What will call them back?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

The back half of the Stormlight Archive is supposed to feature the Heralds. I doubt this is going to be Ishar and Kalak playing tennis on a paradisic beach. So they'll need to return. But why will they do so? Sheer boredom? Retribution returning to Roshar? Will somebody contact them?

[Ripheus23]

I don't know if the continent-spanning darkness will cover the oceans or not, but either way, Roshar's ecosystem is going to be so messed up by Retribution's dominion that there will be a need for environmental healing on a vast scale, if Roshar is to truly survive. Lift, Jasnah, Shallan, Rlain, Renarin, and whoever else won't be powerful enough to do that without Sylphrena and Kaladin's help, and the help of the other Heralds. I wish I remembered what Kaladin says about the sanctuary they're in at the end but doesn't he already say something about preparing to return "one last time"?

[MagicMaggot]

If they can come back without putting the spren in danger, why are they on Braize at all? I really don't get the mechanics here, yet. It vaguely made sense that the heralds would have to be on Braize to keep the fused there. But I guess it is more about being on the planet to somehow channel its "well of souls". To... bind Retribution somehow? Or are they binding the spren? Either way, that should get undone, if they stop doing it, shouldn't it? 

I really hope future content or WoBs will give us more clarity here.

Edited January 12, 2025 by MagicMaggot

[BinarySecond]

I think they can return without endangering the spren, but they're simply not ready. They've tacked the protection of the spren onto the Oathpact but not the part requiring them to stay on Braize. Spren should be a-ok.

 

They got lots of time, thanks to the time dilation, to just rest and prepare for the Final Desolation.

[Treamayne]

23 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

I wish I remembered what Kaladin says about the sanctuary they're in at the end but doesn't he already say something about preparing to return "one last time"?

Here's the quote (WaT Postlude):

Spoiler

Kalak opened his eyes.

Kaladin still had his hand outstretched. “Come. At least listen to me. I think I can help you reclaim some of what you used to be.”

“There’s nothing left,” Kalak said. “The world is doomed. We have failed. Everyone on Roshar is as good as dead.”

“Then what harm is there,” Kaladin said, “in trying one more time? If everything is already doomed?”

“I…”

“One more try,” Kaladin whispered. “Just once more.”

“Once more,” Kalak said. “A … final Return?”

“We heal,” Kaladin said. “We reclaim ourselves. Then we go back to Roshar. This time, we win for real. Instead of coming back withered from torture, you’ll return refreshed. Mended, and we’ll see what we can do together.”

One more try.

A final Return.

What harm … what harm could there be in it? 

Hope that helps.

[Ailvara]

I don't really get it either. Time dilation doesn't really play in their favour, since time on Roshar is going to pass on quicker. So if it's about stopping and healing damage done to Roshar, and they can come back whenever, they should ideally return immediately and lay low somewhere for a year or two, so that it doesn't mean 10-15 years passing for the rest of Roshar while they heal.

Also, Ishar mentioned it might be "centuries" before they return. Why would it be, if it's only about them deciding whenever they feel ready? I highly doubt Ishar expected they might seriously need to chill and get therapy for a few hundred years. At some point, idleness will bring more harm than good, especially for people already too ancient for their own good. So I believe there either must be a different trigger, or additional consequences to their return.

[Treamayne]

The rate at which SR visions pass is neither stable nor consistent. That's why Dalinar needed a clock Connected to Wit's to be able to keep tabs on the PR time while in the SR. The Heralds do not have that, Ishar's comment was simply about "when we return, we will not know how much time has passed until we get there."

[QuantumAce]

On 1/12/2025 at 9:36 AM, MagicMaggot said:

I really don't get the mechanics here

Teasing the mechanics of the oathpact is the cruelest thing Brandon has ever done. 

On 1/12/2025 at 9:36 AM, MagicMaggot said:

I really hope future content or WoBs will give us more clarity here.

You are better off seeking the Old Magic to have it shshsh'ed out of your mind

[Hexagonal He/Him]

21 hours ago, Ailvara said:

At some point, idleness will bring more harm than good, especially for people already too ancient for their own good. So I believe there either must be a different trigger, or additional consequences to their return.

We know that both Vasher and Wit have some way to help with having too many memories(Wit stores them in breaths and Vasher has that command that removes memories), so maybe they can figure something out. Ishar has been shown to be very willing to experiment with investiture(he did start the surgebinding that destroyed Ashyn), so maybe he will be able to figure out the memory storing the Wit uses(Wit did say something about maybe showing the heralds how to store memories with stormlight). I see a combo of Kaladin's therapy and possible memory removal/storage helping the heralds deal with the memories of thousands of years of torture they have.

