[Speculations] Oathpact & Recreance

[DreamEternal]

I find it very unlikely the spren were in in on the Recreance, or supported it in any way. Betrayal is specifically mentioned:

Dalinar reached the Shardblades. They sprouted from the rock like glittering silver trees, a forest of weapons. They glowed softly in a way his own Shardblade never had, but as he dashed among them, their light started to fade. A terrible feeling struck him. A sense of immense tragedy, of pain and betrayal. Stopping where he stood, he gasped, hand to his chest. What was happening? What was that dreadful feeling, that screaming he swore he could almost hear?

Dalinar felt a sense of betrayal from the dead spren. That doens't necessarily mean they weren't willing participants of the act, only that said act was one of betrayal of oaths, and felt inherently wrong like it should.

[Shardbearer he/him]

I for one do not that Syl took away Kaladin's powers to spite him. The way I see it, he was acting against his Ideals and so the bond failed to work in that moment. That was the start of Syl's "death" in my eyes.

[Moogle]

Dalinar felt a sense of betrayal from the dead spren. That doens't necessarily mean they weren't willing participants of the act, only that said act was one of betrayal of oaths, and felt inherently wrong like it should.

 

But, as Jasnah says, the spren do consider it a betrayal. The Stormfather backs her up when he talks to Dalinar, and Pattern tells as much to Shallan. Can it be a betrayal of the spren if they participated willingly? And then there's this:

 

Relis dropped the Blade as if bitten. He backed away, raising his hands to his head. “What is it? What is it! No, I didn’t kill you!”

 

Though we don't hear the spren's words, here, I think we can be rather confident it was accusing Relis of killing it. I wouldn't expect this if the spren did it willingly.

 

I grant that the evidence is rather flimsy either way, here. I can't really make a better argument. I guess we can agree to disagree on this point.

[DreamEternal]

I for one do not that Syl took away Kaladin's powers to spite him. The way I see it, he was acting against his Ideals and so the bond failed to work in that moment. That was the start of Syl's "death" in my eyes.

I didn't say she took them to spite him, but that he tried to use them against Adolin out of spite. Sorry for the ambiguity.

EDIT: @Moogle:

It certainly does not help that we have no reliable sources, since the unbroken survivors are those who weren't bound to a human at the time. So I agree to disagree.

Edited January 9, 2016 by DreamEternal

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

Found that WoB, and it's much less than I remember. Still, it supports the idea that it's basically the same thing as unbonding a dead Shardblade:

 

 

A little sceptical on that first WoB as Brandon mentions the Oathpact and may have confused the Radiants with the Heralds...unless the Radiants entered the Oathpact at a later point perhaps

[Stormgate he/him]

Um...Paradox? Your quote is broken.

Spren normally think in terms of ideas, ideals. This is shown mildly in the released chapter three of Oathbringer, where (light to moderate spoilers)

Syl thinks Kaladin should be happier than he is of going home

They have trouble with abstract concepts such as humor and sarcasm, things which are lies that people know to be such. When they bond with humans, they gain a greater ability to understand these things. Completely unfounded speculation, the Nahel bond is likely symbiotic. The spren get a greater ability to understand the physical world, and the Radiants get supernatural abilities and (this is the part that I am most shakey on) a greater understanding of their chosen ideal, protection or lies or the things that bind men, etc. as well as greater information about the Cognitive Realm and the physical realm by default, such as gravity being less a law and more an 'agreement between friends'. Quite frankly, I have a little bit of trouble with Cryptics being so number-based, given they are liespren. Numbers don't lie. If anyone can help with this particular bit of Cosmere philosophy, I would appreciate it.

[Oversleep]

Um...Paradox? Your quote is broken.

Spren normally think in terms of ideas, ideals. This is shown mildly in the released chapter three of Oathbringer, where (light to moderate spoilers)

Syl thinks Kaladin should be happier than he is of going home

They have trouble with abstract concepts such as humor and sarcasm, things which are lies that people know to be such. When they bond with humans, they gain a greater ability to understand these things. Completely unfounded speculation, the Nahel bond is likely symbiotic. The spren get a greater ability to understand the physical world, and the Radiants get supernatural abilities and (this is the part that I am most shakey on) a greater understanding of their chosen ideal, protection or lies or the things that bind men, etc. as well as greater information about the Cognitive Realm and the physical realm by default, such as gravity being less a law and more an 'agreement between friends'. Quite frankly, I have a little bit of trouble with Cryptics being so number-based, given they are liespren. Numbers don't lie. If anyone can help with this particular bit of Cosmere philosophy, I would appreciate it.

