[OB] Midius's sketches

[Fulminato he/him]

17 hours ago, dvoraen said:

Urithiru existed well before the last Desolation, though.  That's pretty much fact from the visions Dalinar had.

The point I'm trying to make, or perhaps the question I want people to answer, is would it have been "expected" for Urithiru to contain accurate depictions of the Heralds?

urithiru exist before the KR, nohadon can walk to the city, and the order were founded after he writing the way of kings

[PhineasGage]

I think it needs to be stated that the depictions of the Heralds in Urithiru cannot be known to be accurate by those who have only just arrived there. Here are some reasons why:

1) It will be difficult to date the images - so you cannot assume they were made prior to Aharietiam (or shortly after) when people's living memory was still in play. Even if they were made by people who had seen the heralds, how would Jasnah know?

2) The pictures will be somewhat (or possibly, very) idealised because, let's not forget, these are divine beings to the people who created the images. On top of that, pictures/paintings tend to be idealised - look at portraits painted over the years of many powerful people - it is a well known phenomenon that artists tended to make the picture more flattering. So even if they were done in person, they may still not be completely accurate - especially as we don't know how much they have changed as they are "getting worse".

3) Jasnah has no personal frame of reference to check the images against. So even  if they are accurate, again, how would she know? In order to be sure, she would ideally have access to someone who had seen one or more of the Heralds in person and knew what they were looking at so they could identify them. This likely rules out Shallan because although she had seen Taln, she didn't believe he was a Herald when he saw him, she also has not seen Shalash and recognised her for a Herald.

There is, to my mind, only Hoid fits these requirements for Jasnah to be sure that her pictures were accurate enough to definitively identify 2 Heralds - which we know they did because they've been identified and Shalash believes the pictures have come from someone she knows.

[kmosiman]

1 hour ago, PhineasGage said:

2) The pictures will be somewhat (or possibly, very) idealised because, let's not forget, these are divine beings to the people who created the images. On top of that, pictures/paintings tend to be idealised - look at portraits painted over the years of many powerful people - it is a well known phenomenon that artists tended to make the picture more flattering. So even if they were done in person, they may still not be completely accurate - especially as we don't know how much they have changed as they are "getting worse".

Excellent point. Even if the Heralds sat down for the portraits, the artists would have taken some liberties.

To put this in modern context, think of pictures of celebrities without makeup or photo editing. True or not, there's a story about Charlie Chaplin losing a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. 

Having an accurate picture of what someone last seen 4,000 years ago looks like would be nearly impossible. From the Heralds point of view, they can narrow their suspects down to a small handful of people. There's not that many immortals floating around.