Ishar caused the Heralds' madness

[Caged_Drifter]

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hese days he felt only panic, indecision, and a crushing darkness. Always nearby, always threatening him. Without Ishar holding some of it back… it would have destroyed him long ago.

 

We know Ishar's kept contact with at least some of the Heralds and is all in all what could be described as "one shady af motherThis post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules**".

Knowing that he had a hand in helping Kalak "holding back" his darkness is suspicious as hell when we know what his advice lead Nale to do. He seems to be be playing his own game and I suspect he might have caused or encouraged the heralds descent into insanity. 

I don't have enough proof to build a cohesive theory yet but maybe someone here has examples of quotes or wobs that imply he's had contact and influence over some of the other heralds as well? Or some that bring light to what exactly he told Kalak and Nale?

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, Caged_Drifter said:

We know Ishar's kept contact with at least some of the Heralds and is all in all what could be described as "one shady af motherThis post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rules**".

Knowing that he had a hand in helping Kalak "holding back" his darkness is suspicious as hell when we know what his advice lead Nale to do. He seems to be be playing his own game and I suspect he might have caused or encouraged the heralds descent into insanity. 

I don't have enough proof to build a cohesive theory yet but maybe someone here has examples of quotes or wobs that imply he's had contact and influence over some of the other heralds as well? Or some that bring light to what exactly he told Kalak and Nale?

We don't know a lot about Ishar. We know that Nale was often visiting and talking to him, with Ishar convincing him to ignore the Everstorm and continue to hunt down other Radiants, but I don't think we know if any other Herald did the same. Heralds madness is a consequence of their unnaturally long lifespan combined with a ton of trauma gained from millenia of torture on Braize - it's not something that could be caused by Ishar. Every Cognitive Shadow that lived long enough suffers the same fate - including Fused. It awaits even Kelsier, if he doesn't do anything to fix this (that's why he wants to get Kalak in his hands). 

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)

What's more likely is that Ishar found a way to mitigate the effects of this madness and helped others in some way. With this new information in mind, a quote that Kalak said in WoR prologue now makes a lot of sense:

Quote

“She’s getting worse,” the voice continued. “We weren’t supposed to get worse. Am I getting worse? I think I feel worse.”

Whatever Ishar was doing, it clearly had some limitations and only slowed down the progression of their insanity, not stop it completely. Maybe it even ceased to work at some point, or Ishar stopped doing this judging by what Kalak said in WaT. And looking at Ishar himself, it probably wasn't a good idea to allow another insane Herald to help you with your own insanity - that's probably why Nale ended up killing Radiants, his trust to Ishar blinded him and prevented him from seeing that Ishar is also insane. Maybe even Ishar was more affected by this and his own madness got worse? There is even a Death Rattle that in the context of what Kalak said might suggest it:

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The burdens of nine become mine. Why must I carry the madness of them all? Oh, Almighty, release me. 

As for quotes about Ishar, there isn't much to show, only what Nale told us.
 

Spoiler

Edgedancer ch 9:

Quote

“But…” said the male initiate. “Is it really … I mean, shouldn’t we want them to return, so we won’t be the only order of Knights Radiant?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Darkness said. “I once thought as you, but Ishar made the truth clear to me. If the bonds between men and spren are reignited, then men will naturally discover the greater power of the oaths. Without Honor to regulate this, there is a small chance that what comes next will allow the Voidbringers to again make the jump between worlds. That would cause a Desolation, and even a small chance that the world will be destroyed is a risk that we cannot take. Absolute fidelity to the mission Ishar gave us—the greater law of protecting Roshar—is required.”
[...]
“A fluke,” Darkness said, his voice firm. “I contacted Ishar, and he assured me it is so. What you saw are a few listeners who remain from the old days, ones free to use the old forms. They summoned a cluster of Voidspren. We’ve found remnants of them on Roshar before, hiding.”
[...]
“The Voidbringers have not returned,” Darkness said firmly. “Ishar has promised it, and he will not lie. We must do our duty. You are questioning, Szeth-son-Neturo. This is not good; this is weakness. To question is to accept a descent into inactivity. The only path to sanity and action is to choose a code and to follow it. This is why I came to you in the first place.”

