What is Taln too late for? Or, what is Odium’s goal during Desolations?

[coolsnow7]

In TWoK epilogue with Wit, Wit says he fears Taln is too late. Similarly in WoR, Taln’s interlude, he says “I fear I might be too late this time”.

When we read these naively when they first came out, we didn’t know very much: we didn’t know that there even was an Oathpact, how it functioned, or what it was meant to do. So we thought Taln must be too late to stop the Desolation, or something to that effect.

Well, now we know that Taln’s arrival was never going to stop the Desolation. We also know that he isn’t too late to “teach people to soulcast bronze” or whatever, because (as he observed in Oathbringer) technological development has had a chill 4500 years to leapfrog ahead of whatever was cutting edge back in his days.

I want to emphasize, before I give my best guess, that the question is better than the answer. Taln and Wit’s reaction to his timing are not simply a reaction to an impending desolation; they’re reacting to something that is fundamentally different this time. Moreover, we don’t really understand Odium’s goal for the war against humans on Roshar: if he’s trying to train them to be shock troops in a Cosmere-wide war, then is he just never trying to win during the Desolations themselves? If we knew the answer here, we might know what Taln is normally trying to accomplish when he comes back from Braize, and why he’s too late this time.

Anyway my best guess is the Everstorm. That is what makes this Desolation unique, and we also know that it was building up in the Cognitive Realm for a long time - hence Wit would have been aware of its impending actualization. It also got a lot of buildup as a component of various prophecies regarding Odium’s threat and eventual victory, but so far hasn’t seemed terribly significant - it caused a lot of physical and economic damage and woke up the Singers, but otherwise hasn’t done much? Well, presumably there’s something it can do that has existential risks for humanity, and we’ll find out what that is.

[Determination]

1 hour ago, coolsnow7 said:

Taln and Wit’s reaction to his timing are not simply a reaction to an impending desolation; they’re reacting to something that is fundamentally different this time.

So there are a few "fundamentally different" things going on here that I feel like are pretty central to the Taln side of the question. I'm going to ignore Wit because Wit is Wit and so he's mostly unknowable until he decides to say something mysterious for us to decipher.

The first unique aspect is that after the "Last" Desolation the rest of the Heralds ditched Taln and sent him to Braize alone. This of course turned out to be a wonderful idea for everybody else, because unlike those other cowards, Taln is such an absolute unit that he managed to solo Damnation for 4500 years.

We don't know exactly how it normally works when Herald "breaks" (except perhaps that it happens quickly ) but we can probably assume that Taln knew he had been ghosted, and that he would expect the Fused to remain bound unless he broke.

The other thing that's different is we know the Fused had already basically given up on breaking Taln and were instead pursuing other options, with all the Everstorm and the Voidspren business.

Very relevant WoB

Spoiler

Quote

Questioner
Taln. Did he actually ever give up? Or was it... Did he just get released when...?
 
Brandon Sanderson
You will find out, but Taln did not break. You'll find out how it happened, but Taln did not break.
 
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/472/#e14869

I get the impression that at some point Taln suddenly realized he could return to Roshar, and he had been able to for some time. Cue "oh jeez they all started without me" reaction, panicked exit, chasing the school bus down the road, that whole thing.

We know that Taln arrived before the Everstorm but long after Ulim began his meddling. He may have had some knowledge upon his arrival that things had already been set into motion which he was unable to stop. It depends on the exact circumstances of his release from Braize, really.

There is some potentially relevant information in the SA5 prologue preview but I won't include it here because it doesn't change any of the conclusions.

All that being said, it's tough to say whether Taln knows much of anything about what's going on, seeing as he's basically stuck in a loop mumbling to himself. There's a good chance that "I fear I may be too late" is just part of his standard pre-Desolation speech, since the rest of his posse couldn't even make it a whole year in Braize by the time they betrayed him.

As far as Odium's goal during Desolations, we know he's training up an army to take over the universe or something nefarious like that, but I suspect he's playing both sides, and is/was entirely willing to send the singers to space instead, if they come out on top. He's probably just waiting for one side to end the wars for good on their own - the Desolations have gotten progressively more intense as the Fused get more experienced in waging war, and the humans somehow keep winning. He's just going to keep letting them level up on each other until one side is strong enough to ship them off to his Star War.

Aside, my hunch is that the whole "Odium is humanity's god" business is only part of the story. We know he used to cruise the Cosmere murdering Shards, and eventually got stuck on Roshar because he's a big dummy and Honor somehow tricked him into promising not to leave. Seems unlikely that his "home base" was Ashyn all along, and he went out and smashed three Shards before finally going after his neighbors? And yet somehow only recently (in Sibling time scales) became Invested enough on Roshar to get his own Pure Tone? I'm sus. Spooky Hate God is totally an alien. How that plays into his goals is unclear, but it almost certainly does somehow.

tl;dr: Taln is banana sandwiches don't listen to him, and Odium is a snek don't listen to him either

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

3 hours ago, coolsnow7 said:

In TWoK epilogue with Wit, Wit says he fears Taln is too late. Similarly in WoR, Taln’s interlude, he says “I fear I might be too late this time”.

When we read these naively when they first came out, we didn’t know very much: we didn’t know that there even was an Oathpact, how it functioned, or what it was meant to do. So we thought Taln must be too late to stop the Desolation, or something to that effect.

Well, now we know that Taln’s arrival was never going to stop the Desolation.

...

What was Taln too late for...? Taln, the only Herald not of noble birth, was not supposed to remain unbreakable to his soul even after his mind was shattered by torture and watching his friends die. He was late for his own funeral and rebirth because he was stubborn enough to frustrate bedrock into submission...he overshot timing by a power of nine plus three orders of magnitude and he's "afraid that [he] Might he too late this time..."

...call him late or slow all you want, the only two people who have had a greater individual roshar-wide impact on cosmere history than him are Honor and Cultivation...