Jasnah's hidden powers

[logicless.bt]

[This is my first post here, but I trawled these forums during the year of Secret Projects.]

So, a certain line has stuck with me since last week's chapters, 14 and 15, and I haven't seen any discussion about it here or on Reddit (though admittedly I could have missed it). During Jasnah's section, she thinks to herself:

Quote

She did not dispute [Dalinar's choice of champion.] He was a Bondsmith and a fierce warrior. He’d had dealings with Odium, and perhaps understood the creature better than any mortal. Jasnah had written out the reasons he was the best choice. Yet… could it have been her? What if, instead of hiding her powers, she’d told people what she could do and what she feared?

Now, it's phrased rather obliquely. It could feasibly be describing her years of being a secret Elsecaller, but that seems unlikely. The problem at hand is contemporary enough that it makes no sense to beat herself up over the past; additionally, the next paragraph talks about how Jasnah has been hounded for her honesty and compares it to Dalinar, but it does not stop to imagine how she could/would have done things differently if she had gone public. Also, going public would have in no way affected her ability to be chosen as champion or her ability to win the champion's contest. I believe that this is using her Elsecalling powers as a red herring to foreshadow something greater. So the question is: what powers does Jasnah hide?

Here is what we know about these purported hidden powers:

1. Jasnah has a reason to not reveal them during an era when Radiants are not only accepted but highly needed.

2. They cannot be confused with regular Elsecaller powers, or else they are esoteric like substantiation -- that is to say, no one has come up to Jasnah and said "Why aren't you doing X?" even though several people, including various rulers, should be in-the-know about the different Radiant types.

3. They have some kind of ominous information attached to them that would upset the public -- this could be cosmere-aware information, Recreance-related information, or they are just flat-out so dangerous it makes her afraid to publicize them.

4. She had a "fit of madness" as a child, which is referenced directly after the above quote. This is part of my main reasoning that she does possess a hidden power as it draws attention to a facet of her past that has thus far only been given a sentence or two.

I have run through a list of most reasonable possibilities:

1. Off-world powers: unlikely to impossible. She cannot be Returned, and any Breaths she has would not give her strange powers (and she didn't recognize Wit's Awakening). We have never had a reference to her drinking too much water or a hint from Ivory that she has a second bond, so a Luhel bond is off the table. Feruchemist is impossible; Hemalurgist is ludicrously unlikely; Allomancer is impossible due to lack of lerasium. Elantrian is impossible. It also would feel fairly cheap: there's so much going on on Roshar anyway, it doesn't need to poach from other systems.

2. Corrupted bond: unlikely to impossible. The Oathgate spren look like inkspren, and Shallan can tell when those are being corrupted.

3. Double bond: slightly more likely but still not going to happen. That's been Shallan's whole thing, and narratively we don't need a repeat. Technically being a hidden Dustbringer would match several of these points of information, but not the madness part since Ivory was her introduction to Radiant spren.

4. Elsecallers are just that dangerous, possibly because of microkinesis: medium possibility. We keep bumping up into the fact that messing with Surges and spren can destroy the world. Someone blew up Ashyn. Ishar almost stole the Stormfather's bond. Binding BAM eradicated an entire species' culture and knocked a hole in all intelligent spren. Elsecallers aren't one of the ~4 orders that manipulate axi, but it's possible that Transformation or Transportation offers a similar level of danger. Given that Elsecallers form a miniature Perpendicularity according to WoB, this seems possible. Or else it could be that -- thanks to her talks with Wit -- she realized that teleportation being widely accessible via Radiants or fabrial could cause large-scale interactions between different worlds, even leading to war.

4. Unmade influence: most likely imo. There are several Unmade we know nothing about. We also know that Shallan's family -- which has been plagued by mental illness -- was under the influence of an Unmade thanks to WoB. Brandon does like to separate regular mental illness like Kaladin's from magical mental illness, but Elhokar's paranoia was caused by Cryptics and the Heralds' madness is caused by magic, so it remains possible. What if Jasnah had contact with that Unmade in her childhood? Renarin has access to Fortune from Sja-Anat, and Yelig-nar offers all the Surges; it's possible that her "fit of madness" was some manner of Unmade influence that granted her powers. This would also provided a shift in dynamic for Shallan and Jasnah in the second arc, going from mentor and student to equals at the hands of an unkind creature (and potentially fellow worldhoppers).

 

Anyway, this might just be me reading too deeply into a vaguely-phrased line. But I wanted to say this regardless!