OB ch 106:

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“I visited Ishar,” Nin continued. “You call him Ishu-son-God. He has always been the most wise of us. I did not … want to believe … what had happened.”
Szeth nodded. He had seen that. After the first Everstorm, Nin had insisted that the Voidbringers hadn’t returned. He had given excuse after excuse, until eventually he’d been forced to admit what he was seeing.
“I worked for thousands of years to prevent another Desolation,” Nin continued. “Ishar warned me of the danger. Now that Honor is dead, other Radiants might upset the balance of the Oathpact. Might undermine certain … measures we took, and give an opening to the enemy.”

OB ch 121:

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[Nale] nodded. “Centuries spent on Braize—the place you call Damnation— stole my ability to feel. We each cope somehow, but only Ishar survived with his mind intact. Regardless, you are certain you wish to follow a man with your oath?”

RoW ch 77

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“We didn’t do anything to return them,” she said, taking a gamble based on what he’d said earlier. “It was what you did.”
“Impossible,” Nale repeated. “Ishar said only a Connection between the worlds could cause a bridge to open. And Taln has not given in. I would know if he had.…”

RoW ch 101:

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[Nale] nodded. “Centuries spent on Braize—the place you call Damnation— stole my ability to feel. We each cope somehow, but only Ishar survived with his mind intact. Regardless, you are certain you wish to follow a man with your oath?”

RoW ch 111:

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Shalash had disabused him of these notions. She presented Ishar as a confident, eager man. Energetic, more a battlefield commander than a wise old scholar. He was the man who had discovered how to travel between worlds, leading humans to Roshar in the first place.
One word that Shalash had never used was “crafty.” Ishar was a bold thinker, a man who pulled others after him on seemingly crazed ideas that worked. But he was not a subtle man. Or at least he hadn’t been. Shalash warned that all of them had changed over the millennia, their … personal quirks growing more and more pronounced.

 

 

[Subvisual Haze]

My thought is more that Ishar is manipulating their connections to make himself seem completely sane, good, and trustworthy.  The other Heralds then construct delusional explanations to explain reality in a way that won't challenge Ishar.

[Dofurion]

Something I'd like to point out is that Ash doesn't seem to be very close to Ishar and is the one who seems to be more sane. Well, she has her compulsion to eliminate representations of her but compared to the others her state is much better.

[+robardin he/him]

3 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

My thought is more that Ishar is manipulating their connections to make himself seem completely sane, good, and trustworthy.  The other Heralds then construct delusional explanations to explain reality in a way that won't challenge Ishar.

He couldn't have done that without reclaiming his Honorblade to be able to use the Bondsmith surges, and we know that that must have happened fairly recently: after Szeth had been sentenced to being Truthless, given his dialogue with Ishar in RoW, which in turn was only a year or two before the death of Gavilar in of TWoK.

How do we know that? Because in TWoK Interlude 4, where we read about Rysn for the first time, she is with her babsk Vstim in Shinovar, where a Shin man he's trading with named "Thresh" refers to the "soldier" Vstim had acquired from him "nearly seven years ago" as Truthless, and that the token payment Vstim had pressed upon him had ended up thrown into a river, as "I could not take money for a Truthless".

That had to have been Szeth. Meanwhile, a few chapters earlier in I-3, Szeth was reflecting on how he had worn white to assassinate the King of Alethkar "over five years before".

Assuming the two Interludes were roughly cotemporaneous, that means Szeth had been Truthless for up to two years before that killing, given to Vstim and then somewhere/when acquired by Liss, who sold him, but Nalan knew he was bearing Jezrien's Blade and directed the Parshendi to buy him, etc.

So about seven years before Szeth began wreaking terror under Taravangian's orders, seven Honorblades were still in Shinovar (minus the one he himself bore, Nale's reclaimed Blade, and Taln's that had never been there), with the Bondsmith Honorblade in Szeth's father's keeping.

But Ishar's been talking - and advising/directing - Nalan and Kalak at least, for many years. Nalan referred to working "for thousands of years" to prevent a Desolation, under advice from Ishar to prevent Nahel bonds from forming, even as (hey, cuckoobananas much?) it was OK for highspren to be bonding new Skybreakers.

Edited September 18, 2024 by robardin

[Isilel]

23 minutes ago, robardin said:

He couldn't have done that without reclaiming his Honorblade to be able to use the Bondsmith surges,

 

But didn't the Stormfather say at some point that Ishar had been a Bondsmith _before_ he became a Herald? That this was how he had been able to bring humans from Ashyn to Roshar? Personally, I think that he is a Dawnsliver and the Dawnshard he had born is the one mentioned in the Poem of Ista, that could "bind any creature Voidish or mortal".

