The Ten Deaths, Voidbinding, and Nightmares

[ccstat he/him]

Reading the Starfalls chapter again, I noticed something odd about the Midnight Essence. It's not hidden, but somehow I had missed it before. That started me on a train of thought that leads me to speculate about how Midnight Essence is related to voidbinding, voidbringers, and the unmade.

In the past I have imagined the monsters as basically a magically corrupted axehound, but the description is clearly different.

Quote

The creature’s smooth, dark-as-midnight skin reflected light like a pool of tar. It had no visible eyes and its black, knifelike teeth bristled in a head set on a sinuous, boneless neck. The six legs were slender and bent at the sides, appearing far too thin to bear the weight of the fluid, inklike body.

These creatures can't see well (or at all?) but have excellent smell. As you will recall, they deflate when injured, leaking black smoke. The important point, though is that when the Radiants arrive, they slice the things in half with their shardblades.

Quote

He effortlessly sheared a monster in half, flinging pieces into the night that trailed black smoke.

[...] The creatures did not retreat. They continued to attack until the last one was sliced in two by the female Shardbearer.

If you are like me, you probably glossed over that without a second thought, since cutting things in half is something these swords are really good at. But not things that are alive! Shardblades famously fuzz when they pass through living flesh, severing the soul instead. So what does it say about these animated smoke monsters that they can be dispatched in such a way? I know that we have discussed the complementary piece in the past: the ability of the creatures to damage shardplate:

Quote

One landed a scraping hit on the Shardbearer in blue, and the claw scored the Shardplate, digging into and cracking it. The danger to these Shardbearers was real.

Their unusual interaction with plate and blade tells me that they have a strong cognitive aspect to them but no true physical life. So what are they? Recall that this attack is considered a sign that a Desolation is on the way, but hasn't arrived yet. I take that to mean that Midnight Essence is found on Roshar proper (contained, somehow) rather than jumping over from Braize with the rest of the Desolation rabble.

Interestingly, the Knights seem to refer to the group of creatures (or to the phenomenon of their appearance) in the singular. There is just one Midnight Essence there that night, and it is apparently responsible for animating/embodying all of the monsters:

Quote

“Voidbringers? These? No, this was Midnight Essence, though who released it is still a mystery.”

The idea of black smoke (corrupted investiture, anyone?) and a power being trapped / released makes me think of Gavilar's sphere. Especially with the reveal in the recent reading Brandon did from the prologue for Oathbringer that 

Spoiler

there was more than one of those spheres and Gavilar didn't consider them particularly important individually,

(EDIT: having looked at the transcript, that second part is not actually true. My impression listening to the audio was wrong, and it casts my next speculation into doubt. I'll leave it as is, though, since I don't want to make this thread very spoilery for that reading.)

it makes me think that Gavilar's sphere does hold a spren after all, but one of the more mundane odium spren (i.e. not a named Unmade). In particular, it might be one of the types that enable Listener voidforms. Perhaps the spren responsible for, e.g. smokeform, is also responsible for Midnight Essence. We know that the power of spren can be accessed in multiple ways: nahel bonds, fabrials ancient and modern, listener forms, and the mysterious "voidbinding." Read again what Khriss has to say on the subject in the Ars Arcanum (identical wordings in WoK and WoR):

Quote

Ancient scholars also placed the ten orders of Knights Radiant on this list, alongside the Heralds themselves, who each had a classical association with one of the numbers and Essences. I’m not certain yet how the ten levels of Voidbinding or its cousin the Old Magic fit into this paradigm, if indeed they can. My research suggests that, indeed, there should be another series of abilities that is even more esoteric than the Voidbindings. Perhaps the Old Magic fits into those, though I am beginning to suspect that it is something entirely different.

Speculation: Voidbinding is a method of commanding/using spren, likely the same ones involved in Listener voidforms. One manifestation is the Midnight Essence, in which {terror/darkness/nightmare} spren are bound to some physical form, then sent to wreak havoc. Note that there is likely far more to Voidbinding than generating the Ten Deaths, but it makes sense under this paradigm that they would be a subset of the voidbinding powers.

Personally, I am not yet entirely sold on this idea. While it makes a lot of sense to me, I am still hoping to be surprised and have voidbinding be substantially different and less Odious than the predictions I've seen so far. What I do particularly like about the theory is the parallel it sets between the Listener forms and the multiple types of human-spren interaction, with potential for all sorts of interesting twists.

