Vedel's Method

[TheoreticalMagic]

Just spoiler tagging the whole thing because it hinges around the end of the book in general:

 

Spoiler

When Ishar makes Kaladin immortal before making him a Herald, he talks about using Vedel's method, which is a thing beyond Surges or Honor, etc. I don't think he's talking about using other magic systems, specifically, as even on Alaswha the Heralds were using a form of Surgebinding, but rather I suspect he was talking about Investiture and Realmatic Theory, using the power of Surges in ways that weren't strictly of Honor because they played into concepts that underlie the entire cosmere.

Specifically....things like Identity and Fortune.

For starters, I think its important to remember that the Heralds aren't limited to knowledge of just the Surges of the Orders they became associated with. Ishar used Elsecalling to open the way to Roshar. And Vedel - despite being associated with Healing and the Edgedancer Order....was noted as playing with light constructs more than once in the visions.

My suspicion is that before becoming a Herald, Vedel - frequently talked about as a doctor and source of medical knowledge - used Illumination just as much, if not more, than Progression. I think Vedel's method for achieving immortality was something she only theorized before the Oathpact as it needed enormous Investiture to make possible, thus tapping into Honor or another Shard directly in order to power the process is required....

But the basis of it IMO lies in Truthwatching. This scene from Oathbringer is particularly relevant....and its the reason Renarin appeared as Vedel in key visions. There's as strong a Connection between his Order and what that Herald was DOING in those scenes, as the Herald actually associated with Truthwatchers.

Quote

“This is good,” Adolin said to him. “You’re not going to hurt anyone. You’re here to save us.”

Renarin looked to him, then smiled. A pulse of Radiance washed through Adolin, and for an instant he saw himself perfected. A version of himself that was somehow complete and whole, the man he could be.

It was gone in a moment, and Renarin pulled his hand free and murmured an apology. He mentioned again the Shardblade needing to be given away, then fled back into the tower.

Basically....just as Stormlight based healing (all cosmere healing) is Connected to Identity, and is the reason one can't heal injuries, disabilities or ailments that are directly part of a person's sense of self, their 'natural condition'.....

I think what Adolin experienced when Renarin healed his wrist, and what Vedel's method for immortality is essentially just an Investiture super-charged version of.....is a Fortune based inversion of Sel Soul Forgery.

Just as Soul Forgery at its core is about temporarily rewriting a person or object's history so it can be what it would be if things had happened differently....Vedel's method involves using Fortune to see and sift through the infinite possibilities in a person's future and zero in on the most optimal view of the self, the best or most them that person could ever be if everything aligned just right to make it so....

And then using ILLUMINATION....not Progression....to shine a spotlight or focus on that Optimal Self as a new base template for that person's Identity.

Its key here (heh, Vedel pun) that Ishar emphasizes the Heralds' bodies being made of Investiture, even though they still have to eat, as Nale explains earlier. Because Vedel's method isn't about changing the body the way Progression does, its about drawing a new outline for how a Herald's Identity pictures them when they Return and Honor's Investiture is filled into a new Herald-shaped outline in order to create a new physical version of them to START from, each Return.

Think of it as being a heightened version of what Shallan does when she uses Illumination to create a tangible form that gives Radiant substance OUTSIDE Shallan's body, even while Shallan still existed in that one fight scene in Shadesmar.

This would address something that's been bugging me for awhile about the Heralds:

Prior to the Last Desolation, when nine of the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact and never returned to Braize until Shallan killed her mother, the Heralds were regarded for millennia as heroes. Vanguards in the fight against Odium and his forces. Figures of myth and legend, larger than life heroes who inspired humanity each Return.

Obviously a core theme of the series is how much history can be distorted, how much of myth and legend can be lies or grossly misinterpreted, and that at the end of the day, the Heralds are only people, flawed and traumatized and fallible as everyone else.

But at the same time, even with their myths exaggerated each retelling, there has to be SOME basis for them having been figures of inspiration and hope for thousands of years, through countless cycles of Desolations and Returns.

