Taln and Cultivation

[Redmacc]

If any of this is already confirmed or has been discussed at length already, feel free to ignore, I'm not great at searching for topics....

 

In WaT, there were a couple references to Taln's past: That he tried to kill Cultivation and he had a powerful weapon but lost it. (I don't have exact references, forgive me.)

 

Is it possible that Taln acquired Nightblood to use against Cultivation (Vasher is NOT a Shard fan, and I could see him doing such a thing)? Then he lost it while failing to complete the job, which is how the NightWatcher had it to offer it to Dalinar in the Oathbringer flashback?

[Darth_Hel]

I don’t think the timeline lines up. nightblood was based upon Honorblades or Shardblades. So, it came after Taln was a Herald.

More likely he had a Dawnshard.

[The Stick]

I seen to recall something about Kalak making the weapon. I really doubt it is a Dawnshard because Roshar doesn't need that many Dawnshards. Plus, where did it go afterward.

[Darth_Hel]

There’s been at least two Dawnshards in the system. Rysn’s Change and Hoid’s Exist. Could have been either of them.

Its said Kalak gave Taln a weapon that he lost, not that he made it.

[TheoreticalMagic]

1 hour ago, Darth_Hel said:

There’s been at least two Dawnshards in the system. Rysn’s Change and Hoid’s Exist. Could have been either of them.

Its said Kalak gave Taln a weapon that he lost, not that he made it.

There's a particular angle from which it would make a lot of sense for the Dawnshard having originally been in Kalak's possession, of all the Alaswha survivors, before giving it to Taln:

I'm on board with the theory that the "Son of Tanavast" name for Kaladin IS because he's directly descended from Tanavast....and I think its via Kalak, who is Tanavast's son. Brandon's said that the Shards - while Shards - can and sometimes do have children, with Vessels being capable of making Avatars that can reproduce. He's even said that there are people in the cosmere who are descended from one or more Shard, post-Shattering. I think during the time Tanavast left Roshar and got involved with the human civilization on Alaswha, he made an Avatar that had at least one child, Kalak....and if any of the future Heralds were to be trusted with bringing as powerful a weapon as a Dawnshard during the Crossing, after human use of Surgebinding had just destroyed their previous world....who better to entrust it with than the literal Son of Honor?

We also know from Chana that Heralds can have children as well....and the phrasing of how the Heralds talked about her wanting to create a family in the modern era always struck me as noteworthy. Despite being well aware of their nature as Cognitive Shadows, it didn't seem to come as a surprise to them that a Herald COULD have children. I don't think she actually was the first, just the first to raise her children and stay with them as a family. Its far easier/more likely for some of the male Heralds to have sired children at some point in the past....maybe without even knowing it.

So regardless of how far back it is, I do think Kaladin is a direct descendant of Kalak, and thus by extension Tanavast, making him a literal Son of Tanavast....which also casts the Ancient Daughter of the Stormfather seeking out HIM of all people to be the first to bind an honorspren since the Recreance in a very different light.

There's just too many oddities about Kalak's positioning in the narrative for there not to be a big twist coming with him. Out of all the Heralds, his POV seems oddly prioritized compared to the others, relative to their various storylines. Not Ishar, not Jezrien.....despite being neither the leader of the Heralds nor the designer of the Oathpact nor the Herald actively still guiding an Order in the modern day like Nale....Kalak just happened to be the POV Herald in the literal opening of the series, the last one to actually make the choice to abandon the Oathpact, Taln's final betrayer as it were. He just happened to be one of the only Heralds present for Tanavast's betrayal of Bo-Ado-Mishram, which led to Tanavast's Descension and death. Despite not being the one to make the Oathpact he seems to be the Herald with the greatest understanding of how it works, other than Ishar, who made it....he also seems to be the most cosmere aware and best informed on other worlds. Despite having no obvious connection to the Windrunners, he lives in Lasting Integrity with the honorspren, who seem to revere him even while disliking him, in ways that aren't reflected in how they refer to other Heralds. He's leader of the Sons of Honor, he's one of the only two Heralds whose names actually seem to reflect Tanavast's fixation on symmetrical names (he couldn't have a more Tanavast approved name if Tanavast were to have picked his name personally....wink wink), the Ghostbloods focus on kidnapping him out of all the Heralds despite his ramped up paranoia making him one of the more difficult Heralds to isolate and take by surprise, and Mraize notes him as being especially dangerous.

