Cultivation's Arrival

[Mason Wheeler]

In chapter 100, we see Tanavast's perspective of arrival on Roshar.  Soon after this, Koravellium Avast, AKA Cultivation, shows up.  Tanavast has a brief argument with the power of Honor, which revolts at him breaking his word, the agreement that the Vessels all made with one another to go their separate ways and not have anything to do with each other anymore.  But he shouts it down:

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I am God, I thought to it. You obey me.

It writhed.  How could I break my word?  Yet I was in command, not it.  I could decide what promise was worth keeping, and what was worth discarding.

Kor was here. This was right.

The power simmered.  Well, it would learn.

I find this a bit irritating, because six years ago I asked Brandon about this:

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Q: One of the Letters in Oathbringer suggests that the original Shards had a pact to go their separate ways, and some of them held to it while many didn't.

A: Yeah.

Q: How is it possible that, among those who broke the pact was the one whose nature is to obsessively keep your word on everything no matter what?

A: He would say that he did keep his word.

Q: So he found a loophole?

A: He wouldn't even classify it as a loophole.  He would say that he kept his word on that one.

That was a very intriguing answer, and I've been kind of hoping ever since then to see some explanation of how that worked.  And now we get one, and the book makes it clear that he blatantly did not keep his word afterall; he just decided "screw keeping my word; I decide that in this case, the promise is worth discarding."

[Ewery1]

No, he did keep his word. Earlier in that chapter he mentioned that they had promised to be together after the Shattering. He kept his word to Kor, but not to the other 15.

Edited December 8, 2024 by Ewery1

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

23 hours ago, Ewery1 said:

No, he did keep his word. Earlier in that chapter he mentioned that they had promised to be together after the Shattering. He kept his word to Kor, but not to the other 15.

Exactly

it mirrors Kaladin’s 2 oaths in WoR that almost drove him to break his bond with Syl

[listerfeend]

On 12/8/2024 at 8:00 AM, Mason Wheeler said:

That was a very intriguing answer, and I've been kind of hoping ever since then to see some explanation of how that worked.  And now we get one, and the book makes it clear that he blatantly did not keep his word afterall; he just decided "screw keeping my word; I decide that in this case, the promise is worth discarding."

My read on this was: that promise was made by the Vessels before they picked up Shards. There was a line in one of the Honor POV chapters that said as much, I'll see if I can find it.

[11thHerald]

Arguably he also kept his word since he went off alone and it was Cultivation who broke the promise by showing up later

[Asininity]

On 12/8/2024 at 5:23 PM, Ewery1 said:

No, he did keep his word. Earlier in that chapter he mentioned that they had promised to be together after the Shattering. He kept his word to Kor, but not to the other 15

That's still breaking the Pact. He could gaslight Honor into believing previous agreement with Kor takes precedence but it still breaks word given to other Vessels. How could he argue that was upholding it?

[alder24]

9 minutes ago, Asininity said:

That's still breaking the Pact. He could gaslight Honor into believing previous agreement with Kor takes precedence but it still breaks word given to other Vessels. How could he argue that was upholding it?

As long as both Shards agreed to settle together, it was fine. The pact wasn't a binding Oath so it wasn't on the same level as Odium's binding to 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)

 

Spoiler

Nameless36

All the Shards basically agreed not to settle on the same planet. Six of them - that we know of - immediately, basically broke that.

Brandon Sanderson

So... they did not make an oath to it. There was a suggestion made... and perhaps the people who made the suggestion did not understand that, if you want the Shards to do something, you need an actual oath. And they did not get one.

Tel Aviv Signing (Oct. 18, 2019)

 

[Asininity]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

As long as both Shards agreed to settle together, it was fine. The pact wasn't a binding Oath so it wasn't on the same level as Odium's binding to Roshar.

Thanks, I hate it  
I'd still put it into loophole category, Tanavast should be lawyer, not a tanner