The identity of the 3 intelligent Unmade

[coolsnow7]

My guess:

Sja-Anat: Odium-warped remnants of Ambition

Dai-Gonarthis: same, but Dominion

Ba-Ado-Mishram: same, but Devotion

What we know of Sja-Anat is her ambition to subvert Odium and become a God herself. The specific way she’s doing that is the Odium-inflected direction of granting freedom to Spren; but ultimately her goal is a pretty clear expression of ambition. And we have a WOB for this one.

Ba-Ado-Mishram is similar in that what we see of her is her devotion to her people, the Singers, being paramount for her. When we see her in Odium-inflected moments, her rage is at her imprisonment and their enslavement. But much more interestingly, when we see her during the False Desolation, she doesn’t seem Odium-esque at all! Peace is decidedly the opposite of an Odium-aligned goal. I speculate that gaining access to the Well of Control granted her some measure of ability to recover her true self (even though it did the opposite to Ishar.) Another piece of evidence is we see her going around healing Singers - consistent with Aona’s identity as a healer. (WaT ch. 113)

As for Dai-Gonarthis, we know exactly one thing about her: that she transports people for a price. Have we seen this mechanic before? Certainly, with the Dakhor monks on Elantris! My speculation is therefore that the price Odium had to pay was sacrificing tens of thousands of Singers to transport the troops that facilitated the assault on the Shattered Plains. (By the same token: in the WoR epigraphs on the Unmade, we see speculation that Dai-Gonarthis was involved in the scouring of Aimia - well, she might have facilitated the transportation of soldiers onto the island chain, such that they could completely negate Aimia’s defenses!)

[RedBlue]

2 hours ago, coolsnow7 said:

As for Dai-Gonarthis, we know exactly one thing about her: that she transports people for a price.

From the RPG materials (World Guide chapter 3), we know:

Spoiler

Dai-Gonarthis wants to destroy the world. That’s what she would do if sufficiently empowered.

IMO that motivation doesn’t match up with Dai-Gonarthis being derived from Dominion. It seems a bit too contrary to the Intent I would expect to see, even accounting for some warping.

[teknopathetic he/him]

27 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

From the RPG materials (World Guide chapter 3), we know:

  Hide contents

Dai-Gonarthis wants to destroy the world. That’s what she would do if sufficiently empowered.

IMO that motivation doesn’t match up with Dai-Gonarthis being derived from Dominion. It seems a bit too contrary to the Intent I would expect to see, even accounting for some warping.

We could do a swap:

 

Sja-Anat: Wants her own dominion of spren to rule

Dai-Gonarthis: has the ambition to destroy the world

Ba-Ado-Mishram: devotion to her charges

[RedBlue]

Not to pick holes, but we still don’t know what Sja-anat's motivations are, and Ba-Ado-Mishram is described as ‘ambitious.’

For sure, you can find a way to make the Ambition-Dominion-Devotion thing fit, but the fact that you can swap those attributes around into different configurations that work just as well demonstrates that the link is tenuous IMO.

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

My take is:

Sja-anat, Devotion, she cares for the enlightened spren

Dai-Gonarthis, Dominion

Ba-Ado-Mishram, Ambition, since she was ambitious enough to lead the False Desolation without Fused.

[coolsnow7]

On 7/31/2025 at 4:19 PM, RedBlue said:

From the RPG materials (World Guide chapter 3), we know:

  Reveal hidden contents

Dai-Gonarthis wants to destroy the world. That’s what she would do if sufficiently empowered.

IMO that motivation doesn’t match up with Dai-Gonarthis being derived from Dominion. It seems a bit too contrary to the Intent I would expect to see, even accounting for some warping.

This actually came up in WaT: Vienta tells Sigzil that “she wishes to break and burn this world”. (p. 663) And I agree that that’s contrary to the intent. That said, I’m comfortable waiting for more context before writing it off; I usually don’t like to theorize on the basis of similar mechanics, but in this case the similarity is hard for me to ignore.  

[Nitpicking]

Proposed: Sja-Anat is the Unmade remains of The Night, the Adonalsium spren created to guard Roshar along with The Wind.

[mai_day she/her]

On 8/11/2025 at 3:30 PM, Nitpicking said:

Proposed: Sja-Anat is the Unmade remains of The Night, the Adonalsium spren created to guard Roshar along with The Wind.