[Icy]

You make really interesting points, the only thing I want to touch on is hemalurgy, which you say is ludicrously unlikely; is it? Brandon confirmed that there are people with hemalurgy who have been to Roshar, and he's pretty sure they've been on-screen as of Oathbringer. I'm not saying it's likely that this is the case, and I personally don't think she's got a hemalurgic spike, but given the Scadrians and other Cosmere-aware people Gavilar had been dealing with, I wouldn't rule it out as impossible. Just my 2 cents, good thread, I like the way you're thinking. My assumption is that she's maybe reached the 5th ideal already, as she has been routinely hiding her power level.

[Dreamwa1ker she/her]

I hadn't thought of this but it is an interesting idea. Hiding it under the potential reading of it as just referring to her time as a secret Elsecaller is the kind of thing Brandon has done before in terms of foreshadowing. I think the most compelling argument is the potential that it is tied to her "madness" as a child. But I wonder if we won't get to know more until her book in back half.

[alder24]

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

Now, it's phrased rather obliquely. It could feasibly be describing her years of being a secret Elsecaller, but that seems unlikely. The problem at hand is contemporary enough that it makes no sense to beat herself up over the past; additionally, the next paragraph talks about how Jasnah has been hounded for her honesty and compares it to Dalinar, but it does not stop to imagine how she could/would have done things differently if she had gone public. Also, going public would have in no way affected her ability to be chosen as champion or her ability to win the champion's contest. I believe that this is using her Elsecalling powers as a red herring to foreshadow something greater. So the question is: what powers does Jasnah hide?

I'm quite sure this is a “what if she revealed her Radiant powers in the past” question. She is wondering if she did this, would she be in Dalinar's place now - not just as a champion, but as a leader. She wanted to make that final decision, that final deal to bind Odium herself, she is uneasy thinking that it's someone else's duty now, despite all of the years she spent on preparing for this moment. It's not just this paragraph that makes this obvious, it's the surrounding ones that are needed to understand this whole context. She started by imagining where she might be if she had gone public from the very beginning, then she reminded herself how people treat her and that is just wishful thinking - she knows she wouldn't have been in the position to make this final decision, simply because people hate her. 

Quote

Perhaps it was a way to distract her. Because despite all of her training, all of her learning, all of her preparation… the final decision was going to come down to someone else. Dalinar would face Odium’s champion himself.

She did not dispute his choice. He was a Bondsmith and a fierce warrior. He’d had dealings with Odium, and perhaps understood the creature better than any mortal. Jasnah had written out the reasons he was the best choice. Yet… could it have been her? What if, instead of hiding her powers, she’d told people what she could do and what she feared?

Her life and Dalinar’s seemed very different. He’d burned a city, and people forgave him. He’d proclaimed the Almighty to be dead, and half the ardents had joined him. Yet when Jasnah was honest about her atheism, her thoughts on government, or her displeasure with traditions like the safehand… well, condemnation and judgment had chased her like twin headsmen, each looking to get a whipping in before the execution.

When Jasnah Kholin spoke her mind, people hated her. Perhaps she’d learned the wrong lessons from that, but could she be blamed?

 

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

4. She had a "fit of madness" as a child, which is referenced directly after the above quote. This is part of my main reasoning that she does possess a hidden power as it draws attention to a facet of her past that has thus far only been given a sentence or two.

This is something that happened way before she bonded Ivory and something done to her by those she loved the most - most likely Gavilar. She is not terrified by the prospect of losing her mind, like she did back then. However I doubt this gave her hidden powers of some sort. OB ch 47:

Quote

Something stirred deep within her. Glimmers of memory from a dark room, screaming her voice ragged. A childhood illness nobody else seemed to remember, for all it had done to her.
It had taught her that people she loved could still hurt her.
“Have you ever wondered how it would feel to lose your sanity, Ivory?”
Ivory nodded. “I have wondered this. How could I not? Considering what the ancient fathers are.”
“You call me logical,” Jasnah whispered. “It’s untrue, as I let my passions rule me as much as many. In my times of peace, however, my mind has always been the one thing I could rely upon.”
Except once.
She shook her head, picking up the paper again. “I fear losing that, Ivory. It terrifies me. How would it have felt, to be these Heralds? To suffer your mind slowly becoming untrustworthy? Are they too far gone to know? Or are there lucid moments, where they strain and sort through memories … trying frantically to decide which are reliable and which are fabrications…”

 

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

1. Jasnah has a reason to not reveal them during an era when Radiants are not only accepted but highly needed.

2. They cannot be confused with regular Elsecaller powers, or else they are esoteric like substantiation -- that is to say, no one has come up to Jasnah and said "Why aren't you doing X?" even though several people, including various rulers, should be in-the-know about the different Radiant types.

