[Theory] Those Damned Radiants

[NinjaAlligators he/him]

I suspect that when Radiants who have reached a certain degree of progress in the Nahel bond die, they go to Braize.

Several points of evidence have led me to to suspect this:

• The Nahel bond was not designed by Honor, but was an attempt by the spren to imitate what Honor had given to the Heralds.

Spoiler

The Almighty turned to him.  "I was surprised when these orders arrived.  I did not teach my Heralds this.  It was the spren--wishing to imitate what I had given men--who made it possible.  (WoR chapter 4)

In WoR chapter 87, Syl clarifies to Kaladin that the Nahel bond was specifically based on the Honorblades.  

• The Prelude to the Stormlight Archive tells us that one of the conditions of the Oathpact is that the Heralds would return to Braize to be tortured if they died, and were expected to return willingly if they did not die during a Desolation.  To abandon the Oathpact, they had to leave their Honorblades behind, willingly and intentionally giving them up.  They did so by slamming the Blades into the stone ground.  This suggests that the Honorblades was the basis of their connection to the Oathpact, and thereby to Braize.
• The coded passage from the Diagram found in the WoR Chapter 84 epigraph references "the secret that broke the Knights Radiant".  Apparently there is such a secret, and obviously it would need to be a very significant one.
• When Dalinar observes the Recreance in his vision (WoK Chapter 52), he sees the Radiants slam their Blades into the stone ground, as the Heralds did, and as Dalinar does when he relinquishes Oathbringer to Sadeas.  This is clearly how the Bond is broken, though why they needed to leave the Plate behind as well is unclear, mostly because we know so little about what Shardplate actually is and whether it has any connection at all to the Heralds (whom so far have never been shown wearing Plate of any kind).
• Nale believes, following Ishar, that when the proto-Radiants "naturally discover the greater power of the Oaths"..."without Honor to regulate this, there is a small chance that what comes next will allow the Voidbringers to again make the jump between worlds."  (Edgedancer, Chapter 9)  This suggests that the Radiants are connected in some way we do not yet understand to Braize, and could potentially (though by no means certainly) bring a Desolation the same way the Heralds do.  Whether Ishar is correct in this belief or not is not yet known to us.

 

To bring these points together, the Nahel bond is based on the Honorblades, and severed by the same means that the Heralds severed their ties to the Oathpact.  Is it possible, then, that by copying the Honorblades, the Nahel spren inadvertently recreated the not-so-desirable aspect of the Honorblades that connects the Heralds to Braize?  If so, it is possible that when Radiants die, their soul(?)/Cognitive shadow/non-material aspect goes to Braize, as the Heralds do, instead of going through the usual afterlife?  This would be an extremely serious side-effect for the Nahel bond to have, and it's hard to imagine anyone, least of all the Radiants who were all broken people in some way, stoically accepting more-or-less-eternal torment after their death.  As others have theorized, we already have reason to believe that the afterlife is messed up in some way on Roshar, but if the Radiants suddenly found out that they were more or less guaranteed to go to Damnation, that would go a long way toward explaining the Recreance.

[Radiant_Jaeger he/him]

I like this because it makes Tanavast and the Spren to be culpable for the Recreance. The knights discovered the price of their bond with the spren was a hell not even the heralds could suffer, and willingly gave up their powers rather than face that road.

 

This could have been discovered after their "grievous defeat" where a lot of them (The Radiants) died, and the spren revealing to the survivors just what horrors awaited their bondmates after death.

[Weltall]

Welcome to the Shard and awesome first post. It's not exactly a new theory (for example here's an earlier formation of it) but it's one that's gotten a certain degree of traction so hat-tip for independently deriving it and doing a nice job arguing it.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

Biggest issue I have with the idea is that I don't see how the Spren could replicate something that they didn't know happened.

The other thing is that your cognitive shadow should show up in the Cofnitive Realm pretty close to where you died, and the Spren should notice something dragging souls to Braize and start asking questions. This is more speculation in my part that the Spren should be able to put 2 and 2 together, but it's possible that they didn't.

[NinjaAlligators he/him]

1 hour ago, The One Who Connects said:

Biggest issue I have with the idea is that I don't see how the Spren could replicate something that they didn't know happened.

The other thing is that your cognitive shadow should show up in the Cofnitive Realm pretty close to where you died, and the Spren should notice something dragging souls to Braize and start asking questions. This is more speculation in my part that the Spren should be able to put 2 and 2 together, but it's possible that they didn't.

Your guess is as good as mine how the spren chose to imitate and reverse engineer the Honorblades, but as Syl tells Kaladin, she's a piece of Honor, and bonding comes naturally.  With enough understanding of the magic, a good magical scholar can "hack" imitations of other magical systems, sometimes with unintended consequences, as Warbreaker and Shashara did in creating Nightblood based on Shardblades.  While I doubt the Nahel spren understood what they were doing as much as the Five Scholars did, they had a clear model to copy in the Heralds, which is exactly my point.  When you copy something without knowing exactly how and why it works, you risk dangerous side effects.

I'm not  sure what the spren know about death in Roshar.  The most intelligent and knowledgeable spren live in Shadesmar, which few of the characters we have met so far have access to.  The spren we have heard from the most are Syl, Pattern and Wyndle, and all of them are only slowly recovering memories over time.  We will probably learn more in Oathbringer, since it seems that we will get to see some of Jasnah's adventures in Shadesmar.  Even so, she talked to the highspren, and we can't be certain that the spren of the Skybreakers have the same perspective as the other Nahel spren, considering the relationship between the Skybreakers and the Recreance is still murky.  It is possible that the spren in Shadesmar do know that something is terribly awry with the afterlife, we just haven't gotten to see any conversations with the right spren to find out (yet).