 To quote Hoid: "You have to know the law before you break it". When you start seeing world in numbers (happens to math students who, for example, subconsciously choose the shortest path implementing algorithms they learned about) and you perceive it in an abstract kind of way you can manipulate it easier, as you are a little on the side from it (like you're watching a match instead of playing it. You start seeing...well...patterns). It's easier to lie with that mindset. The best lies have to grow out from the world and be plausible. You have to know what is true, what is possible, what's unlikely but that person before you may still believe... It's also about chances.

[Moogle]

A little sceptical on that first WoB as Brandon mentions the Oathpact and may have confused the Radiants with the Heralds...unless the Radiants entered the Oathpact at a later point perhaps

 

The spren did model themselves after the Honorblades, and we know Nalan considers the Radiants as capable of causing Desolations, so I never really considered the WoB was wrong. I guess it might be. It seems really hard to misunderstand that question though.

[IndigoAjah he/him]

Isn't the implication that they betrayed their oaths or decided to, their spren died and became shard blades and then they ritually discarded their screaming blades in front of feverstone keep? That's what I read from the WOB

[IndigoAjah he/him]

Maybe oathpact can be used to apply to any similar mutually binding promise, just as Shardblade is a derivative of both the honourblades and the fact that spren are of shards?

[IndigoAjah he/him]

Um...Paradox? Your quote is broken.

Spren normally think in terms of ideas, ideals. This is shown mildly in the released chapter three of Oathbringer, where (light to moderate spoilers)

Syl thinks Kaladin should be happier than he is of going home

They have trouble with abstract concepts such as humor and sarcasm, things which are lies that people know to be such. When they bond with humans, they gain a greater ability to understand these things. Completely unfounded speculation, the Nahel bond is likely symbiotic. The spren get a greater ability to understand the physical world, and the Radiants get supernatural abilities and (this is the part that I am most shakey on) a greater understanding of their chosen ideal, protection or lies or the things that bind men, etc. as well as greater information about the Cognitive Realm and the physical realm by default, such as gravity being less a law and more an 'agreement between friends'. Quite frankly, I have a little bit of trouble with Cryptics being so number-based, given they are liespren. Numbers don't lie. If anyone can help with this particular bit of Cosmere philosophy, I would appreciate it.

Maybe they follow the Gaiman law of opposites- Dream is Reality too because both define each other. Lies and truth define each other- liespren could just as easily be called truthspren? They need truths...

[Tyndl he/him]

Isn't the implication that they betrayed their oaths or decided to, their spren died and became shard blades and then they ritually discarded their screaming blades in front of feverstone keep? That's what I read from the WOB

That's what I thought happened.

[Moogle]

The fact that the Stormfather can be on the other side of the world from Dalinar is another sign that the Bondsmith bond is quite different. Syl has a range limit. There is a WoB on that, but I cannot for the life of me find it.

 

Found that WoB:

 

Q [17:15]: Does the spren have to be present for a Surgebinder to have their abilities? Because with Dalinar, the Stormfather won’t be around all the time...

A: Good Question! Fortunately, the Stormfather is a little more omnipresent. Normally you’re gonna have to have your spren close, but the Stormfather absorbed... is basically Honor’s cognitive shadow, which means he’s got a connection to a lot of different things, so he’s not bound by a lot of the rules that others are.

(source)

[DreamEternal]

Found that WoB:

Nice! It also is basically a soft confirmation the Stormfather/Rider of Storms merged with Tanavast's cognitive shadow.

[Seerow]

A wild thought just occurred to me while reading this thread, but I'm missing an important detail. Do we know how long after the Last Desolation that the Recreance occurred? The Last Desolation was around 4000 years ago, but do we have an estimated date on the Recreance?

 

I ask because one thing we have speculated on in the past is how the Oathpact held for so long with only a single herald, when it seemingly held for a far shorter period of time in between the main desolation cycles. Like 100 years or so between desolations, maybe even just a few decades, rather than thousands of years. Yet somehow now the Oathpact has held for thousands of years.

 

Is it possible that the reason for the Recreance was the Radiants finding out about the shattered Oathpact, and them choosing to sacrifice their spren to reinforce Odium's prison, and holding off the true final desolation as long as possible? It would provide a good motivation to do so, but is subjecting thousands of sapient spren to effectively eternal torment to buy humanity time. The Radiants break their oaths without necessarily being terrible people; the spren have reason to hate all humans, and we get an explanation for why the Oathpact lasted so long (presuming the Recreance occurred somewhere during the time period it would normally take for a new desolation to come).

[Bunshin]

I like the theory of the skybreakers as the last order standing (even if they only got one surgebinder).

The only information i can add that in the end of WoR mraize tell shallan her brother was looking for the skybreakers. How can one look for an order that is gone unless its still alive in some form.

[Yata he/him]

@Seerow: At the first I finded your theory pretty perfect. But now I may see that it has some problems:

 

If the Dead-Spren are torturated in a cycle of neverending pain as the Healrds were. And for the same purpose. The Odium's prison will never falling apart, because the Spren can't left their suffer-state (instead the Heralds may surrender, stop their effort to keep Odium and the Desolation begin).

