There's also a point in the prologue where the stormfather directly criticizes Tanavast without being reverent to him.

[agrabes]

On 7/30/2024 at 3:30 AM, Oltux72 said:

We have to answer a basic conundrum. The Radiants found out that capturing BAM caused something so bad that they risked the Recreance to prevent it. Why did they not just release her. If that would have been even worse, they would have had a logical reason. This may be the explanation.

That raises a terrible question. Does Kalak know the whole story? What will happen if Shallan finds BAM?

Do we know if the Recreance was before or after they realized they'd created the Parshmen?  I always took it as before/simultaneous where the bulk of them didn't know, if any did and their reasoning for the Recreance was not tied to the Parshmen.  It seems like the "official story" in the book is that the Radiants learned they were the original Voidbringers and basically felt really bad when they learned their ancestors had invaded the planet thousands of years ago.  They probably also learned of the dangers of their powers and decided that the right thing to do was to give them up in order to save the world.  I always saw the BAM mission as basically "we'll do this now to end it for good, so let's make one last push before we give up our powers."  

Either way, yeah this will be really interesting when we find out.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

10 hours ago, agrabes said:

Do we know if the Recreance was before or after they realized they'd created the Parshmen?

If they gave up their powers and shards while there were still Parshendi with forms of power on Roshar, they would have lost the war.

 

10 hours ago, agrabes said:

They probably also learned of the dangers of their powers and decided that the right thing to do was to give them up in order to save the world.  I always saw the BAM mission as basically "we'll do this now to end it for good, so let's make one last push before we give up our powers." 

That does not mesh with the story about the Skybreakers. Nor, frankly, does it make intrinsic sense. Yes, you can get some people to break their bonds based on that. But why would everybody agree?

[Shacharma]

On 7/29/2024 at 9:05 PM, CtrlAltDepressed said:

Whats interesting about that is he doesn't seem to be trying to get him back. I think there is a wob that he is looking for Nightblood, but that does not seem to be a priority. 

It really feels like Vasher just tossed Nightblood when he got to Roshar and said 'Dad needs to do some work, go make new friends'
 

 

 

I think we know that he didnt just toss it, but rather gave it to the nightwatcher or cultivation, and that they in turn are the ones who gave it to Nale (after previously offering it to Dalinar). Wish we knew what he got in return....

Joining the format:

Vasher - We were told that he is on Roshar since investitutre is somuch more easily (and ethically) available there. And we also know from WoBs that while he's learned how to use it he still hasnt figured out how to awaken things with it. i think his goal here seems to be similar to that of the ghostbloods - finding a way to get stormlight offplanet so he can charge up on Roshar and then go elsewhere with the stormlight. Transporting light to braize and back is a logical step in this for him.

And in general him looking into how the light works fits his character, especially if creating the anti-voidlight was a byproduct of learning the tones to translate stormlight into something closer then breaths (endowment-light). Working with Gavilar for local legitimacy and resources makes sense as well.

Regardless, this is a cool and logical piece of the puzzle- but the big question to me is what he's been up to since then. Has he given up on his work? Or is he stil running experimets? 

Stormfaker - I was never a big believer in this theory but this version makes me lean even stronger towards stormfather.

[alder24]

13 hours ago, GudThymes said:

So I recall feeling from the original prologue that there was something significant in the way that the stormfather talks to Gavilar, how it is almost always in italics rather than the all caps font. Re-reading it now with the changes I feel more strongly about the stormfaker theory and want to put forward (if others haven't already) that the faker is Ash.

 

We already know that she was in the palace that evening and I feel that everything Gavilar experiences while awake could be attributed to a light weaving. When Dalinar spoke in his visions it was a language that contemporary Rosharans didn't know but Ash would be able to and then be able to respond directly to Gavilar. There's also a point in the prologue where the stormfather directly criticizes Tanavast without being reverent to him.