Edited February 10, 2017 by ccstat

[+Extesian he/him]

I really like how this is put together. The only part I disagree with (and purely on my speculation) is that I suspect the black sphere isn't the spren to make one type of voidbond but is kind of like Lerasium, it gives the ability to become a full voidbinder and then go around bonding the voidspren that give the various forms. In the Oathbringer prologue (spoiler)

Spoiler

Eshonai refers to it being the light associated with the King of their gods (from memory)

So I suspect it's an Odium god-spren that turns you into a full voidbinder.

But I like this theory. And it makes me want to read through the Parshendi songs describing their forms again.

I also need to think more on the third form of binding abilities, sound like Cultivation but I'm curious about how they manifest.

Edit - actually rereading, I think the third form of abilities is Adonalsium spren.

Edited February 10, 2017 by Extesian
Reassessed

[Itchy Savant he/him]

First off nice post @ccstat!

Secondly @Extesian I have always thought that megaspren that axies investigates meshes well with the first oath of the edge dancers. No proof really just amother gut feeling, but I feel you are on to something there

[Jofwu he/him]

Reread the WoR vision at Purelake as well. My interpretation is that Midnight Essence and Thunderclasts are essentially the same thing... Just different voidspren involved, or something like that.

[Yezrien]

28 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Reread the WoR vision at Purelake as well. My interpretation is that Midnight Essence and Thunderclasts are essentially the same thing... Just different voidspren involved, or something like that.

I like this theory. To expand... if voidbinding does parallel the ten surges in some way, then these monsters might arise from the void-version of soulcasting. 

From the essence chart, topaz gets you "rock and stone" (thunderclast) and smokestone gets you "opaque gas, smoke, fog" (midnight essence). Soulcasting makes resources, but void-soulcasting makes demon-constructs. 

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

Has anyone thought about the fact that there are ten levels of void binding BUT 10 is not the number tied to ODium there are not 10 unmade, and likely odium doesn't have 10 core values such as honor does, so why ten levels of voidbinding?

 

I suspect the Ten-Deaths, and levels of voidbinding are direct corruptions of the surges and Heralds not something inherently different.

 

Argent Interview for WOBs

[Jofwu he/him]

13 minutes ago, Tsidqiyah said:

Has anyone thought about the fact that there are ten levels of void binding

Based on what?

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

From Ars Arcanum: (thank you to @ccstat for the quote)

Quote

Ancient scholars also placed the ten orders of Knights Radiant on this list, alongside the Heralds themselves, who each had a classical association with one of the numbers and Essences. I’m not certain yet how the ten levels of Voidbinding or its cousin the Old Magic fit into this paradigm, if indeed they can. My research suggests that, indeed, there should be another series of abilities that is even more esoteric than the Voidbindings. Perhaps the Old Magic fits into those, though I am beginning to suspect that it is something entirely different.

But the more important thought is that ten is not applicable to Odium. Hence my thought that void binding is not originally his.

 

[The One Who Connects he/him]

1 hour ago, Tsidqiyah said:

But the more important thought is that ten is not applicable to Odium. Hence my thought that void binding is not originally his.

While I like this idea, it is entirely possible that our resident Ars Arcanum writer is making an educated guess based on the prevalence of 10 on Roshar. We have not yet seen Voidbinding, so they may not have found a way to test/prove how many levels there are yet.

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

While I like this idea, it is entirely possible that our resident Ars Arcanum writer is making an educated guess based on the prevalence of 10 on Roshar. We have not yet seen Voidbinding, so they may not have found a way to test/prove how many levels there are yet.

Fair enough. Though if there are not ten levels of voidbinding, the diagram at the back of WoK is poorly named. (I realize BS has not yet named it and the "voidbinding chart" is just a 17th shard reference) 

I like the idea it is connected to the old magic,  or fabrial creation some how. (Side topic)

[The One Who Connects he/him]

4 minutes ago, Tsidqiyah said:

(I realize BS has not yet named it and the "voidbinding chart" is just a 17th shard reference) 

You should check out recent developments in Harakeke's Translation thread. Whole new set of potential in that chart page.

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/10/2017 at 8:17 AM, Belzedar said:

I like this theory. To expand... if voidbinding does parallel the ten surges in some way, then these monsters might arise from the void-version of soulcasting. 