Nobody really knows what an Elsecaller can do, because only Jasnah is an Elsecaller. Except for the Stormfather himself, who might notice something is off (which is unlikely because he failed to see that Glys was Enlightened), nobody would ask any questions regarding Jasnah powers and they would all accept that it is a regular Elsecalling - unless it's something very flashy and obvious of course. Jasnah is the first Elsecaller in 2,500 years, nobody really knows what Radiants in general can do after such a long time and they have nobody to compare her to. 

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

3. They have some kind of ominous information attached to them that would upset the public -- this could be cosmere-aware information, Recreance-related information, or they are just flat-out so dangerous it makes her afraid to publicize them.

Jasnah knows the truth about Recreance from Wit. She wanted to tell what happened, but Ivory persuaded her not to. OB ch 47:

Quote

“We must tell the others what we learned from Wit, Ivory. Eventually, this secret must be known.”
“Jasnah, no. It would be the end. Another Recreance.”

 

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

2. Corrupted bond: unlikely to impossible. The Oathgate spren look like inkspren, and Shallan can tell when those are being corrupted.

And we've seen Ivory multiple times, he looks normal and if he was corrupted, they would not want to kill Renarin in OB.

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

4. Elsecallers are just that dangerous, possibly because of microkinesis: medium possibility.

They don't have access to microkinesis-like powers - that's Cohesion, that's Stoneshaping, that's Willshapers and Stonewards. RoW Ars Arcanum:

Quote

The power known as Stoneshaping, as practiced by the orders of Stonewards and Willshapers, is an excellent example of this. This ability manipulates the Surge of Cohesion, and is in many ways a cousin to the axial manipulation known as microkinesis—as both grant the ability to manipulate the forces that bind individual axi together

 

14 hours ago, logicless.bt said:

4. Unmade influence: most likely imo. There are several Unmade we know nothing about. We also know that Shallan's family -- which has been plagued by mental illness -- was under the influence of an Unmade thanks to WoB. Brandon does like to separate regular mental illness like Kaladin's from magical mental illness, but Elhokar's paranoia was caused by Cryptics and the Heralds' madness is caused by magic, so it remains possible. What if Jasnah had contact with that Unmade in her childhood? Renarin has access to Fortune from Sja-Anat, and Yelig-nar offers all the Surges; it's possible that her "fit of madness" was some manner of Unmade influence that granted her powers. This would also provided a shift in dynamic for Shallan and Jasnah in the second arc, going from mentor and student to equals at the hands of an unkind creature (and potentially fellow worldhoppers).

It's possible that Jasnah could be influenced by an Unmade during her insanity period, but I doubt that would give her some powers, unless she was constantly under this Unmade's influence - which now with a fully working Urithiru would be impossible. Renarin has access to future sight because of his Enlightened bond, Yelig-nar grants Surges because he bonds and consumes a soul of its host, Nergaoul gave Dalinar furious battle rage because he was targeted by him specifically. For Jasnah to gain powers from an Unmade, she would have to be bonded or Connected to one of them - which I find highly unlikely. Sja-Anat is already walking on eggshells when she collaborates with Honor's side, another Unmade working with Jasnah, a person who sacrificed most of her life to fight against Odium, would definitely draw Odium's attention. And if that's all Odium's plan, then Jasnah would probably be searching for a way to free herself of this curse, not wondering what if she revealed those powers to the world - she almost killed Renarin because his spren was corrupted, she would rather kill herself than allow Odium to use her against those she love. If she was bonded with an Unmade, she wouldn't have tried to kill Renarin in the first place, because she would know that those touched by Odium can be good and fight against him, like she was. 

[Erklitt]

@logicless.bt I also like this topic, and it has made me think.

Have we seen any abilities from Jasnah that are hard to explain? I've searched my memory, and the only thing that comes to mind is that her soulcasting skills are otherworldly: without touch in WoK when she kills those murderers in Kharbranth; creating that gigantic wall and making stairs in real time during the battle of Thaylen City... So my conclusion for the time being matches @Icy's:

20 hours ago, Icy said:

My assumption is that she's maybe reached the 5th ideal already, as she has been routinely hiding her power level.

Her bond began roughly around the same time as Shallan's first bond with Testament - a little later, as she didn't yet understand what was happening to her on the day Gavilar died, while at the same time Shallan already had her Shardblade. But unlike Shallan, she never broke her bond and has arguably been progressing continually ever since. Shallan saw all the instances mentioned above, but no one asks her about Jasnah's skills. And Jasnah doesn't show them casually in everyday life, just in life and death situations. Probably prompted by the same ruminations she makes in this chapter: While others are praised for their Radiant skills nowadays, she will probably still be reviled. And here she wonders whether that was the right thing to do, because a 5th ideal Elsecaller might have some advantages over a 3rd ideal(?) Bondsmith.

