[Discuss] How Connected was Ba-Ado-Mishram?

[TheOneKEA]

One of the big lore bombs from Rhythm of War came in the epigraphs in Part Four:

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“As one who has suffered for so many centuries … as one whom it broke … please find Mishram and release her. Not just for her own good. For the good of all spren.
For I believe that in confining her, we have caused a greater wound to Roshar than any ever realized.”

Excerpt From
Rhythm of War
Brandon Sanderson
https://books.apple.com/us/book/rhythm-of-war/id1489970175
This material may be protected by copyright.

Here’s my theory:

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Odium allowed himself to be too strongly invested in the Rosharan star system and in Roshar itself. This resulted in Odium becoming Connected to everything on Roshar, but especially in the Spiritual Realm. After Odium and the Fused were sent away after Aharietiam, Honor was eventually shattered by Odium, altering the Spiritual Realm. These alterations produced cracks in the spiritwebs of the Rosharan spren that rose to accept and moderate Honor’s spiritual power and his Investiture; these cracks were filled by Odium’s Investiture, as provided by Ba-Ado-Mishram.

Since she was still present on Roshar and appears to have the greatest independent measure of Odium’s Investiture, she thought she could replace Odium and could drive a Desolation, and thus willingly put forth her Investiture to Connect herself thus. We have textual evidence that she thought she had enough Investiture under her perception to accomplish this goal.

When Ba-Ado-Mishram was imprisoned, the Investiture she provided to the Rosharan spren was torn away from them, just like with the singers. The Radiant spren were badly affected by this; it was a crack in their spiritweb that the Innate Investiture of their Radiant could not repair. When the Radiants grasped the enormity of the destruction of Ashyn and the realization that Honor’s loss would remove the restraints on Surgebinding, they tried to be Honorable and chose to dissolve their Nahel bonds with their spren. But because of the loss of Odium’ Investiture, the Radiant spren didn’t know that the Nahel bond could no longer be cleanly dissolved, and they all became deadeyes instead of returning to Shadesmar.

I believe that freeing Ba-Ado-Mishram will cause all the deadeyes to come back to life and return to full sapience. I also suspect that this is how Sja-anat is able to “enlighten” spren: she is  Connecting them to her own Investiture, but because she has less of it under her perception and perceives its use differently, the spren she touches are thus altered into something new.

We all assumed that Ba-Ado-Mishram was only collected to the singers and to the Voidspren that remained behind during the False Desolation. With all of the revelations about just how much of Odium’s Investiture has permeated Roshar and become part of the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects of that star system, I wonder just how significant the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram really is.

Edited November 19, 2020 by TheOneKEA
Fixed the quote tag.

[Necessary Eagle]

Makes sense. I'll take it.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Necessary Eagle

[Harkain]

The theory that some of Odiums investiture got into spren actually could explain some other things as well.

ROW Spoilers
 

Spoiler

• Why Kaladin's eyes seemed to glow red after Teft's death and he got angry (Odiums investiture entering into him via the Nahel Bond)
• Why are there lesser spren that are attracted to emotions? Spren representing aspects of nature makes sense as apart of Cultivation, Honourspren and so forth make sense as being apart of Honour but spren representing emotions? They seem a lot more like Odiums thing.

 

[ftl]

Ooh, I really like that last bit about the emotionspren.

[Zedseayou]

I think if we follow this theory exactly, it would imply that spren created since the Recreance would not be as suffused with Odium's investiture. This has implications for whether or not the new crop of honorspren (and possibly other, younger spren) are subject to becoming deadeyes from broken oaths.

 

[Blackwarder]

On 2020-11-20 at 10:09 AM, Zedseayou said:

I think if we follow this theory exactly, it would imply that spren created since the Recreance would not be as suffused with Odium's investiture. This has implications for whether or not the new crop of honorspren (and possibly other, younger spren) are subject to becoming deadeyes from broken oaths.

 

Well we have Testament as an answer to that.

 

[Zedseayou]

On 02/12/2020 at 9:56 AM, Blackwarder said:

Well we have Testament as an answer to that.

 

I'm not sure we know exactly how old Testament is. It's only with the honorspren where we are told every single honorspren had sought a bond pre-Recreance.