From the essence chart, topaz gets you "rock and stone" (thunderclast) and smokestone gets you "opaque gas, smoke, fog" (midnight essence). Soulcasting makes resources, but void-soulcasting makes demon-constructs. 

I'd been thinking along the corrupted Essences line too, with smoke for midnight essence and stone for thunderclast, but I was thinking that the Ten Deaths are what you get when an Odiumspren possesses inanimate matter, while Voidbringers are what you get when an Odiumspren possesses a Listener. I believe one of Dalinar's visions shows a spren going into stone and a thunderclast emerging.

That would explain why the Shardblade cuts rather than soul-cuts the Midnight Essence, if its body is really "inanimate" matter (in the same way that a Shardblade cuts rather than soul-cuts 'dead' parts of a living thing like hair and shells).

On 2/10/2017 at 9:43 AM, Tsidqiyah said:

Has anyone thought about the fact that there are ten levels of void binding BUT 10 is not the number tied to ODium there are not 10 unmade, and likely odium doesn't have 10 core values such as honor does, so why ten levels of voidbinding?

 

I suspect the Ten-Deaths, and levels of voidbinding are direct corruptions of the surges and Heralds not something inherently different.

 

Argent Interview for WOBs

Or maybe voidbinding is actually not Odium's magic but a Honor plus Odium balance magic the way that (Mistborn first trilogy spoilers)

Spoiler

Feruchemy is of the balance between Ruin and Preservation.

Or maybe Honor was the first Shard to Invest in Roshar, so 10 became Roshar's number and now anybody who Invests there gets a 10 based magic system.

Edited February 13, 2017 by cometaryorbit
fixed spoiler

[Tsidqiyah he/him]

@The One Who Connects thank you i spent hours on that thread. now to delve into that line more.

[ccstat he/him]

On 2/10/2017 at 2:38 PM, Tsidqiyah said:

Fair enough. Though if there are not ten levels of voidbinding, the diagram at the back of WoK is poorly named. (I realize BS has not yet named it and the "voidbinding chart" is just a 17th shard reference) 

Surprise! This weekend at Boskone, Brandon confirmed it as the voidbinding chart. Transcripts aren't finished yet, but you can see the signing report here.

On 2/10/2017 at 10:43 AM, Tsidqiyah said:

Has anyone thought about the fact that there are ten levels of void binding BUT 10 is not the number tied to ODium there are not 10 unmade, and likely odium doesn't have 10 core values such as honor does, so why ten levels of voidbinding?

I suspect the Ten-Deaths, and levels of voidbinding are direct corruptions of the surges and Heralds not something inherently different.

That was my thought as well, and my main argument against the rear chart being related to voidbinding. Now that we know I was wrong, I can speculate that it is related to the planet. There were some questions with the AU release about planetary numerology, in which Braize was confirmed to have 9-centric numerology, while the rest of Greater Roshar has 10. The question of whether that is an attribute of the planet, independent of its Shards, received a RAFO, but I think the case is strong. My suspicion now is that Odium's investiture, when interacting with Roshar, produces a 10-fold system called voidbinding. How it relates to surgebinding is very much an open question.

(Fuel for speculation: In the same answer that confirmed the voidbinding chart, Brandon said that the oaths that act as gateways to surgebinding are a feature of Honor specifically, so it could be that many of the same "surge" powersets are represented in voidbinding, but the method of accessing them is substantively different.)

[Jofwu he/him]

I don't think the "ten deaths explanation" really solves anything. Doesn't that just push the problem further down? Why are there ten deaths rather than nine deaths?

I think too much value is being placed on the number associations here. Just because "Odium's number is 9" that doesn't mean his magic system HAS to have 9 'orders' to it. Especially since I'm not sure we can say voidbinding is precisely "Odium's" magic system. It seems to me that voidbinding is actually a corrupted form of surgebinding. There's some evidence, I believe, that voidspren are regular spren who have been corrupted in some way (e.g. Dalinar's vision where they look for spren that aren't acting normal). So it makes sense that corrupted spren would use the same ten surges of Roshar. That's in their nature. It's just that they use those surges in different ways, compared to how they are made manifest in surgebinding.

All of that said, it's interesting that Brandon said Roshar is 10-centric and Braize is 9-centric, rather than referring to the Shards there. Perhaps this suggests that the unmade (assuming there are 9) are from Braize? (hence the reason there's not ten of them)