Could Kaladin and the Heralds come back 1,000s of years older?

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

I just had a thought. The Heralds and their spren are in the SR, and time is all wibbly wobbly there compared to the PR. So, even if the Heralds return in 10 years or less Rosharan time...would it make sense that Kaladin and Company can come back centuries or millennia older? 

Secondary question..if they do (from their perspectives) stay in the SR for 100s or 1000s of years, should it be any easier for a mortal mind to handle that amount of time in the SR?

Thoughts?

[Deejaypenguin]

I just finished the book maybe 20 minutes ago, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the Heralds spren are in the SR with them. They only transported the minds of the heralds, but their bodies are still on Braize, getting tortured(By whom, I'm not sure, as the Everstorm means the Fused aren't trapped anymore[This could be wrong too]).

Now with the relation to the PR and the time passing, I imagine the connection they have to their bodies in the physical realm would tether them, as the rock Wit gave Dalinar and Navani would have done as well. However, the time on Roshar is passing at a slowed pace, like how Cadmium works on Scadrial, only on a planetary scale. This doesn't expand to Braize, presumably, so even without the weird SR time shenanigans, time will have passed faster for the Heralds compared to everyone on Roshar.  

1 hour ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

Secondary question..if they do (from their perspectives) stay in the SR for 100s or 1000s of years, should it be any easier for a mortal mind to handle that amount of time in the SR?

Remember, Kaladin is no longer mortal. The Connection made to Honor through Ishar invested him enough to become a cognitive shadow, which means his body(and mind/memories maybe) will be made of pure Investiture. We've seen Hoid store vast amounts of memory in breath, just a comparatively small amount of Investiture to the power of Honor infusing Kaladin and the heralds. While they couldn't use breath, the amount of information that can be stored in Investiture could probably hold the memories that the Heralds make while getting therapy from Kaladin in the SR.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

3 minutes ago, Deejaypenguin said:

I don't believe the Heralds spren are in the SR with them.

They are there. Kalak describes seeing Nale's Highspren and Syl when he wakes up on SR version of Alaswha. 

Also, I get that Kaladin is immortal now, but the Heralds have all been immortal for 7,000 years and that's been "too long" for their minds to take. That's why I'm asking what others think about being pure investiture...might that help them. I feel like it's probably pure speculation at this point, but you did hit on the thought I had, which was that Hoid has used Breath to store memory. But, even if there is a benefit to them in the SR, I am wondering if that would be a problem coming out of it and back to the PR.

[Deejaypenguin]

2 minutes ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

They are there. Kalak describes seeing Nale's Highspren and Syl when he wakes up on SR version of Alaswha. 

I looked back at the book, You're totally right, my apologies.

2 minutes ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

the Heralds have all been immortal for 7,000 years and that's been "too long" for their minds to take.

 WoB talks about the Herald's madness(Idk how to link it, so forgive me).

Questioner

The Heralds seem to be insane in the ways of their Divine Attributes, at least somewhat. Is this because they're Heralds? As Cognitive Shadows, they're subject to people's perception, like how spren are?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a very astute question, and yes, that is influencing them quite a bit. I'm doing something here with the Heralds. Like, I want the Heralds "madnesses," as we call them, to be magical diseases. And the contrast of something like Kaladin's depression, which I'm trying to treat very real-world. I'm trying to treat them as these things that couldn't exist in our world. They're fantastical mental diseases, like we have fantastic physical diseases in Elantris. So I did make them thematic, and I would say part of the reason for that is people's perception of them and their mental state reacting against that. And that should be a theme among all of the Heralds.

---

The madness of the Heralds is a mix of the torture given to them on Braize, as well as a "magical" disease, given to them by people's perception of them fighting the actual ideas of themselves they have in their heads. This could be fixed 2 ways I believe. One, Kaladin's therapy helping them restore their original sanity, and 2, Szeth's wife's account of the final days before Stormfall, given before each chapter in the first and tenth days. This could restore the people's ideas about them, changing the public perspective and restoring the "magical" aspect of their mental state.

[alder24]

21 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

I just had a thought. The Heralds and their spren are in the SR, and time is all wibbly wobbly there compared to the PR. So, even if the Heralds return in 10 years or less Rosharan time...would it make sense that Kaladin and Company can come back centuries or millennia older? 

No, Ishar said that while decades will pass on Roshar, they will experience just a few months, not more. 

21 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

Secondary question..if they do (from their perspectives) stay in the SR for 100s or 1000s of years, should it be any easier for a mortal mind to handle that amount of time in the SR?

I don't think so. The big part of their madness is that they've lived too long so that even their soul can't handle it as it wasn't made to live that long. The more time they will experience, the worse they will get. And they will also have more memories and that also causes their mind to deteriorate. It doesn't matter if they’re in their physical form or they are in SR, they’re still living and experiencing that time as it passes, so it's best for them not to spend there a lot of time.

Spoiler

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

[Nitpicking]

20 hours ago, Deejaypenguin said:

Now with the relation to the PR and the time passing, I imagine the connection they have to their bodies in the physical realm would tether them, as the rock Wit gave Dalinar and Navani would have done as well. However, the time on Roshar is passing at a slowed pace, like how Cadmium works on Scadrial, only on a planetary scale. This doesn't expand to Braize, presumably, so even without the weird SR time shenanigans, time will have passed faster for the Heralds compared to everyone on Roshar. 

