The Shame of Honor and the Stormfather

[Dofurion]

OK, analyzing the information on Honor, the Stormfather, and the Oathpact that we have available, I came to a somewhat less striking conclusion about "shame" but that I think is still interesting to publish.

The shame of Tanavast and by extension of the current Stormfather is to copy Leras' plan.

Let's start from what we know of the immediate context after the oath was promulgated. Odium locked in Braize, being able to attack Roshar again with all his Fused after successfully torturing some Herald to break. Honor creating 10 Heralds to bear the burden of keeping Odium locked up, guiding the reconstruction of humanity until stabilizing the social situation of humans. Then voluntarily returning to Braize to endure the torture.

Conjecture to keep in mind: Honor and Cultivation allowed Odium's entry as a plan to lock him in the Rosharian system.

So this creates a very similar scenario, if not identical, to that of Ruin and Preservation in Scadrial. One Shard wants to keep another Shard locked up and achieves this by locking its body in a specific place.
So I imagine you're wondering, what's so shameful about this? Well, the detail lies in the mechanics of the return by Odium's forces as well as the difference in strength with respect to Honor.
The Fused initially used a much more direct method to return to battle, Odium himself created a body for them (We see this at the end of RoW) which implies a direct expenditure of their investment, investment that did not return to circulate in their investment reservoir. In theory the same thing happened with Honor, but here you have to take into account the investment given for each Shard, Honor invested 10 for each Desolation, Odium had to replenish more than 900 (Conjecture).
So what's the shame? Well, Honor used all of Roshar as a battlefield in a deliberate attrition situation. Risking thousands of lives of both Humans and Singers in order to wear down Odium power in the long term.

Note: I would also like to add as a curiosity that Honor's unforeseen troops, the Radiants, were excessively over-regulated. It is a topic in itself that I would like to address after the release of the full book.

[Slayd_07]

Where do we see Odium create a body for a Fused directly? It seems to me like they always possess singers - the Fused seem pretty used to the process in RoW. 

[Dofurion]

10 minutes ago, Slayd_07 said:

Where do we see Odium create a body for a Fused directly? It seems to me like they always possess singers - the Fused seem pretty used to the process in RoW. 

End of RoW, El's experiments with anti‐voidlight

[alder24]

20 minutes ago, Dofurion said:

End of RoW, El's experiments with anti‐voidlight

It was never said Odium created a body for the Pursuer, only that it was done the old way. This can mean they found a Singer, made him attune to a specific Rhythm and open themselves to a new host, like it's done during Everstorms and the Pursuer was pulled towards them. I highly doubt Odium created their body directly when there were so many Singers ready to accept them, just like they accepted Voidspren. No Fused ever said that the way they are being reborn now is so much different than how it used to be done. 

And that body would have been eventually broken down and returned to Odium, so Odium doesn't lose everything (in the long run).

Moreover, Odium wasn't fully invested on Roshar until recently (sometime after the Recreance). Odium was unwilling to invest significantly and that's why he wouldn't have done what you propose.

Spoiler

Questioner

When one of the shards, like Odium, move from world to world in the cosmere, does their presence, like the metals they leave behind and their magic, leave with them?

Brandon Sanderson

Odium never really settled on a planet.  He is now settled on Roshar and his magic has permeated things.  Leaving would be very difficult for him. It would either involve leaving behind some of his power or ripping that out, which would be a difficult process.  So yes it is very tough to leave.

Phoenix Comicon 2013 (May 24, 2013)

 

[bmcclure7]

4 hours ago, Dofurion said:

OK, analyzing the information on Honor, the Stormfather, and the Oathpact that we have available, I came to a somewhat less striking conclusion about "shame" but that I think is still interesting to publish.

The shame of Tanavast and by extension of the current Stormfather is to copy Leras' plan.

Let's start from what we know of the immediate context after the oath was promulgated. Odium locked in Braize, being able to attack Roshar again with all his Fused after successfully torturing some Herald to break. Honor creating 10 Heralds to bear the burden of keeping Odium locked up, guiding the reconstruction of humanity until stabilizing the social situation of humans. Then voluntarily returning to Braize to endure the torture.