Kalak is more significant than he appears....the other Heralds have reasons for why THEY are so tied to the most pivotal events of the series....Ishar designed the Oathpact, Jezrien and Ash are the leader of the Heralds and his daughter, Taln is obvious, Chana is the mother of one of the main characters, Nale is the only one of the Heralds to have seemed to recognize Odium's threat and oppose him from the get-go, even back on Alaswha.....but with multiple other Heralds still largely unexplored, it doesn't really seem clear why we keep coming back to the Willshaper Herald in particular....yet we constantly do.

Finally, Kaladin's frequently had his name commented on throughout the series as being an unusual name for a darkeyes, not fitting the normal naming conventions, almost as if we're meant to have the thought that there's something significant about KALadin's name in the back of our minds.

And for all that many of us are obviously interested in the Chekhov's Gun that is Kaladin's dynamic with Chana, given that he's so close to her daughter and killed Helaran.....there's one last tangle that I think has largely flown under the radar, when it comes to contemplating Kaladin's interactions with his fellow Heralds between now and the next Return:

It just happened to be Kalak....in his guise as Restares, who literally convinced Amaram to take Helaran's Shards himself. Which directly led to Amaram's betrayal of Kaladin (mirroring Kalak and the other Heralds' betrayal of Taln, and Tanavast's betrayal of Bo-Ado-Mishram), and set in motion Kaladin's entire storyline from that point on.

So yeah. I think Kaladin (and Oroden - who I think is going to be a major character in the back half, which Brandon is now saying might be set fifteen years later, which would make Oroden around the same age Kaladin was at the start of Way of Kings) are directly descended from Kalak, who is Tanavast's son and was entrusted with a Dawnshard that was brought from Alaswha during the Crossing, and that he eventually gave it to Taln, who used it to try and kill Cultivation, who then took it from him. 

Edited January 19, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[TwinStorm He/Him]

7 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

There's a particular angle from which it would make a lot of sense for the Dawnshard having originally been in Kalak's possession, of all the Alaswha survivors, before giving it to Taln:

I'm on board with the theory that the "Son of Tanavast" name for Kaladin IS because he's directly descended from Tanavast....and I think its via Kalak, who is Tanavast's son. Brandon's said that the Shards - while Shards - can and sometimes do have children, with Vessels being capable of making Avatars that can reproduce. He's even said that there are people in the cosmere who are descended from one or more Shard, post-Shattering. I think during the time Tanavast left Roshar and got involved with the human civilization on Alaswha, he made an Avatar that had at least one child, Kalak....and if any of the future Heralds were to be trusted with bringing as powerful a weapon as a Dawnshard during the Crossing, after human use of Surgebinding had just destroyed their previous world....who better to entrust it with than the literal Son of Honor?

We also know from Chana that Heralds can have children as well....and the phrasing of how the Heralds talked about her wanting to create a family in the modern era always struck me as noteworthy. Despite being well aware of their nature as Cognitive Shadows, it didn't seem to come as a surprise to them that a Herald COULD have children. I don't think she actually was the first, just the first to raise her children and stay with them as a family. Its far easier/more likely for some of the male Heralds to have sired children at some point in the past....maybe without even knowing it.

So regardless of how far back it is, I do think Kaladin is a direct descendant of Kalak, and thus by extension Tanavast, making him a literal Son of Tanavast....which also casts the Ancient Daughter of the Stormfather seeking out HIM of all people to be the first to bind an honorspren since the Recreance in a very different light.