Personally, I think Ba-Ado-Mishram is the Night Unmade for sure (hence why all of Roshar was wounded and disrupted when she was sealed away, why she was connected to all Singers and Spren, why she is described as moving as a cloud of smoke pulled along the ground by smoky hands in the same way as the Nightwatcher, why she started ‘talking’ to Shallan at the same time the Wind started talking to Kaladin), but I also think it’s likely that several or perhaps even all of the Unmade were created from the Spren of Night.

Sja-Anat's drive to create and protect her Spren children, and Re-Shephir’s desire to understand and create people from her Midnight Essence both seem to be similar to BAM’s desire to protect the Singers that she cares for, all possibly stemming from the Night’s rejection by the peoples of Roshar. The Wind seems to have some degree of future sight, and if the Night is similar, that part of them could’ve been split off into Moelach. Ashertmarn seems like the normal human instinct to gather and celebrate in community at night just turned up in intensity until it’s mindless lust for indulgence. Heck, we still don’t know anything about Chemoarish except that she’s often conflated with the Nightwatcher, who we know is made of a small piece of the Night’s essence.

I don’t know if it all fits, but it seems like an interesting line of connection. I am pretty sure about at least Mishram, though.

[Leuthie]

The Sibling is made from the primordial Spren of Stone. Stormfather is made from the primordial Spren of Wind. These two facts have support. Nightwatcher was probably made from the primordial Spren of Night. While the Unmade could have been fashioned from the remnants of these, I'm guessing not. 

I'm 90% sure that the Unmade were fashioned from the 9 True Spren (Spren that bond with Radiants). Before the Unmade, the True Spren were single Spren. There was one honorspren, one Cryptic, one Cultivationspren, etc. Odium corrupted these Spren to create his Unmade. Since the concepts that created the True Spren still existed, new Spren took their place. Tanavast and Ishar created the Knights Radiant concept after these new True Spren started popping up in numbers and bonding with humans, mimicking the lesser spren bonds with all other creatures of Roshar. They took it a step further and created the Unique Spren above out of the Primordial Spren of Roshar (which, of course, Ishar became the patron of). 

Unless someone can find WoB to the contrary, this is still what I'm sticking with.

Edited August 14, 2025 by Leuthie

[Jult]

2 hours ago, mai_day said:

Heck, we still don’t know anything about Chemoarish except that she’s often conflated with the Nightwatcher, who we know is made of a small piece of the Night’s essence.

I was so hoping to get even a tiny bit of info on Chemoarish from the RPG World Guide. But we only got information that we already knew. We did, however, get some very cool Unmade artwork. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it or not though (someone please let me know if I can and I will). Chemoarish has some heavy Dustbringer vibes in her art. She's charging toward the screen with one hand on the ground (which seems like Abrasion sliding to me). She's leaving dust and cinders in her wake and the part of the ground that her hand is touching is cracking apart like she's using Division on it. It looks a lot like how I picture the Searing Dust Storm ability that Dustbringers get in the RPG.

There's also a quote about the creation of the Unmade in general that is pretty vague, but I think this bit I've bolded is very interesting to include:

Quote

The nine Unmade are ancient, perverse spren who are Splinters of Odium.... <I cut out some middle parts about how scary they are>

...It’s unclear how Odium created the Unmade, including whether they were spren or people before he corrupted them.

I think this has all been implied before, but I don't think it's ever been stated this clearly. They're Odium Splinters with something else mixed in. I do get the impression that Ambition, Devotion, or Dominion will NOT be in the mix, which was an idea that I previously liked. I've since bought into other theories about those three.

 

13 minutes ago, Leuthie said:

Nightwatcher was probably made from the primordial Spren of Night.

The RPG confirms this:

Spoiler

Quote

"This enigmatic spren appears as a vaguely human woman made of green mist. She has a delicate face with silken black eyes, and she uses long, claw-like arms to pull herself forward. However, she doesn’t resemble humans as closely in appearance or mindset as do most sapient spren. Instead, she’s closer to her original form as the primal spren of night."

[mai_day she/her]

1 hour ago, Jult said:

The RPG confirms this:

Even without that, The Sibling says it flat out in Wind and Truth

Quote

“'When was the Nightwatcher created?' Jasnah whispered to Ivory. 'We call her the Old Magic, but how long has she been around? When did Cultivation form her?'

Before Ivory could answer, a voice whispered back from a nearby air vent. 'The Nightwatcher came from the Night, as the Stormfather came from the Wind. Though, when I was young, the Wind was different. So very different.'”