[Nitpicking]

On 1/14/2025 at 8:21 AM, Hexagonal said:

... (Wit did say something about maybe showing the heralds how to store memories with stormlight) ...

Imagine if they had used Stormlight to store their memories, and then Retribution reabsorbed all Stormlight everywhere.

[Hexagonal He/Him]

8 hours ago, Nitpicking said:

Imagine if they had used Stormlight to store their memories, and then Retribution reabsorbed all Stormlight everywhere.

That would have been disastrous. I'm not sure if Retribution would have gained their memories(Nothing about T-Odium getting Wit's memories), but this could have caused them to go more insane than they were in actual SA.

[QuantumAce]

On 1/18/2025 at 2:24 PM, Hexagonal said:

That would have been disastrous. I'm not sure if Retribution would have gained their memories(Nothing about T-Odium getting Wit's memories), but this could have caused them to go more insane than they were in actual SA.

Or, we get Syladin spending the next 20 SR years raising 9 immortal beings from mental infanthood. 

[LeondeBowa]

I realise it doesn't really answer your question, but I think they will return either start book 6, end book 6 or mid book 7.

I think the trigger will be a change in the nature of the conflict. Possibly the start of the war with the other shards, a point that retribution is too committed to the fight and cannot spare the effort to reabsorb the spren.

Possibly someone on world will call them back

[Elegy he/him]

My guess is that it would work kind of similarly to the Oathpact before - as soon as another conflict on the scale of the Desolations starts, they come back. For the time being, Azir and Uritihiru are somewhat safe due to the contract, but humans - like before the First Desolation - will find excuses (probably provoked by Retribution) to go to war with the singers again. I'd guess that as soon as that happens, the Heralds will come back. I expect it to be the end of book 7, since the front 5 also took 2 books for the main conflict to unravel, and symmetry is such a huge thing in SA.

[Darth_Hel]

They’re not automatically healed by the Oathpact reforging. A lot of them have mental illnesses that might be alleviated but Battar got pure greed. She might sell out to Odium and force a return if it helps his plans.

[TheoreticalMagic]

I think Battar is going to surprise a lot of people. And I don't think its accurate to say a lot of them got mental illnesses and Battar got greed, I think its more that Ishar's Connection to the others and to Odium's power enhanced each Herald's primary vices to the nth degree, which compounded by their trauma made a lot of them PRESENT as mental illnesses. Or more accurately, made a lot of their magically magnified vices present as PART of their mental illnesses, or a symptom of their poor mental health.

Mental health is of course a huge theme of the series, and I don't think Brandon spent all that time on Kaladin's mental health and recovery journey just to switch gears to the Heralds and be like now let's focus on a bunch of characters whose mental health issues are Because Magic Did It. And saying that some of the Heralds' mental health issues were due to the corrupted Oathpact risks Brandon presenting the idea that reforging the Oathpact can or should "cure" some of their mental health issues, which again, doesn't really track with Kaladin's character arc. Nor is it something I think Brandon would want to stray too close to saying.

So I think the mental health issues and instability derived from the Heralds' millennia of trauma and torture is ONE issue and the Heralds' vices magnified to inhuman extremes by the Odium-corrupted Oathpact connection is a SECOND issue and I think those two issues fed into each other in a self-perpetuating and continuously reinforced cycle that left us with the Heralds as we know them in the modern day.....but the end perception we have of them isn't predicated on just the corruption or their mental health, but rather a kind of resonance created by the juxtaposition of the two in each Herald. Not unlike how Radiants have a magical resonance born of the bond with their spren juxtaposing two Surges in each of their spiritwebs, something along those lines.

But IMO this means that with the expulsion of the corruption born of Odium's power, the Heralds are indeed not "healed" by any means....but the magnified vices are no longer a factor in their mental health struggles, and the resonance is gone. They're not all fully altered from how they were while the Oathpact was corrupted because that resonance built from things that already existed naturally within them, further amplified by the compounding factor of their trauma and poor mental health....but the magnification of their vices I believe has been decisively cut off at the source, has been magically dealt with just as it was a magically derived issue in the first place. Their base vices are still within them, and those vices can and I believe are magnified non-magically by their mental health struggles, but they now have the capacity to NOT be defined by those vices any more than anyone who struggles with their mental health is prone to being defined by their worst traits.

So Battar might indeed still sell them out because of greed-based characteristics that were within her all along, but I think its far from a given. The Battar we met so far had no more ability to on her own withstand the magnification of her worst trait than any of the other Heralds. She's got trauma to deal with, and if she doesn't, it very well could continue to fuel her less noble characteristics in being defining traits that motivate her to sell the others out or make deals of her own with Retribution.....but by the same token, she now has the same potential as any of the others to take advantage of this opportunity before the next Return to address her mental health, begin recovering, and Return anew as more like the Herald she once was than the greedy sell-out the Corrupted Oathpact turned her into.