There's just too many oddities about Kalak's positioning in the narrative for there not to be a big twist coming with him. Out of all the Heralds, his POV seems oddly prioritized compared to the others, relative to their various storylines. Not Ishar, not Jezrien.....despite being neither the leader of the Heralds nor the designer of the Oathpact nor the Herald actively still guiding an Order in the modern day like Nale....Kalak just happened to be the POV Herald in the literal opening of the series, the last one to actually make the choice to abandon the Oathpact, Taln's final betrayer as it were. He just happened to be one of the only Heralds present for Tanavast's betrayal of Bo-Ado-Mishram, which led to Tanavast's Descension and death. Despite not being the one to make the Oathpact he seems to be the Herald with the greatest understanding of how it works, other than Ishar, who made it....he also seems to be the most cosmere aware and best informed on other worlds. Despite having no obvious connection to the Windrunners, he lives in Lasting Integrity with the honorspren, who seem to revere him even while disliking him, in ways that aren't reflected in how they refer to other Heralds. He's leader of the Sons of Honor, he's one of the only two Heralds whose names actually seem to reflect Tanavast's fixation on symmetrical names (he couldn't have a more Tanavast approved name if Tanavast were to have picked his name personally....wink wink), the Ghostbloods focus on kidnapping him out of all the Heralds despite his ramped up paranoia making him one of the more difficult Heralds to isolate and take by surprise, and Mraize notes him as being especially dangerous.

Kalak is more significant than he appears....the other Heralds have reasons for why THEY are so tied to the most pivotal events of the series....Ishar designed the Oathpact, Jezrien and Ash are the leader of the Heralds and his daughter, Taln is obvious, Chana is the mother of one of the main characters, Nale is the only one of the Heralds to have seemed to recognize Odium's threat and oppose him from the get-go, even back on Alaswha.....but with multiple other Heralds still largely unexplored, it doesn't really seem clear why we keep coming back to the Willshaper Herald in particular....yet we constantly do.

Finally, Kaladin's frequently had his name commented on throughout the series as being an unusual name for a darkeyes, not fitting the normal naming conventions, almost as if we're meant to have the thought that there's something significant about KALadin's name in the back of our minds.

And for all that many of us are obviously interested in the Chekhov's Gun that is Kaladin's dynamic with Chana, given that he's so close to her daughter and killed Helaran.....there's one last tangle that I think has largely flown under the radar, when it comes to contemplating Kaladin's interactions with his fellow Heralds between now and the next Return:

It just happened to be Kalak....in his guise as Restares, who literally convinced Amaram to take Helaran's Shards himself. Which directly led to Amaram's betrayal of Kaladin (mirroring Kalak and the other Heralds' betrayal of Taln, and Tanavast's betrayal of Bo-Ado-Mishram), and set in motion Kaladin's entire storyline from that point on.

So yeah. I think Kaladin (and Oroden - who I think is going to be a major character in the back half, which Brandon is now saying might be set fifteen years later, which would make Oroden around the same age Kaladin was at the start of Way of Kings) are directly descended from Kalak, who is Tanavast's son and was entrusted with a Dawnshard that was brought from Alaswha during the Crossing, and that he eventually gave it to Taln, who used it to try and kill Cultivation, who then took it from him. 

isn't there a wob that the Stormfather wouldn't call Oroden or Tien son of Tanavast tho?

[alder24]

13 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

I'm on board with the theory that the "Son of Tanavast" name for Kaladin IS because he's directly descended from Tanavast....and I think its via Kalak, who is Tanavast's son.

6 hours ago, TwinStorm said:

isn't there a wob that the Stormfather wouldn't call Oroden or Tien son of Tanavast tho?

There is, the answer is "it depends." However there is a WoB saying that Kaladin has no special or secret heritage so the theory that he's the literal son of Tanavast or another Herald is dead on arrival. My personal farfetched theory is that the Stormfather saw Kaladin as an ideal Vessel of Honor - we know the Stormfather had his own plans regarding Honor's power and that he needed a person who didn't want to Ascend. Kaladin fits this so maybe the Stormfather was secretly grooming Kaladin to become the Vessel of Honor. 

Spoiler

Just_A_Silvereye

Would the Stormfather call Tien or Oroden "Son of Tanavast"?

Brandon Sanderson

I see what you're hunting here. I'm gonna say RAFO. Don't read too much into that RAFO. Because the answer is actually "it depends." And that's why I'm RAFOing it.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

Spoiler

AlwaysTheNextOne

Does Kaladin have a mixed heritage. Like maybe Yolish and Rosharan?