Ash can't Lightwave without her Honorblade and she doesn't have it. It's in Shinovar. The way Ash speaks in RoW is not consistent with this Stormfather. And of course, Heralds can't feel other Heralds dying regular death.

On 7/30/2024 at 4:06 PM, The Stick said:

However, what really convinced me was when Gavilar looked into the Stormfather's eyes and saw all the crazy stuff with infinite storms that made the world seem frail. I would say that power is not something Ishar could replicate.

 

This part was unchanged, it was present in the previous version:

Quote

The Stormfather rippled, then a face emerged in the shimmering. Two eyes, like holes in a storm, clouds spiraling around them and leading into the depths.

“You lied,” Gavilar said. “You lied?”

Oh, Gavilar. There is so much you do not know. So much you assume. And the two never do manage to meet. Like paths to opposing cities.

Those eyes seemed to pull Gavilar forward, to overwhelm him, to consume him. He’d never seen anything like this before. He... He saw storms, endless storms, and a world so frail. A tiny speck of blue in against an infinite canvas of black.

 

On 7/30/2024 at 3:44 PM, Oltux72 said:

I am sorry, but that always looked like a contrived justification to me. If they just wanted to stop surgebinding, the literally would have to do nothing, that is stop bonding people. Problem solved.

Not solved because they would have still had access to Surgebinding, they were afraid they themselves would accidentally destroy Roshar. In their mind, as long as Radiants existed, the threat remained. Breaking Oaths was the only way to stop this threat - at least that's what they thought. They couldn't have trusted themselves to not Surgebind - it's unreasonable to expect a Windrunner not to use his powers to protect, or an Edgedancer not to heal, or any other Radiant to just stop Surgebinding, being held back only by their own willpower. That's just impossible. It's all about fearing to cause an accident that will hurt Roshar - and they'd literally just witnessed one accident that had unforeseeable consequences and lobotomized an entire sentient, native species. They already had proof that their powers were dangerous and they could destroy everything, even when those powers were used for the greater good. 

Releasing BAM wasn't an option because that would have started another Desolation.

On 7/30/2024 at 3:44 PM, Oltux72 said:

Also organizing a concerted dropping of the shards still implies that they knew something is wrong. If they really decided that Surgebinding needed to end at that time, they could have let a few volunteers break their bonds first.

It wasn't organized. It just happened. All Radiants made this decision together with their spren in the heat of the moment, mostly independent from each other. Spren knew it would hurt or it might even kill them, yet they were still willing to do this (Maya told us this).

Spoiler

Questioner: (paraphrased)

In RoW was see Kaladin telling Syl that he believes that the Recreance took place not as one event such as fever stone keep, but on an individual basis. This has created many discussions in the fandom about how the spren could have been unaware that they would become deadeye's. Is this because it took people years later to discover how to summon and dismiss shards through an ornementation mishap, and deadeye's weren't seen by the other spren in shadesmar until there was no stopping anyone. 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

The recreance wasn't something that happened over months, more like days. And the decision was made in the heat of the moment by the spren and their knights.

Footnote: I don't have the exact wording unfortunately, but he did say 'days not months' and explained that this was something that he hoped to be totally cleared up by the end of book 5. 
Miscellaneous 2021 (July 1, 2021)

RoW ch 94:

Quote

“Did you know the full cost, Maya?” Adolin asked, the question suddenly occurring to him. “Did you and your Radiants know that you would become deadeyes?”
Adolin felt Maya searching deep, pushing through her exhaustion, seeking … memories that were difficult for her to access. Eventually, she shook her head and whispered, “Pain. Yes. Death? No. Maybe.”

 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

They couldn't have trusted themselves to not Surgebind - it's unreasonable to expect a Windrunner not to use his powers to protect, or an Edgedancer not to heal, or any other Radiant to just stop Surgebinding, being held back only by their own willpower.

I wouldn't be surprised if deciding to never use their powers to uphold their Ideal counts as breaking their oaths in and of itself anyway.