[Blackwarder]

17 hours ago, Zedseayou said:

I'm not sure we know exactly how old Testament is. It's only with the honorspren where we are told every single honorspren had sought a bond pre-Recreance.

“Surely there are others among you, though,” Shallan said. “Older Cryptics? Who were alive back then?”
“No,” Pattern said softly. “None who experienced the bond.”
“Not a single one?”
“All dead,” Pattern said. “To us, this means they are mindless—as a force cannot truly be destroyed. These old ones are patterns in nature now, like Cryptics unborn. We have tried to restore them. It does not work. Mmmm. Perhaps if their knights still lived, something could be done . . .”
Stormfather. Shallan pulled the blanket around her closer. “An entire people, all killed?”
“Not just one people,” Pattern said, solemn. “Many. Spren with minds were less plentiful then, and the majorities of several spren peoples were all bonded. There were very few survivors. The one you call Stormfather lived. Some others. The rest, thousands of us, were killed when the event happened. You call it the Recreance.”

Excerpt From
Words of Radiance ch.75
Brandon Sanderson
https://books.apple.com/us/book/words-of-radiance/id717847678
This material may be protected by copyright.

I’m pretty sure she’s a newborn Cryptic. But she might be from the older ones.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Blackwarder

[Harkain]

Not much to contribute here but found a pattern quote (From Coppermind) that also supports the idea of Spren being suffused with the investiture of Odium.

"Spren are ...power . . . shattered power. Power given thought by the perceptions of men. Honor, Cultivation, and . . . and another. Fragments broken off." 
Words of Radiance Chapter 24.

Excerpt From
Words of Radiance
Brandon Sanderson
https://books.apple.com/us/book/words-of-radiance/id717847678
This material may be protected by copyright.

[Bremen]

I think people overlook that spren were present on Roshar since it was created by Adonalsium.  The much simpler explanation is that Ba-Ado-Mishram was originally created as the spren of nahel bonds (bonds between spren and physical creatures), and later turned into an Unmade by Odium.

Being the spren of nahel bonds would explain why things went so wrong when she was imprisoned. The Singers who had bonds had something ripped out and were trapped in dull form. The spren bonded to humans were similarly effected. I suspect the Great Shells would have been impacted too, this could explain the change in behavior we see in a Chasm Fiend at the end of RoW (assuming the Everstorm healed them like it did Singers).

Edited December 7, 2020 by Bremen

[spitfireky]

On 12/7/2020 at 1:03 AM, Bremen said:

I think people overlook that spren were present on Roshar since it was created by Adonalsium.  The much simpler explanation is that Ba-Ado-Mishram was originally created as the spren of nahel bonds (bonds between spren and physical creatures), and later turned into an Unmade by Odium.

Just an idea, but could she have maybe been a Bondsmith spren at one point? Or is that exclusive to The Stormfather, Nightwalker, and Sibling?

[Brgst13]

3 hours ago, spitfireky said:

Just an idea, but could she have maybe been a Bondsmith spren at one point? Or is that exclusive to The Stormfather, Nightwalker, and Sibling?

This is an interesting idea.  We know that during the era of Urithiru, there were only 3 Bondsmith spren.  However, if BAM were unmade prior to the creation of Urithiru, there very well might have been more.

[Bremen]

16 hours ago, spitfireky said:

Just an idea, but could she have maybe been a Bondsmith spren at one point? Or is that exclusive to The Stormfather, Nightwalker, and Sibling?

The thing that sets the Stormfather/Nightwatcher/Sibling apart from other unique spren, like Cusicesh, is that they all contain investiture from a shard (Honor/Cultivation). This is also the case for the Truespren that bond with radiants.

Odium's investiture might be able to grant similar abilities. We know corrupted Truespren can still bond, but they presumably still have Honor/Cultivation investiture in addition to Odium's. It would be rather amusing if in the process of unmaking the Unmade he made them able to bond Bondsmiths.

[+Aletus]

On 12/7/2020 at 0:03 AM, Bremen said:

I think people overlook that spren were present on Roshar since it was created by Adonalsium.  The much simpler explanation is that Ba-Ado-Mishram was originally created as the spren of nahel bonds (bonds between spren and physical creatures), and later turned into an Unmade by Odium.