[Alcatur]

1 hour ago, Isilel said:

 

But didn't the Stormfather say at some point that Ishar had been a Bondsmith _before_ he became a Herald? That this was how he had been able to bring humans from Ashyn to Roshar? Personally, I think that he is a Dawnsliver and the Dawnshard he had born is the one mentioned in the Poem of Ista, that could "bind any creature Voidish or mortal".

He was "binder of gods" before he became a Herald. 

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

We don't know a lot about Ishar. We know that Nale was often visiting and talking to him, with Ishar convincing him to ignore the Everstorm and continue to hunt down other Radiants, but I don't think we know if any other Herald did the same. Heralds madness is a consequence of their unnaturally long lifespan combined with a ton of trauma gained from millenia of torture on Braize - it's not something that could be caused by Ishar. Every Cognitive Shadow that lived long enough suffers the same fate - including Fused. It awaits even Kelsier, if he doesn't do anything to fix this (that's why he wants to get Kalak in his hands). 
 

Herald madness is a little too specific to be just a normal consequence of living too long:

Shalash, herald of beauty, obsessed with destruction of artwork

Nale herald of justice, obsessed with merciless application of law

Jezerezeh, the king of heralds, reduced to a lowliest, alcoholic bum

Kelek, renowned for his leadership skills, unable to commit and to make a decision. 

 

All four of them seem to have an affliction which is opposite of their main strength. That is very peculiar and implies that something more is afoot. It could apply to Taln as well - he is overcame by fear, unable to act - but when we saw him at Kholinar, he seemed to be functional, if terribly worn down.

[ZenBossanova]

I suspect Ishar may be the most mad of them all, but in a distinctly spiritual sense. A warped twisted priest, who misleads. 

 

4 hours ago, Alcatur said:

Herald madness is a little too specific to be just a normal consequence of living too long:

Perhaps he is part of the source of their madness? 

[alder24]

14 hours ago, Isilel said:

But didn't the Stormfather say at some point that Ishar had been a Bondsmith _before_ he became a Herald? That this was how he had been able to bring humans from Ashyn to Roshar?

Yes, he was a Bondsmith on Ashyn. However it's really hard to say if he still had those powers on Roshar, but I doubt he did, especially after becoming a Herald. Powers on Ashyn are given by diseases (which Cognitive Shadows are immune to) and he wouldn't have needed to recover his Honorblade if he still had his old Bondsmithing powers.

 

12 hours ago, Alcatur said:

Herald madness is a little too specific to be just a normal consequence of living too long:

Shalash, herald of beauty, obsessed with destruction of artwork

Nale herald of justice, obsessed with merciless application of law

Jezerezeh, the king of heralds, reduced to a lowliest, alcoholic bum

Kelek, renowned for his leadership skills, unable to commit and to make a decision. 

 

All four of them seem to have an affliction which is opposite of their main strength. That is very peculiar and implies that something more is afoot. It could apply to Taln as well - he is overcame by fear, unable to act - but when we saw him at Kholinar, he seemed to be functional, if terribly worn down.

That of course is true. It's a magical consequence of being a Cognitive Shadow who has lived for way too long. Heralds are Cognitive Shadows and that makes them susceptible to people's perception - they will change based on how people view them. Ten Fools are connected to Heralds - they are the reversal of Heralds. This must have affected them, combined with how different people on Roshar view them manifested as this kind of madness. Ishar was not free of the same fate, he was affected by it just like others. 

Spoiler

celestialwolf157

By the way, Kaladin's comment on Taln and Shalash's mental health makes me wonder: Are the Ten Fools based on the Heralds after they broke the Oathpact? Having 9 immortal, mentally ill people on Roshar for millenia seems like it'd have spawned some stories that could have eventually become stories of the Ten Fools. Taln wouldn't be included in this, but with Vorinism and the number 10, I imagine they'd have created something to oppose his virtues.

Also, I can't remember if this is confirmed or not, but on the topic of the Heralds' mental health, is it at all supernatural? Taln seemed to recover somewhat when Dalinar summoned the perpendicularity at the end of Oathbringer. So, is it just severe PTSD, or something supernatural is involved?

Brandon Sanderson

I've tried to make it clear in talking about the books that I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health. What they're suffering from is in large part supernatural--and has to do with the way souls (or Cognitive Shadows) work in the cosmere. So you are correct. This doesn't mean that some normal treatments wouldn't help them, but their core problem has a huge supernatural component.