Because Brandon likes ambiguity, "Roshar" includes the entire stellar system, not just the planet also named "Roshar". I'm quite sure that Braize and Ashyn are also in the time bubble. Notice that it does, for instance, affect Shadesmar.

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

On 2/15/2025 at 5:09 AM, alder24 said:

No, Ishar said that while decades will pass on Roshar, they will experience just a few months, not more. 

This is really confusing to me in the book. Why are they experiencing time at a faster rate than those on Roshar - i.e. why do they seem to exist outside of the planet's time dilation? This is especially confusing to me, because you'd think the Heralds would want more time to relax and recuperate. 

[alder24]

2 hours ago, EdgedancerJacob said:

This is really confusing to me in the book. Why are they experiencing time at a faster rate than those on Roshar - i.e. why do they seem to exist outside of the planet's time dilation? This is especially confusing to me, because you'd think the Heralds would want more time to relax and recuperate. 

Ishar is creating visions just like Dalinar had and those happen in the Spiritual Realm, which is spaceless and time independent. Dalinar was warned by Hoid that while years or even decades might pass on Roshar, he might feel like only hours passed in those visions in SR. Time there flows differently than in the Physical Realm.

As for why they want to experience as little time as possible, it's because they are still not healed, they can't be fully healed because their status as a Cognitive Shadow makes their condition worse the longer they live. A human soul, even if made immortal, isn't capable of existing for thousands of years, it wears down and this takes a toll on Heralds. Additionally, their minds also aren't capable of remembering all of what they lived through (as Hoid explained in ch 14). The more they have to remember, the more they forget, causing their minds to deteriorate further. For Heralds it is actually beneficial to live in a faster time frame.

Spoiler

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Dalinar was warned by Hoid that while years or even decades might pass on Roshar, he might feel like only hours passed in those visions in SR.

Ahhh that makes sense. I understood that the visions were in the SR, but didn't connect this piece to it. 

 

3 minutes ago, alder24 said:

it's because they are still not healed, they can't be fully healed because their status as a Cognitive Shadow makes their condition worse the longer they live.

This also makes sense to me - though I know Kaladin was hoping to get them to a more healed place before the next Return. So I assumed more time = more opportunity to do that. To be honest, I'm sure he'd want more time with them.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

16 hours ago, alder24 said:

Ishar is creating visions just like Dalinar had and those happen in the Spiritual Realm, which is spaceless and time independent. Dalinar was warned by Hoid that while years or even decades might pass on Roshar, he might feel like only hours passed in those visions in SR. Time there flows differently than in the Physical Realm.

As for why they want to experience as little time as possible, it's because they are still not healed, they can't be fully healed because their status as a Cognitive Shadow makes their condition worse the longer they live. A human soul, even if made immortal, isn't capable of existing for thousands of years, it wears down and this takes a toll on Heralds. Additionally, their minds also aren't capable of remembering all of what they lived through (as Hoid explained in ch 14). The more they have to remember, the more they forget, causing their minds to deteriorate further. For Heralds it is actually beneficial to live in a faster time frame.

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

Why or how are the Heralds the only ones we've seen so far that are affected by magical maladies due to either their high Investiture or long lives?

Brandon Sanderson

I would argue the Fused are having the same situation, so they're not the only ones. The why and how... there's a whole host of things going on here. Like a lot of physical and mental illness, it's not one thing or the other. But it is a compound of other things.

One is going so long without certain protections that you kind of need to take. The human being's soul might be immortal, depending on your argument in the cosmere. (That's really up to you.) But they certainly aren't meant for thousands of years of existence, the same way that our bodies aren't. There's some of that.

There's some of the things they've been through. Like, legit trauma; this is not all simply a magical ailment. You've got people with PTSD, layers of PTSD on top of layers of PTSD, for thousands of years, bearing things that no human being without their level of Investiture would even be able to bear. You've got that manifestation, you've got their own sense of guilt.

And these things are all just kind of overlapping together with the fact they've been alive for so, so very long. And a lot of the people that you've seen otherwise have not been alive nearly... orders of magnitude more for the Heralds. The only people you've seen that are that old are: some of the dragons, Hoid, and Vessels of various Shards. And you're basically at that group. And this is a group who knows what they're doing. Either they were built like the dragons, this is part of their innate nature, that they are functionally immortal. Or you are getting the Shards. Or you're getting people that are 300 years old, which is a very different thing, cosmere-wise, than having lived for thousands and thousands of years, part of it being torture.

Dragonsteel 2023 (Nov. 21, 2023)

 

But in Gav's case, it was the other way around. Though for that, there was the direct meddling of a Shard involved. So I don't know that that's actually a valid point, beyond the fact that they could be experiencing super slow time, but probably aren't based on what I've read above.

[Kerico]

Dalinar noticed that while he was in a vision, he experienced more time than the Physical Realm. Between visions, he experienced practically no time. Odium locked Gavinor in visions wherein he witnessed Dalinar's worst again and again, so Gavinor was stuck experiencing years while hours passed for Navani. Odium didn't change the way the Spiritual Realm worked, but he did heavily guide and manipulate Gavinor's experiences.