Being the spren of nahel bonds would explain why things went so wrong when she was imprisoned. The Singers who had bonds had something ripped out and were trapped in dull form. The spren bonded to humans were similarly effected. I suspect the Great Shells would have been impacted too, this could explain the change in behavior we see in a Chasm Fiend at the end of RoW (assuming the Everstorm healed them like it did Singers).

I really like this idea, but I want to go a little further. Melishi was -likely- the only bondsmith during the time of Mishram's capture. That's not definite, but I think it's both true and not true. 

I'm working on a big theory for this, but here's a spoiler, for a small part at least. So we have WoB's saying it's possible to be more than one order at a time, but not like, a cool easy thing that everyone does. Looking at that more simply, I think it sort of means a person could form two Nahel bonds. 

We know that when Mishram was trapped, everything fell apart. IIRC it's not ever clearly stated when Honor was splintered, just that it was shortly following the Recreance. I think that Honor's last Bondsmith may have also bonded the Mishram spren. 

There's a bunch of lines of text that I am not prepared currently to quote (like I said, I'm working on writing this up, and all of the relevant info is on my Kindle) 

It has to do with the literary mechanic "hearts of men" - humor me for a second, I'm sure a bunch of you guys are Kingkiller Chronicles Fans, and there's a very specific literary mechanic used in that series as well, the word "folly" - used way more frequently than it should. Such it is with this phrase about the hearts of men. 

Honor isn't dead, he lives on in the hearts of men. - Navani said something to this extent, as did Notum. 

You'll find god in the same place you find salvation from this mess, in the hearts of men - Jasnah and Wit. 

but then, there's the opposite of this, just to make things fun. Voidbringers are rumored to enter the hearts of men as an excuse for them doing terrible things, per folklore. 

Mishram was trying to play god so bad during the false desolation I think she succeeded, her capture in the gemstone splintered off a chunk of honor, and sealed it away with the Unmade source of Voidlight, leaving us with like a Warlight spren. I think uniting the hearts of man, the people of Roshar, both human, spren, and singer against Odium could restore Honor. 

[Bremen]

8 hours ago, Arch1tect said:

I really like this idea, but I want to go a little further. Melishi was -likely- the only bondsmith during the time of Mishram's capture. That's not definite, but I think it's both true and not true.

This is something I've been wondering for awhile. We don't know whether breaking a bond would hurt Bondsmith spren the samw way it hurts other Truespren. Since they are larger, more invested (presumably), and don't form shardblades it is conceivable they would not suffer the issues other spren did.

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but then, there's the opposite of this, just to make things fun. Voidbringers are rumored to enter the hearts of men as an excuse for them doing terrible things, per folklore. 

This makes me think of Moash. Odium made him emotionally dead, until that Connection was interrupted and Moash couldn't cope with the emotional pain.

Also spren literally enter Singer's gemhearts. Void spren have entered their "hearts" and give them excuses to do terrible things.

[+Aletus]

Right, we're biased to think of men as just the hu kind, but it's like a generic term here I strongly believe. 

Also on a tangent I mean we know that Stormfather won't form blade for Dalinar but I always kind of took that as sort of just a persnickety part of his deal in bonding Dalinar. I'm your god, I won't lower myself to be a simple tool for you, if we're anything, we're brothers in this. I don't think it's stated anywhere solidly that a Bondsmith couldn't summon their spren as a blade. But then thinking, Sibling doesn't really manifest in the physical world, unless you count her physical form as the tower. Then they'd be living in a blunt giant shardblade. 

I'm not sure what breaking a bond will do to Stormfather though, but I sorta think we're definitely going to find out in the next book. Unless Dalinar is allowed to dip out of the bond prior to the Contest. I can't see the contract holding Odium in the back 5 if whats left of honor was killed by a broken oath. 

WHICH is why I think Mishram will be set free and retain enough of Honor's investiture in her. 

[Bremen]

On 12/7/2020 at 1:03 AM, Bremen said:

nahel bonds (bonds between spren and physical creatures)

I don't know whether Brandon has said this before but he used almost this exact language during the livestream tonight to describe Nahel Bonds. He even mentioned Nahel Bonds between spren and greatshells. Obviously this doesn't mean that Ba-Ado-Mishram was the spren of Nahel Bonds, but I'm feeling pretty good about my theorizing