Brandon Sanderson

One thing I wanted to be very careful about in writing the Stormlight books is to stray away from people needing some kind of past or heritage to be special—it's okay for this to be for some characters, but it becomes a crutch. So your answer is no, he doesn't have much secret to his heritage. (Though his mother grew up wealthy for a darkeyes, and that's a little odd.)

Footnote: Brandon has mentioned Hesina's comparatively wealthier background several times, including mentioning that one of her parents are not darkeyed.
General Reddit 2020 (Dec. 16, 2020)

[TheoreticalMagic]

Ahh, gotcha. Hmmm. Well, that seems pretty definitive. Tbh, I always had some hesitation about this idea for similar reasons, that it would dilute Kaladin's storyline to imply that a divine heritage was a factor. I only settled into it recently after reading Book Five because I thought the reveals of Tanavast's clear fallibility, Kalak's own issues and the fact that Kaladin's character arc all the way up to becoming a Herald included no heritage reveal......could lead to some interesting subversions if in the back half of the series, such a connection were treated as irrelevant to Kaladin's story and his being revealed as Kalak's descendant only ended up having relevance/significance to KALAK'S storyline in the back half. With the latter perhaps finding inspiration/drive to feel worthy of being known as Stormblessed's ancestor after everything the Heralds had done (or failed to do), and struggling with the idea that this descendant who was of such more humble beginnings than he was and had so far fewer resources and advantages had risen so high while he himself had fallen so low. Its more the subversion of expectations in how that dynamic might come across that intrigued me rather than needing or wanting any connection to Heralds/Shards on Kaladin's part, to "add to his clout" or whatever, since he hardly needs it.

But yeah, either way, hard to make that work with these WoBs so oh well. I do think there might still be something to the idea that Kalak is Tanavast's son, however.

Edited January 20, 2025 by TheoreticalMagic

[bdoble97]

I just want to see him fight her in her dragon form. I think that will be a epic scene 

[Through The Living Ash he/him]

So we know that Taln tried to kill Cultivation, and that Kalak gave him a weapon. I don't think that the weapon was a Dawnshard or Nightblood, but something else. He lost the weapon after his attempt, and was at some point forbidden to hold any weapon, suggesting maybe that he could perhaps change any weapon into this thing, thought that might not be related. He also wished that he had his weapon when Tanavast appeared, in order to kill him. This means that either Kalak was on board with killing Cultivation or Taln tricked Kalak. It seems odd to me that if they had a weapon with the potential to kill a Shard that they would not try to use it against Odium. So maybe it was destroyed, maybe they did try, or maybe Honor was too scared of giving someone that capability to let them try to do that. In Tanavast's PoVs, it seems that Cultivation did not interact with Ashyn, which is why Taln's motives are particularly confusing. 

[Ripheus23]

I keep getting the impression that we're reading too much into the power of the weapon Taln used: just because he thought it might be enough to kill Cultivation with doesn't mean it was actually remotely that potentially effective. Like how, in the Wheel of Time backstory, the Dragon thought that the cuendillar seals would be permanently effective at sealing away the Dark One, yet they really weren't, maybe. So, by analogy, Taln's/Kalak's weapon might've been something more like a prototype of a cultivationspren Shardblade, or a bit of anti-Lifelight, or whatever, but not necessarily something on the level of a Dawnshard.*

*Do we know, incidentally, that Dawnshards can kill Shards if used correctly? We might naively reason, "Oh, but they were powerful enough to Shatter Adonalsium," but we don't know what kind of Physical process the Shattering involved, what kind of weak spots/vulnerabilities Adonalsium particularly had to Dawnshards, etc. I don't know, barring WoBs that I'm not familiar with, that we can naively go off "raw power levels" in our analysis, here. Again, though,

Spoiler

they didn't save the Choedan Kal for last in WoT, but two other sa'angreal, so...

 

Edited April 21, 2025 by Ripheus23

[Through The Living Ash he/him]

I did think about that, and Taln obviously tried and failed, but he seemed to be relatively aware of the power wielded by Honor. The fact that it left his soul scarred means that Cultivation likely found it a legitimate enough threat to counter, unless something went wrong with the weapon itself.