Conjecture to keep in mind: Honor and Cultivation allowed Odium's entry as a plan to lock him in the Rosharian system.

So this creates a very similar scenario, if not identical, to that of Ruin and Preservation in Scadrial. One Shard wants to keep another Shard locked up and achieves this by locking its body in a specific place.
So I imagine you're wondering, what's so shameful about this? Well, the detail lies in the mechanics of the return by Odium's forces as well as the difference in strength with respect to Honor.
The Fused initially used a much more direct method to return to battle, Odium himself created a body for them (We see this at the end of RoW) which implies a direct expenditure of their investment, investment that did not return to circulate in their investment reservoir. In theory the same thing happened with Honor, but here you have to take into account the investment given for each Shard, Honor invested 10 for each Desolation, Odium had to replenish more than 900 (Conjecture).
So what's the shame? Well, Honor used all of Roshar as a battlefield in a deliberate attrition situation. Risking thousands of lives of both Humans and Singers in order to wear down Odium power in the long term.

Note: I would also like to add as a curiosity that Honor's unforeseen troops, the Radiants, were excessively over-regulated. It is a topic in itself that I would like to address after the release of the full book.

I dont see any evidence that Honor and Cultivation allowed Odium to come to roshar especially since it dosnt work like that Shards dont come and go they exist everywhere. perhaps you mean that he invested on roshar but that dosnt make sence either if harmony couldnt stop Autonomy from investing on his planet why would you assume Honor could.

[alder24]

15 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

I dont see any evidence that Honor and Cultivation allowed Odium to come to roshar especially since it dosnt work like that Shards dont come and go they exist everywhere. perhaps you mean that he invested on roshar but that dosnt make sence either if harmony couldnt stop Autonomy from investing on his planet why would you assume Honor could.

We have a WoB confirming that Odium was allowed to settle on Roshar:

Spoiler

Questioner

It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.

Brandon Sanderson

The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

Autonomy didn't come to Scadrial to settle there, she just used investiture that was already present in the system and that's the difference.

Spoiler

[...]

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

We generally mean the term "Invested" to mean a Shard has taken permanent residence in a location, a kind of base of operations--but at the same time, this is meaningless, since distance has no meaning on the Spiritual Realm, where most Shards are. So imprisonment of a Shard like Ruin or Odium is a crude expression--but the best we have.

Autonomy never "Invested" on First of the Sun. But even answering (as someone else asked) if they created an avatar without visiting is a difficult thing to explain--because even explaining how a Shard travels (when motion is irrelevant) is difficult to manage. It's a subject that I intend to be up for debate, discussion, and argument by in-world philosophers and arcanists.

[...]

Let's say you were Autonomy, and you have--through expanding and exploring your understanding--found a gathering of Investiture that has always been there, you always knew about, but still didn't actually recognize until the moment you considered and explored it. (Because even though your power is infinite, accessing and using that infinity is beyond your reach.) Were you "Invested" there? No, no more than you're Invested on Roshar, where parts of what were Adonalsium still exist that are associated with you (in the very fabric of matter and existence.) But suddenly, you have a chance to tweak, influence, and do things that were always possible, but which you never could do because you knew, but didn't know, at the same time.

[...]

General Reddit 2018 (March 18, 2018)

 

[bmcclure7]

On 11/6/2024 at 8:36 AM, alder24 said:

We have a WoB confirming that Odium was allowed to settle on Roshar:

  Hide contents

Questioner

It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.

Brandon Sanderson

The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

Autonomy didn't come to Scadrial to settle there, she just used investiture that was already present in the system and that's the difference.

  Hide contents

[...]

Brandon Sanderson

[...]

We generally mean the term "Invested" to mean a Shard has taken permanent residence in a location, a kind of base of operations--but at the same time, this is meaningless, since distance has no meaning on the Spiritual Realm, where most Shards are. So imprisonment of a Shard like Ruin or Odium is a crude expression--but the best we have.