 

[Dofurion]

7 hours ago, alder24 said:

I'm quite sure this is a “what if she revealed her Radiant powers in the past” question. She is wondering if she did this, would she be in Dalinar's place now - not just as a champion, but as a leader.

I also interpreted it that way.

And looking back on his case it wouldn't have changed much. Basically no one could have achieved what Dalinar did, not because he was a man or anything else (although I won't deny that Alethi society has problems with gender), but rather because he bonded with the Stormfather. That's the only spren who could achieve a cultural impact to create a religious and social schism.

Whether it was Jasnah, Kaladin or whoever, at the time of their reveal they would most likely be branded as heretics by the Vorinists, in fact, I imagine many using the joke argument that Lift used during his presentation, accusing them of making deals with the Voidbinders or something like that.

[Master Silver]

Question, about Jasnah, Isn't teleportation a thing for Elsecallers? Is that just to Shadesmare? Could a temporary Oathgate be created over short distances with the help of both bondsmiths?

[Etedbert he/him]

1 hour ago, Master Silver said:

Question, about Jasnah, Isn't teleportation a thing for Elsecallers? Is that just to Shadesmare? Could a temporary Oathgate be created over short distances with the help of both bondsmiths?

From Shallan’s conversation with the Oathgate Spren in OB, it definitely seems like the Oathgates were made by Honor binding Inkspren to the locations via some Oath. I haven’t looked for any WOBs, but iirc the oathgates work by shunting folks through the SR where space doesn’t matter, to a different location in the PR.

given the post-recreance attitude of the Inkspren, it’s very unlikely anyone, even the bond smiths and especially not Janay, would be able to convince new Inkspren to form oathgates again.

my tinfoil hat theory is that Elsecallers have an easier application of Transportstion in regards to realmatic travel, and and Willshaper’s will have an easier application of it allowing transportation more akin to the Nex-Im, teleporting around the PR.

Basically with the help of a bondsmith, I think Jasnah might be able to temporarily move multiple people from Roshar to Shadesmar or vice versa, and that a bondsmith with a Willshaper would be able to teleport people more similarly to an Oathgate, eg across long distances within the PR.

I can imagine a scene where Navani uses her connection to Urithiru to allow Venli to transport her and a small group from some location back to Urithiru.

Edited October 10, 2024 by Etedbert
Clarified

[earthexile]

I strongly suspect that something about Jasnah's ability to Soulcast at a distance makes her way, way more dangerous than most people have added up yet. The key here is Dalinar. 

Connect Honor's Bondsmith to an Elsecaller, open her up to infinite Stormlight. How large of an object, or area, or hey why not- concept can she impose her will on and change? Could she point to that twenty-acre plain your army is camped out on, and turn it into a deep hole? Or fire? Could she turn every drop of water in your city's supply into blood, like an angry Old Testament God? 

Being a living weapon of mass destruction is the kind of thing Jasnah would keep in her pocket. I think if it were something like additional teleporting or Realm-shifting power, she would already have been making use of it. No reason to send an emissary across half of Shadesmar with twenty useful people if you can just step him up to the front gates of Lasting Integrity, for example.

But once you're laying waste to whole regions, everything's different. The moral calculus you've all been operating by goes right out the window. The impression you're trying to create in the minds of your subjects, as their new heretic Queen who's trying to upend a lot of old, important social orders? That's now tied to the fact that everyone knows you can erase them from the world.

Jasnah wants to promote a more humanistic culture and be Alethkar's last monarch. So she doesn't want to be a planetary tyrant. But we know she's had genocide on the mind, at times. She probably wouldn't worry about it, if she didn't think it was an option.

[gokucauthon]

Crazy addition, could Wit have given the bead of Lerasuim to Jasnah? 

[Miyabi She/Her]

[Consideration] I think she was likely referring to whatever the Resonance is or what she can do by combining her two Surges.  (We know this isn't distance Soulcasting as WoB is that anyone with Transformation can do that with practice.)  Though, I do like the idea of her potentially lighting up an entire battlefield it doesn't seem likely.  She had some pretty good gems in WoK and at least one of those broke from the strain.

She also could have been referring simply to her ability to fight.  I imagine she has been honing her combat abilities in hiding and could be an amazing duelist/fighter in hiding.

[Display-Names-Are-Stupid]

On 10/12/2024 at 6:24 PM, gokucauthon said:

Crazy addition, could Wit have given the bead of Lerasuim to Jasnah? 

As cool as it would be to see her as a Mistborn, he only had one bead and he ate that himself. And at this point they haven't figured out how to make more Lerasium.