What is interesting to me is the certainty that Syl, Pattern and even the Stormfather seem to have that their Radiants will eventually kill them--it is almost as though they know that once the truth (whatever it is) is known, betraying the Oaths is inevitable.  That can't be a good sign, and I'm pretty sure it means trouble for our new Radiants later on.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

@NinjaAlligators I'm not questioning how the managed to copy the Honorblades. I'm saying that there is no possible way the Spren could know the Herald bond with the blade takes them to Braize upon death. Odds are they didn't even know the Heralds died unless they witnessed it happen. Therefore there is no way they could have somehow replicated that aspect of the Herald Bond. 

If something nefarious is whisking away the souls of your prior bonded partners to parts unknown, someone will get involved. Honorspren pretty much have too, High Spren could have laws regarding, etc... Near the start of the bonds, back before all these millennia, somebody should notice something different going on.

The Stormfather was a victim during the Recreance. Tanavast merged his cognitive shadow with him, and that may have been the only thing that kept the Sotrmfather alive. So he has quite hostile rhetoric about oath breakers, and his word is pretty much law around Syl and many others.

Lastly, something that isn't a direct response to your prior post. The Heralds are bound to the Oathpact and Braize by their Blades. The Radiants cannot be bound in a similar way, as the Spren survive to bond others again. Once the Radiant dies, nothing remains to bind them to the pact. It doesn't make sense that they are somehow captured for eternity by this bond when the Spren are not.

[vikorr]

This theory is confusing:

 

It's presupposes that the Heralds swords are the link to Braize,

- Heralds are themselves heavily invested.  The guess that the sword is the link to Braize is just a guess.

- it supposes that the sword takes the Heralds to Braize dead or alive (when they survive a desolation) - but the swords didn't do this. Unless they do some mystical nonsense with the sword...but there  no evidence of this.  

- But what we already know / is evidenced,  is that dying takes the Heralds to Braize. So wouldn't it make more sense if it was simply the Heralds death that triggered their going to Braize? .

- so if they survived, they needed to kill themselves to fulfill their oath

- it doesn't have to be the Honorblade to kill them, because being killed by desolationspawn also took them to Braize. So it appears simply dying is the the answer.

 

The Heralds going to Braize is part of the oathpact:

- the Heralds made an oath to do so, with Honor and Odium (and possibly Cultivation)

- the Knights Radiant did not make such an oath.

 

It also presupposes that spren:

-, tied to Roshar, created a link to Braize by bonding humans. 

- are able to invoke part of the Oathpact between Odium, themselves, and Humans

- who would know where the KR who advanced far enough went (dang, my silly KR said one oath too many)

- and were still happily bonding humans...right up until the time the KR killed a lot of them

 

Then there's the theory that if the KR advanced far enough, they went to Braize as part of the Oathpact. The KR went on for centuries after the last desolation, and before the Recreance. Perhaps they live a long time, or perhaps they died of old age, and kept getting replaced by new Radiants. Let's say the advancing far enough triggers going to Braize:

- Surely in those centuries, some of them advanced far enough?

- where's the desolation linked to such events occurring?

- Such advancements would have happened sporadically over the centuries, rather than all at once. Surely the KR would have noted if their very highest members kept disappearing to Braize? (some can walk the Cognitive Realm. Surely they would have some idea)

 

Now on the for side: Honor made a binding agreement at the oathpact. Spren are parts of Honor and so parts of them must be bound by the oathpact. Spren, in bonding to humans, and trying to imitate something honor did in relation to the Heralds....may carry that agreement into the Nahel Bond.

 

Personally, think this is what Nale came to believe, but it also seems to be wrong.

 

Edited April 23, 2017 by vikorr
correcting sentences

[Yata he/him]

I feel unlikey the "Radiant goes to Damnation" for a series of reasons:

- The Heralds are Cognitive Shadows, being able to survive without ties to the physical world. Once they lose their physical body they aren't pulled in the Beyond

- KR are standard living beings. Upon death they have no way to remain in the Realms longer.

- The KR lose their Nahel Bond upon death, so the Spren can't actually do nothing to them.

- There are two orders (actually three but in marginal way) and at least 10 comunities of Spren who could manage to see what happen to the other side. I feel really unlikely they didn't notice something weird.

So unless all the Rosharans are sent into Damnation (therefore the KR are no special in this) I find someone will soon discover what is going on.

[dyring]

Interesting and original theory.

How would this fit with "wicked thing of emminence" wich caused the recreance according to Shallans book? Still, its a theory wich provides a possibly sufficent motivation for Radiants to kill their sprens, and that takes some doing. Myself, I think its more likely that they too were tricked into thinking that somehow radiants would cause the desolations to return, the way Nale thought, but I havent managed to think up a way that could have happened.

 

Still, upvote for original and interesting theory.

 

 

 

[Beatsmorn]

Just one thing, Odium wasn't part of original Oathpact by WoB.

 

[Farnsworth]

Great first theory! However, I can't resist poking holes in theories, so here are some issues:

1: Radiants die in between desolations, either in battle or through old age. Why would the spren hold these radiants exempt, but send the ones who are alive when a desolation ends, and then send them all to damnation? The Heralds are immortal so it makes sense that they are only necessary during desolations. But the Radiants make no sense.

2: How would the spren who don't have the suge of Transportation transport their Radiants to Braize?

3: Desolations were described in the prelude as involving fire and hooks. I think this would permanently injure a human who was not a Herald (are Heralds even human?).

[The Count he/him]

Assuming this theory holds true:

Could this be the origin of the afterlife mythos on Roshar? 

That those who serve with distinction (i.e. the KR) are sent to the Tranqualine Halls (i.e. Braize) to help retake it from the Voidbringers.