And for me, the problem always lay in matching that up with the reveal that the Desolations always only began when one or more of the Heralds BROKE under torture.

Realistically, each Return the Heralds - or at least some of them - should be at their most traumatized, most emotionally compromised. Again, the books emphasized the theme that even at someone's most depressed, they can still be heroic and do amazing things in others' eyes, such as Kaladin at key points of his narrative. But the books have also emphasized that this can also be a facade covering up the fact that a hero could be far closer to breaking than anyone realizes. For thousands of years, the Heralds were Returning from centuries of torture at their enemies' hands and plunging right back into the fight, with literally no actual rest or recuperation happening anywhere in there. And yet somehow in the immediate aftermath of them breaking under torture they managed to pivot to going right back to being mythic, inspirational heroes leading humanity in their darkest hours each time....until the Last Desolation, when all of them but Taln finally broke?

No, I don't buy it. There's something else going on there.

Vedel's method fills the gap in that perfectly, IMO.

Because it doesn't just provide a framework for the Heralds' immortality....it acts as a magic booster shot that uses the very mechanism of Returns to give the Heralds a leg up each time the cycle starts anew. It isn't a magic cure all for mental trauma, but its more like ensuring that each time the Heralds start anew, reset via Returns to their default factory settings...

The baseline they get reset to, the outline drawn for their newly recreated selves and that Honor's Investiture is shaped into raw, physical material accordingly...

Is physically, cognitively, and spiritually each Herald on the equivalent of their BEST DAY. According to Fortune. The image of what they COULD be...as sought out, highlighted and illuminated by Vedel's method.

Its the intersection of their most idealized traits and potential for heroism/nobility and the cosmere logistics that create or align circumstances that allow for this to be the stock template for their immortality.

I believe this is also the nature of the Heralds' otherworldly strength and speed. They're not using Surges for that. Or rather they're not ACTIVELY using Surges for that. Those things are simply symptomatic of the way Illumination fused Fortune and Identity in order to create these base templates for their respawn points. Contrary to how Returns go for other kinds of "immortals" in the cosmere, like the Returned on Nalthis, these Returns were designed to utilize the most optimal incarnations of the Heralds as heroes, demigods, active front line participants in a forever war against an equally inexhaustible enemy. It only makes sense (IMO) that the Heralds' design would include superhuman tiers of strength, speed and other characteristics as a default, in order to maximize the effectiveness of such a small group of elite warriors.

Because of course, even this can only do so much. Just as once Returned to physical forms, the Heralds have to eat, just as they can be killed if they take enough damage....the initial Return only helps fortify them mentally and emotionally, give them enough breathing space to regroup before plunging once more into the fray. After all, its not like when the Oathpact was initially forged that they were even taking into account the possibility of being eternally tortured between Returns. Their initial burden was predicated on the belief that they were committing themselves to an endless war....THAT part was an oversight, something they'd failed to adequately consider and prepare for. But the basis for their Returns still allowed them to endure it far longer than would have otherwise been possible.

However, just like Kaladin's own mental health struggles, being Returned as they are on their best of all possible days doesn't erase all their pre-existing trauma or forestall the accruement of even more trauma as their war continues. This takes a toll....

And I think it wasn't JUST Ishar's act of seizing some of Odium's power that corrupted the Oathpact and the other Heralds as dramatically as it did over the last four thousand years.

The very fact of them going so long WITHOUT Returning anew meant that they never got to avail themselves of that Best Day reset button to give them a breather from their various issues. They were Kaladin worn down to his worst day, without reprieve, for four millennia, with Odium's power seeping through the cracks in the Oathpact via Ishar and gradually eroding more and more of their base morality and their reasoning.

Of course, I don't know that a Return would have worked as well for any of them past a certain point, given Taln as an example. I don't think his traumatized state after his Return disproves this theory, as its frequently emphasized that no matter how much the modern day characters delve deeper into their histories and learn more about their past, they don't really know what to make of him. He doesn't behave anything like ANY of the stories about the Returning Heralds, there's no history or lore about them coming back each Desolation initially almost catatonic and acting like prisoners of war rather than a heroic vanguard....