And yes, there IS a relationship between the ten fools and the Heralds, though people on Roshar wouldn't be able to point it out.

mastapsi

Is the Heralds' madness related to and/or the same thing as the Fused's madness? The Stormfather mentions that each time one of the Fused is reborn, their mind is further damaged. Is it the same with the Herald? To many rebirths, possibly compounded by the fact that they not only often died each Desolation, but were tortured until the next one?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, these two things are related. (There are some hints in Rhythm of War at how Hoid has avoided a similar fate.)

Note that the torture--and the many rebirths--are a big part of this. But their age is also a factor.

3DLightweaver

Does this mean that a certain Cognitive Shadow from the Mistborn series is fated to go insane?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on a lot of factors. But the longer a Cognitive Shadow exists, the more likely these problems are.

dce42

Would this affect the Returned as well? What about those with a lot (like 8,000) breaths since they are not cognitive shadows.

Brandon Sanderson

Returned are Cognitive Shadows. In the Cosmere, there is no way to bring someone back to life, other than normal medical resuscitation, without using a Cognitive Shadow.

Stromeng

What about Dalinar? I thought he has had textbook PTSD, but the screams he continued to hear turned out to be magic.

Brandon Sanderson

Dalinar has a whole host of issues, not easily defined by a single definition. Assume, though, that his mental state is a normal response to, in part, supernatural occurrences.

The different for the Heralds is that they have conditions which could only truly exist in the cosmere, even if some of the manifestations and symptoms are similar to what could happen on Earth.

Stonewalker16

So is that implying that Hoid is a Cognitive Shadow, or is that just an effect of being really really old? Also does Vasher know about/how to avoid these effects? Probably an RAFO, but...

Brandon Sanderson

Come back to that question in about a month or so.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As (Sept. 8, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Spren are reflections of how people in the Physical Realm see things. So if you have a Cognitive Shadow, would their personality change based on what people in the Physical Realm see them as?

Brandon Sanderson

The short answer is, not as much as you're worried about, no more than we tend to change based on what people say to us and how we interact with the people around us.

The long answer is, over a long period of time, it can happen. And it's gonna depend on a number of factors. But we're talking a matter of centuries not years. The same sort of thing you see happening to Vessels of Shards can happen to Cognitive Shadows.

So, the long answer is yes, but it's not an immediate worry. It's not like people start thinking of you and it shifts you because your perception of yourself is enough strong usually that it rebuffs these sorts of things, being self-aware does that. And a lot of the influence to spren and things like that happen during kind of formative not-quite-self-aware times, if that makes sense.

If you were to become a Cognitive Shadow right now, it wouldn't be a major concern, but in a thousand years, you may look back and say "wow, I was shaped by public perception in ways that I wasn't expecting".

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

The Heralds seem to be insane in the ways of their Divine Attributes, at least somewhat. Is this because they're Heralds? As Cognitive Shadows, they're subject to people's perception, like how spren are?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a very astute question, and yes, that is influencing them quite a bit. I'm doing something here with the Heralds. Like, I want the Heralds "madnesses," as we call them, to be magical diseases. And the contrast of something like Kaladin's depression, which I'm trying to treat very real-world. I'm trying to treat them as these things that couldn't exist in our world. They're fantastical mental diseases, like we have fantastic physical diseases in Elantris. So I did make them thematic, and I would say part of the reason for that is people's perception of them and their mental state reacting against that. And that should be a theme among all of the Heralds.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

 

Spoiler

gunslingers

The number 10 seems to be a recurring theme in this world. Are the "ten fools" the antithesis of the ten orders of the knights radiant?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, ten is a number of mythological import in the world. The Ten Fools are, essentially, the opposites of the Ten Heralds--who each represented an ideal. (Those ideals were later adopted by the orders of Knights Radiant, so yes, there is a connection--but there's a step between them.)

General Reddit 2011 (March 1, 2011)

 

[Subvisual Haze]

18 hours ago, Isilel said:

 

But didn't the Stormfather say at some point that Ishar had been a Bondsmith _before_ he became a Herald? That this was how he had been able to bring humans from Ashyn to Roshar? Personally, I think that he is a Dawnsliver and the Dawnshard he had born is the one mentioned in the Poem of Ista, that could "bind any creature Voidish or mortal".

That's a good point.  I wonder if Ishar's original Ashyn Bondsmith powers were sealed away/regulated by Honor after Ashyn's destruction, but then when Honor was dying the limitations starting reverting and Ishar's old unregulated powers returned.  We are told for example that Dalinar's ability to see connection lines was something that Stormfather had only had described to him once before by Melishi.  If Honor's limitations on Bondsmith magic were degrading for Melishi (shortly before Honor's death), then Ishar's original Bondsmith powers might also have been making a return.