I do think we might get one more big betrayal in the second half, with it likely to be one of the Heralds, but I think it'd be a mistake to assume it will be Battar based solely on the fact that her no-longer-magically-magnified vice is greed or susceptibility to bribery. Its a whole new game for the Heralds now that the Oathpact has been reforged, Odium's power expunged, and they have Kaladin with them to provide new resources and tools for dealing with their mental health and trauma in a space safe from further traumatization. Any of them could benefit hugely from all of this, and any of them could end up still vulnerable to Retribution post-Return because they for whatever reason didn't make the most of these opportunities or wound up not as far along in their recovery journey as the others by the time of the next Return. I don't think we have nearly enough of a look at the Heralds in general to even begin speculating who's most likely to be least trustworthy of the Heralds going forward. 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[Darth_Hel]

I think the least trustworthy is probably still Battar so far, with Kalak as a possible dark horse due to fear. I’m not sold on their worst traits no longer being fully amplified now. 
 

We saw little of Battar in this book, and what we did see was just showing her amplified greed, with not too much of an effect on this book. It makes me think that this was set up for the back half, where either we get a betrayal or guilt arch from her. Maybe she betrays the Heralds or if she does heal she becomes a mole close to Odium for them and betrays him.

[BinarySecond]

Do we know the timeline of Ishar tapping into the Well of Control?

I can't imagine how being magically tied into God's Divine hatred for (I assume) at least a thousand years would be beneficial to one's well being.

 

I'm very excited to see how the Heralds fair without that direct Connection to the power.

[Treamayne]

On 1/27/2025 at 5:22 AM, BinarySecond said:

Do we know the timeline of Ishar tapping into the Well of Control?

Definitive timeline, no. Approximate timeline - Centuries before WaT (so, still long after BAM and the Recreance).

Spoiler

WaT Ch 126:

Quote

“Yes,” Nin whispered, his voice frail, even sickly. “I … now that I see better, I question this plan. Much of what Ishar has done these last centuries—these last years in particular—is … unsettling to me. Trying to build an army of physical spren and Fused, preparing for far-distant conflicts. I fear what drinking of Odium’s power did to him. That troubles me deeply now. I do not know why it didn’t before.”

WaT Ch 140:

Quote

Kaladin distinctly thought he heard, echoing through that failing bond, the gasps of eight other people as an unacknowledged darkness left them. An oppressive cloud that Ishar thought he’d been holding back, but had in reality been infecting every Herald. The blackness he’d absorbed from Odium centuries ago, by finding his pool of power.

It wouldn’t heal them, lifting this dark cloud. Their wounds stretched back millennia before Ishar’s terrible decision. However, this might help open a path to healing.

 

Hope that helps

Edited January 28, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[RefusesToElaborate]

I love presumption. Truly.

A little background on me, I finished writing my first novel when I was 15 years old.

My every attempt to be published has been met with responses varying from "Why can't you just be normal? to "This is not marketable to a mass audience." Why? Because Michael Kirkbride is a big inspiration to me and turns out there isn't a big market for fantasy based on pagan witchcraft and eastern spirituality that results in characters doing things that are intended to be slowly achieved over multiple lifetimes and going insane because they supercharged their spiritual growth on a timescale that isnt sustainable.

Point is, Kirkbride is lucky he manipulated Todd Howard into letting him get away with all that stuff he did in Elder Scrolls 3. Seriously, the 36 Lessons of Vivec are my definition of peak fantasy and I will be forever disappointed he never wrote The Pillow Book of Almalexia.

But what do I mean by this?

Because when I speculate on where another writer is going, you gotta take it with a grain of salt. My favorite character in all of fantasy is a gay robot knight from the future who killed a man by smothering him with moths for suggesting he has a connection to a dead god and has a best friend thats a winged bull or Minotaur or really strong man who calls him Uncle.

I like weird, I like questions that aren't intended to be answered by the writer, I like things that don't make sense to people that aren't willing to sit and think for a while.

So, that being said, I think the best course if action from a writers perspective, is to let Syl decide.

As the Queen of Storms, the Heralds are her knights, on a moral level, I mean. Because their power is of Honour and she is the Stormfathers eldest heir. Therefore she, speaking with the authority of a Ruling Queen, can send them back whether or not they feel ready.

Now she would in this scenario, defer to Kaladin and the Heralds as advisors but not as authorities in and of themselves. Meaning she would ask them about their progress and if they feel ready. And that would certainly influence her judgement.