The Oathpact wasn't supposed to require torture

[wormotif]

Wind and Truth gave us a revelation I haven't seen other discussion of: when the Oathpact was formed by the Heralds and Honor, no one seemed to think they were signing up for an eternity of torture. I don't think this was previously known.

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To Dalinar, [Taln] asked the question none of them had. “And what is the price?” “Pain,” Dalinar whispered. “By binding away the enemy, you might be bound with them,” Tanavast said. “As an immortal, you will watch everyone around you grow old, then die. You will have power none can understand, and you will be lonely, isolated. Years will blend like drops of water that form streams.”

Emphasis mine. Dalinar - taking the place here of Kalak - knows what's coming; the Heralds do not. Honor, at worst, seems to think that the Heralds might be stuck on Braize, but doesn't seem to have made the connection that this will put them at the mercy of the Fused. And Honor isn't apparently being deceptive here either - here's Tanavast's POV of the same events later in the book:
 

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 I TOLD THESE HUMANS I COULD BESTOW THEIR SURGES AGAIN, IF THEY WERE WILLING TO OBEY AND ACCEPT THE RULES I PLACED ON THEM. THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN THINKING OF WAYS TO REGAIN THEIR POWERS, AND ISHAR HAD A PLAN. A GOOD ONE, INVOLVING THE DISTANT WORLD THAT COULD COLLECT SOULS.

Tanavast is mostly thinking of this as a way to give humans Surges within the confines of the agreement with Rayse. Ishar's the one who comes up with the plan, which Tanavast thinks is a good one; presumably, had he known this would result in torture and the placing of a great deal of his Shard's power in the hands of deeply broken people, he would've been more dubious.

Why didn't they know? Unclear; it seems like Honor, at least, should have realized thanks to the foresight granted to Shards. I suspect we'll learn more about when the Heralds were first caught and tortured in Braize in Ash's and Taln's flashbacks in the back half. 

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What does this mean? 

• It shouldn't be surprising that the new Oathpact doesn't require torture. This wasn't an intrinsic requirement of the bonding, it was just a side effect of being stuck on Braize. Presumably, had the Heralds and Honor known about the torture before the first Oathpact, they could have found a workaround like Ishar did for the new Oathpact.
• We should think of the Heralds with more pity. They didn't go into this eyes wide open; they didn't really know what they were doing when they agreed to the Oathpact. When something they knew would be hard turned into hell, they nonetheless upheld their oaths for 2500 years (!) before being wholly broken. That they were not Taln - who somehow continued for another 4500 years and was ready to do it indefinitely - cannot reasonably be held against them.

 

 

[TypicalShard]

 

On 12/13/2024 at 2:13 PM, wormotif said:

Why didn't they know? Unclear; it seems like Honor, at least, should have realized thanks to the foresight granted to Shards

I find this interesting because the last Honor vision, Rejection, shows that Tanavast didn't foresee Odium's trick with BAM. This, combined with the fact that Shards must actively consider the permutations of time, and that Honor repeatedly says he's not as proficient at reading the future as the others, leads me to believe that this was either a subtle possibility he overlooked, something Odium actively hid from him, or both.

[DSCrankshaw]

What I learned from this book is that Tanavast just wasn't that good at being Honor. He didn't respect the power, didn't try to work with it, wasn't that good at keeping his word. He probably could have gotten away with a few broken promises--living with Cultivation, for example--if he'd tried harder with the others. 

[Aon Tia she/her]

On 12/14/2024 at 1:43 AM, wormotif said:

It shouldn't be surprising that the new Oathpact doesn't require torture. This wasn't an intrinsic requirement of the bonding, it was just a side effect of being stuck on Braize. Presumably, had the Heralds and Honor known about the torture before the first Oathpact, they could have found a workaround like Ishar did for the new Oathpact.

I think it is almost possible that Tanavast atleast knew that it was a possibility. 

It is also strange that he attributes Heralds madness to the fact that he had provided them with a lot more of his power than a human body can endure. But as per the visions we saw, he does not seem into take into account the fact of them enduring millennia's worth of torture and trauma at the hands of the fused.  

One more thing that made me wonder is that could they have change the old oathpact to incorporate this new, mind is trapped in a vision and escape all that happened?

Could he have swapped the heralds, found new people?  

[wormotif]

On 12/17/2024 at 12:30 AM, Aon Tia said:

I think it is almost possible that Tanavast atleast knew that it was a possibility. 

It is also strange that he attributes Heralds madness to the fact that he had provided them with a lot more of his power than a human body can endure. But as per the visions we saw, he does not seem into take into account the fact of them enduring millennia's worth of torture and trauma at the hands of the fused.  

One more thing that made me wonder is that could they have change the old oathpact to incorporate this new, mind is trapped in a vision and escape all that happened?

Could he have swapped the heralds, found new people?  

This is a great question, and I think it's still somewhat ambiguous. We see this in the text:
 

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“The Wind has suggested a way to avoid the torture, Nale,” Ishar said. “Impossible while Honor lived, but with some of his power siphoned off as Retribution asserts himself…” (WaT 1288)

So it sounds like the Oathpact:

1) Was unmodifiable in any significant way while Tanavast lived (presumably since he'd made the Oathpact, he couldn't touch it?)
2) Is modifiable in a lot of ways (new purpose, new Herald, new protection against torture) now that Honor has just had all oaths shattered, is in the hands of a new holder, has had several bits fragment off, and with one of the original Heralds already dead. 

But there's of course the two millennia between Tanavast's death at the Recreance and the present when neither was true. It's unclear what was possible then. Ishar was planning to make Szeth into a new Herald, but it's unclear if he meant that to happen as part of the original Oathpact or not as far as I could tell. Ishar is/was also insane, so who knows how well that would've actually worked.

My conclusion is that probably this isn't a missed chance - modifying the Oathpact to end the torture was probably not possible - but we don't know quite for sure.

[TheoreticalMagic]

On 12/16/2024 at 6:48 PM, DSCrankshaw said:

What I learned from this book is that Tanavast just wasn't that good at being Honor. He didn't respect the power, didn't try to work with it, wasn't that good at keeping his word. He probably could have gotten away with a few broken promises--living with Cultivation, for example--if he'd tried harder with the others. 

I'm very intrigued by hypothetical AUs where different Vessels ended up with different Shards. Like we do know there is SOME connection between what Vessels got what Shards and it wasn't like they all got to pick whichever one they wanted, but between stuff like this and knowing that Ati was originally considered a good man before Ruin's Intent eventually corrupted him over time, it makes me idly wonder how different things would have ended up if some of the Vessels were swapped around. Like what if Ati had gotten Honor, and Tanavast got Mercy, and Uli Da (Mercy's Vessel, and alleged to have a somewhat....unconventional take on Mercy) got Ruin and was actually already more suited to that one, stuff like that.