Autonomy never "Invested" on First of the Sun. But even answering (as someone else asked) if they created an avatar without visiting is a difficult thing to explain--because even explaining how a Shard travels (when motion is irrelevant) is difficult to manage. It's a subject that I intend to be up for debate, discussion, and argument by in-world philosophers and arcanists.

[...]

Let's say you were Autonomy, and you have--through expanding and exploring your understanding--found a gathering of Investiture that has always been there, you always knew about, but still didn't actually recognize until the moment you considered and explored it. (Because even though your power is infinite, accessing and using that infinity is beyond your reach.) Were you "Invested" there? No, no more than you're Invested on Roshar, where parts of what were Adonalsium still exist that are associated with you (in the very fabric of matter and existence.) But suddenly, you have a chance to tweak, influence, and do things that were always possible, but which you never could do because you knew, but didn't know, at the same time.

[...]

General Reddit 2018 (March 18, 2018)

 

That's because shards can't settle because they exist every where read your own wob

[listerfeend]

17 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

On 11/6/2024 at 9:36 AM, alder24 said:

That's because shards can't settle because they exist every where read your own wob

Sorry, but...that's not what that WoB said, and we've got like...hundreds of other WoB's that discount it. Shards definitely can and do 'settle' places, that's what it means for a Shard to be 'Invested' in a system. What Brandon is telling us in that WoB is that our puny human brains can't really comprehend what that actually means, and it's, at best, a rough approximation of what is actually happening when a Shard Invests in a system. How does a thing that is outside of PR concepts like Time and Space get restricted to a specific Time and Space in the PR? Well, they do, but they don't, and they are, but they aren't... And it's about as clear to us as a quantum mechanics text book thrown in the mud. 

However, this WoB right here, just before the one you said to read, is stating, explicitly, that Shards do settle, and that there are rules around where they can do it, and consequences for doing so.

 

On 11/6/2024 at 9:36 AM, alder24 said:

Questioner

It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.

Brandon Sanderson

The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

[Dofurion]

On 11/5/2024 at 4:17 PM, alder24 said:

It was never said Odium created a body for the Pursuer, only that it was done the old way. This can mean they found a Singer, made him attune to a specific Rhythm and open themselves to a new host, like it's done during Everstorms and the Pursuer was pulled towards them. I highly doubt Odium created their body directly when there were so many Singers ready to accept them, just like they accepted Voidspren. No Fused ever said that the way they are being reborn now is so much different than how it used to be done. 

I honestly don't think that's the case.
The difference is emphasized enough in the narrative for it to be noticeable.

 

On 11/5/2024 at 4:17 PM, alder24 said:

And that body would have been eventually broken down and returned to Odium, so Odium doesn't lose everything (in the long run).

I have to admit that you may be right here.
But my guess is that it would be a case similar to Ruina's with Atium, where she would have to intervene directly to reincorporate it into her being.

 

On 11/5/2024 at 4:17 PM, alder24 said:

Moreover, Odium wasn't fully invested on Roshar until recently (sometime after the Recreance). Odium was unwilling to invest significantly and that's why he wouldn't have done what you propose.

That's exactly the point. Put him in a situation where he has no choice but to invest more in the system.

-

One last thing I forgot to add. And that is that, before the existence of the Everstorm, the Fused were more closely tied to Odium, since according to Rayse's arguments, before they could have accepted the terms proposed by Hoid, and now they can't.

 

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Dofurion said:

I honestly don't think that's the case.
The difference is emphasized enough in the narrative for it to be noticeable.

I honestly can't see anything in the text that would suggest it. And we have a confirmation in OB I-6 that Fused needs Singer's bodies every Return. The new way of reborning is new because Fused doesn't have to go back to Braize, they inhabit the Everstorm and can take over bodies of Singers whenever they want - but they needed Singers previously as well.

Quote

“I said,” Ulim hissed, “that you were opening yourselves up. I didn’t say what would enter. Look, your gods need bodies. It’s like this every Return. You should be flattered.”