Because this isn't how it ever worked in the past. 

In theory, the corruption of the Oathpact could have affected Taln's Return in unexpected ways. Without as obvious a vice to prey upon as with the other Heralds, perhaps Odium's corruption poisoned Taln's return by heightening his trauma so the reset button didn't work properly. (And reset button is not the best term given that a key point of this theory is that at no point is pre-existing trauma erased or rolled back, just...fortified against, but you get what I mean by it).

Or perhaps the weight of bearing the Oathpact alone for so long diluted the effectiveness of the Return for Taln. As I stated, if it works the way I think it does, it provides the Heralds with a huge initial boost, maximizing their ability to regroup and brace themselves for what's to come, allowing them a rebreather before their existing trauma surges in their minds/spirits again. But its not a magic cure all and it has its limitations, so plausibly, four thousand years of unrelenting torture is such a HUGE burden that there's only so much even a Return could do.

Or maybe a combination of Odium's corruption and the breadth of Taln's torture combined to account for his initial state. I do think it's a combination, personally, as what little we saw of Chanarach after she broke and Returned implied that she was not at all Returned in any kind of optimal state - ie the corruption of the Oathpact by Odium's power/Ishar's Connection messed with her Return too - but also she was more lucid in general than Taln seemed to be, with enough of a sense of self to want to attend Shallan's wedding but also able to stay under the radar - suggesting that due to not having spent nearly as much time tortured as Taln, whatever damage the Odium power did to the Return mechanism/process didn't affect her Return as severely as it did Taln's. But at the same time, the fact that she HAD Returned more recently than the other Heralds meant that some of her Odium-enhanced mental health issues were offset by her Return to some degree, accounting for how she seemed more self-aware of her flaws & health than she'd ever been throughout Shallan's childhood.

Regardless, my ultimate conclusion is that I thought it odd that Brandon emphasized the idea that the ten year gap before the Heralds' likely Return in the second half of the series might only be months for them, in their vision Alaswha. With as much emphasis as he's placed on recovery as a journey, it seemed unnecessarily limiting to not take advantage of the ambiguity of time in the Cognitive/Spiritual Realms to give the Heralds a much longer recovery period before their next Return, given the millennia of issues and trauma they're only now beginning to sort through.

But with Vedel's method acting as a spiritual booster shot and the Oathpact cleansed of Odium's corrupting influence, maybe months is enough time for Kaladin to make some decent headway and give them a fighting chance in terms of their trauma and mental health. Them having decades of therapy time in the visions would keep too much of their recovery off the page, and especially with them having POV books in the back half, I don't think Brandon wants to skip much of that.

But he is a 'fight fire with fire' kind of author, so Vedel's method and months of rest/recovery could viably work to offset the supernaturally enhanced nature of their mental illnesses and trauma with a supernaturally enhanced fortification or accommodation that doesn't "fix" anything for them. And with Kaladin, Therapist to the Demigods, using what he's learned from his own journey to start addressing their trauma and specific issues, that combination of things could give them enough tools to be in a much better STARTING place upon their next Return, with the chance to once again be the champions Roshar needs, without guaranteeing that it will hold for each of them or that their setbacks won't be significant, as might be the case if they had this going for them AND years or decades of recovery before their Return.

 

 

Edited January 13, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[PanicPug]

I love that theory. The "reset" boost/state upon return also somewhat reminds me of the power boost a radiant gets when they speak an ideal; which helps them in the moment by filling them with Investiture/Stormlight, but it runs out after a while as well.

[OverlordBob999]

I think this theory is great, and I think it's even further supported by the fact that Kalak states that Shallan herself draws upon Fortune when creating certain drawings (e.g, the one of Elhokar). Shallan using Illumination to show people an idealized version of themselves seems really close, though she doesn't use it for healing. however, Kalak also says that this is because of her double bond, which, in the context of this theory, would require/imply that Vedel (who can't have had a double Nahel bond at this time, since they didn't exist) did some sort of shenanigans with the unbound Surges to mimic that effect.