[Slaybalj]

Forgive me if this was mentioned earlier, but if i recall correctly, the encrypted section of the diagram ( chapter 84, WoR) was translated by somebody and reads something like "hold the secret that destroyed the knights radiant. You may need it to destoy the new radiants". This implies that whatever caused the recreance can be made to reoccur or that the current crop can potentially be manipulated into making the same decision...presumably knowledge of what actually occurred would help them avoid a similar event.

safari is currently refusing to cooperate so i am unable to track down the link.

[Eagle of the Forest Path he/him]

Forgive me if this was mentioned earlier, but if i recall correctly, the encrypted section of the diagram ( chapter 84, WoR) was translated by somebody and reads something like "hold the secret that destroyed the knights radiant. You may need it to destoy the new radiants". This implies that whatever caused the recreance can be made to reoccur or that the current crop can potentially be manipulated into making the same decision...presumably knowledge of what actually occurred would help them avoid a similar event.

safari is currently refusing to cooperate so i am unable to track down the link.

 

It could also simply mean "kill the new radiants". No need to recreate the recreance.

[Slaybalj]

Ok...from the coppermind wiki...

“111​825​101​112​712​491​512​101​011​141​021​511​711​210​111​217​134​483​111​071​514​254​143​410​916​149​149​341​212​254​101​012​512​710​151​910​111​234​125​511​525​121​575​511​123​410​111​291​512​106​153​4”

—Pattern 15[3]

This is a code that translates to "Hold the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. You may need it to destroy the new orders when they return."[4] The key is found in Pattern 1 of the Book of the 2nd Rotation, each letter is represented by the number corresponding to the first instance of that letter in Pattern 1, i.e. "h" is 11, "o" is 1, and "l" is 8.[5]

The secret is valuable in some way because it can be used to destoy the new radiants. So sure.. He may not need to recreate it... But the secret itself _is_ a weapon.

[ParadoxicalZen he/him]

Um...Paradox? Your quote is broken. Quite frankly, I have a little bit of trouble with Crypticsd being so number-based, given they are liespren. Numbers don't lie. If anyone can help with this particular bit of Cosmere philosophy, I would appreciate it.

Hmm, tablet error. I'll fix later. I wouldn't go so far as to call them liespren, as truthspren could equally apply. I think a more apt name would be perspectivespren/crypticspren/perceptionspren or something better, as truth and lies are all a matter of perspective to them, and aren't all tgat different, as demonstrated through shallan's PoV chapters.

Moog, I just was confused as Brandon has sometimes mixed up answers/misheard questions so I was wondering if this was the case as he seemed to refer to the Radiants participating in the Oathpact, so I wondered if he had accidenbtally mixed them up

[Master_Moridin he/him]

Hmm, tablet error. I'll fix later. I wouldn't go so far as to call them liespren, as truthspren could equally apply. I think a more apt name would be perspectivespren/crypticspren/perceptionspren or something better, as truth and lies are all a matter of perspective to them, and aren't all tgat different, as demonstrated through shallan's PoV chapters.

 

I'd personally technically define truthspren as logicspren, given that the formal definition of the relationship between True and False is the basis of logic.

 

Also explains Pattern's obsession with, well, patterns.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Master_Moridin

[Oversleep]

It just occured to me that maybe Cryptics just like non-binary logic. Or fuzzy logic.

• It fits with them being about numbers
• It fits with their attraction to false/true things

Maybe people just misinterpreted them while naming them "liespren" and that's why they don't like that name.

[CabbageHead he/him]

As far as we know, it's possible that only a single Bondsmith was active at the time of Recreance and the Stormfather was the only victim.

Of course if the others GodSpren died Dalinar will be the only Bondsmith during the modern Desolation.

 

I think it is likely they have always bonded with the Stormfather.

 

But as for the Bondsmiths, they had members only three, which number was not uncommon for them; nor did they seek to increase this by great bounds, for during the times of Madasa, only one of their order was in continual accompaniment of Urithiru and its thrones. Their spren was understood to be specific, and to persuade them to grow to the magnitude of the other orders was seen as seditious.

 

 

Note "was", not "were", specific. That appears to me to indicate they always bonded with one specific spren.

I wonder why having many more than three Radiants bonded to him was seen as seditious?

[DreamEternal]

I think it is likely they have always bonded with the Stormfather.

Note "was", not "were", specific. That appears to me to indicate they always bonded with one specific spren.

I wonder why having many more than three Radiants bonded to him was seen as seditious?

Maybe it is because he was strong enough to survive oathbreaking once or twice... or thrice. But it permanently wounds him, breaks off parts of his mind, and if he is eventualy killed Roshar is doomed because of its reliancy on the Highstorm.