[+robardin he/him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yes, he was a Bondsmith on Ashyn. However it's really hard to say if he still had those powers on Roshar, but I doubt he did, especially after becoming a Herald. Powers on Ashyn are given by diseases (which Cognitive Shadows are immune to) and he wouldn't have needed to recover his Honorblade if he still had his old Bondsmithing powers.

I thought the whole "disease given powers" on Ashyn was (a) still non-canonical, and (b) something that has developed there AFTER the cataclysmic breaking of that world that resulted in large scale dispersion of the population there to Roshar.

Ishar was mentioned as already being a "binder of gods" before becoming a Herald, and being largely responsible or heavily involved in using "the Surges" (which just means "Cosmere magic") that "destroyed" Ashyn, but that could mean quite a few things - not that he was a Bondsmith or wielded the same two Surges that he would later gain via the Honorblade.

For example, he could be called a "binder of gods" in terms of negotiating or somehow forcing Odium, Honor, and Cultivation to agree to the oaths that now bind Odium to Roshar: we just don't know what the exchange was, or the broader terms.

Also remember that Odium came to Roshar WITH humanity -- as led by Ishar -- and that he was their god when they arrived. The fact that allegiances shifted/flipped at the same time as Odium being bound, and then the Heralds gaining Honorblades via an Oathpact linked to a cycle of Desolations, cannot all be a coincidence, and to find that Ishar was somehow at the center of it all (either as agent or chief pawn between gods) is hardly to be wondered at.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

I thought the whole "disease given powers" on Ashyn was (a) still non-canonical, and (b) something that has developed there AFTER the cataclysmic breaking of that world that resulted in large scale dispersion of the population there to Roshar.

Well, it hasn't appeared in any book yet, but Brandon is quite consistent in his description of this magic system. And yes, the destruction of Ashyn affected the magic system in some way, but we don't know in what way - we know however that this system existed before the destruction of Ashyn. This magic system is also related to the Old Magic, it is a Cultivation-based system and it is made by a symbiotic bond between investiture and microbes. While we don't know the details yet, I don't think that the very fundamentals of this system changed (but everything is possible considering that Dawnsingers were able to use Surges without the Radiant Nahel Bond).

Spoiler

R'Shara

So on Ashyn, was the magic system always diseased based?

Brandon Sanderson

That was the diseased based magic.

R'Shara

Yeah, before-

Brandon Sanderson

I'll RAFO that. It isn't exactly the same as it was.

Skyward release party (Nov. 6, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Vanahian

Brandon has said that the Ashynite disease-based magic was related with the Old Magic. Did he mean it in a direct way? Like this magic from Ashyn was a branch or a variety of the Old Magic system?

Brandon Sanderson

I do have to RAFO this, for the most part. Suffice it to say that the disease magic is related to a symbiotic bond between spren-like Investiture and microorganisms.

General Reddit 2020 (Sept. 24, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Paleo (paraphrased)

Are the Ashynite magic system, in which micro organisms cause diseases and bestow powers, and the Old Magic related? You could sort of see the powers and the disease as a boon and a curse. If so, does the "Old" part come from that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, they are related, but the name comes from the magic actually predating spren bonds.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

[LewsTherinTelescope]

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

And yes, the destruction of Ashyn affected the magic system in some way, but we don't know in what way - we know however that this system existed before the destruction of Ashyn.

We know it wasn't always disease-based, though we don't know when the change happened.

Spoiler

beer_in_an_esky

1) Is Ashyn still operating on a sickness-based magic, as indicated in the readings you've done previously? Or are you not ready to canonise that?

2) Assuming it is, was the use of Investiture on Ashyn always sickness-based?

3) If someone who is sick on Ashyn leaves while still unwell, would they still have powers? How about any people they infect on the new world?

Brandon Sanderson

1) Ashyn still has that magic, though I've gone a lot of directions on how I want the culture to feel, so I wouldn't consider that canon yet.

2) No.

3) The powers come directly via the micro-organisms, similar to other symbiotic relationships in the cosmere.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 4, 2018)

The floating cities rely on the diseases, though, so either they transitioned from the old magic to this one or this one existed at the time. I've wondered if the disease magic is actually a result of experimenting with the Surges and it escaping is what led to the planet's downfall, would fit with Stormlight's "sci-fi in fantasy clothing" feel.