theory [Discussion] Deadeyes and Ba-Ado-Mishram

[+Child of Hodor]

TL;DR Before Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment broken radiant oaths did not create deadeye spren. Ba-Ado-Mishram's release is needed to fully restore deadeyes and prevent future deadeyes. 

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"Did you and your Radiants know you would become deadeyes?" Adolin felt Maya searching deep, pushing through her exhaustion .... "Pain. Yes. Death? No. Maybe." - RoW Ch. 94

The radiants and their spren at the time of the Recreance did not think the broken oaths would do as much damage as they did to the spren. Surely at some point in the thousands of years the Knights Radiant were an official organization someone broke their oaths before this.  The spren would have some knowledge of what happens when Oaths are broken. It must not have resulted in deadeyes prior to the Recreance. 

The Sibling was wounded from the trapping of Ba-Ado-Mishram. This is what caused the Sibling to lose the ability to make Lifelight. According to the Sibling this act of trapping BAM hurt all the souls of Roshar, including spren. Kalak seems to agree in the epigraphs he alludes to her imprisonment doing a lot of damage to Roshar and to all spren. Perhaps releasing her is necessary to restore the deadeye spren. 

Ba-Ado-Mishram is able to Connect with an entire species over a wide area, providing singers both forms and voidlight. The Ado in her name means light. 

I can only conclude that BAM being absent made spren more vulnerable and led to the deadeyes being created. She is some sort of Connection superspren or "spren of the world" that may be Connected to all things on Roshar and with her imprisoned all Roshar is missing something. 

Ba-Ado-Mishram

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"In the past, Odium granted forms of power, but Ba-Ado-Mishram thought she could do it. ... Connected herself to the entire singer species ... Ba-Ado-Mishram got a really cramped prison and everyone's souls got seriously messed up" RoW Ch. 73

Sibling's Lost Light

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I have ... been wounded. THousands of years ago, something happened that changed the singers. It hurt me too

Navani covered her shock "You're speaking of the binding of that Unmade, which made the singers lose their forms?"

Yes. That terrible act touched the souls of all who belong to Roshar. Spren too. 

"How have no spren mentioned this?"

I don't know. But I lost the rhythm of my light that day. The tower stopped working. 

- RoW Ch. 49

Kalak's Plea

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I was there when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured ...You must release the captive Unmade. ... 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. 

- RoW Epigraphs Ch. 94, 96 - 97

 

[Myrovyn]

I agree that the imprisonment of BAM led to the singer's losing their forms. This can be explained by the fact that she had given forms of power to all singers and had therefore made a Connection with every singer. By imprisoning BAM, the Radiants severed this link and the parshmen lost a part of their Connenction and Identity since these parts are related to a singer's form.

I also agree that there is a likely link between BAM's imprisonment and other events shortly thereafter such as the Recreance and the Radiant spren becoming deadeyes. How and why this happened, is less clear. Was/Is BAM somehow Connected to all spren on Roshar? This is weird, since BAM is, as an Unmade, a Splinter of Odium and Odium might not have been as Invested in Roshar during the ancient Desolations as he is during the events of RoW. Therefore, I suggest that BAM might have been the spren of Roshar before she was Unmade. The Connection to all of Roshar is then older than her status as an Unmade. The ancient Radiants might have torn a part from Roshar itself by imprisoning BAM.

How do you know Ado means Light? And do you have translations of Ba and Mishram?

Also, small detail, the Sibling lost the ability to make Towerlight, because he couldn't hear his father's (Honor's) rhythm anymore.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

Yep, this does seem to likely be the case. I've written up a theory on it here, if you're interested.

[TheOneKEA]

I’ve also theorized along these lines.

 

[Subvisual Haze]

I think the order of events you have it is off.  The imminent death of Tanavast was the driving events of the whole Recreance, indeed the capture of BAM may have been a move of desperation caused by Honor's imminent death.  The best confirmation of this is the logs in the Gemstone Archive https://coppermind.net/wiki/Urithiru_gem_archive they give us a snapshot in time when the tower was being abandoned.  At this moment the Tower's functions have already begun to fail, yet the capture of BAM is still in the planning stage.

Honor's progressive death caused the loss of his "pure tone" which the Sibling needed to combine with Lifelight to make its Towerlight.  Without a supply of Towerlight, the Sibling needed to progressively scale back Urithiru functions, causing the Radiants to abandon the tower and setting in motion the capture of BAM and abandonment of Radiants oaths.

 

[Karger]

We still don't know where the unmade come from.  Raboniel says she is "unmaking" the sibling so that may be a clue.  If it was native to roshar then it may have had an important role.  The spren ask what would happen if the stormfather died.  I think the radiants got an answer to that question on a smaller scale when they trapped BAM.

[LordTheodore]

14 hours ago, Subvisual Haze said:

I think the order of events you have it is off.  The imminent death of Tanavast was the driving events of the whole Recreance, indeed the capture of BAM may have been a move of desperation caused by Honor's imminent death.  The best confirmation of this is the logs in the Gemstone Archive https://coppermind.net/wiki/Urithiru_gem_archive they give us a snapshot in time when the tower was being abandoned.  At this moment the Tower's functions have already begun to fail, yet the capture of BAM is still in the planning stage.

Honor's progressive death caused the loss of his "pure tone" which the Sibling needed to combine with Lifelight to make its Towerlight.  Without a supply of Towerlight, the Sibling needed to progressively scale back Urithiru functions, causing the Radiants to abandon the tower and setting in motion the capture of BAM and abandonment of Radiants oaths.

 

The Sibling explicitly states that it lost the rhythm of its light when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured and that her capture wounded all spren.

[Harfyn]

I really like the idea that BAM was the "spren of spren" before Odium arrived and unmade them.

Some other interesting notes - the Sibling told ... someone (probably Navani but I cant find the quote) that they had pulled away from their bond right before/in the events leading up to the recreance - so they noticed what the radiants were planning and prepared by ending their bond before ending the bond would cause dead-eye-ness. 

Timeline:

- A long long time ago, BAM is unmade by odium (maybe when he first arrives on Roshar/creates the fused? I wonder if this happens before or after spren originally left the singers I could see the unmaking being the thing that causes spren to leave the singers in the first place, but the timeline gets funky in the heraldic days)

- BAM figures out how to offer forms + voidlight to singers, starts false desolation

- Radiants start planning assault on BAM

- Sibling ends bond with Melishi, tower starts functioning worse and worse

- Melishi takes a Dawnshard ("Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.") and a perfect gem to wherever BAM was, and imprisons them. Important note also - "the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece" sounds a lot like a description of Urithiru in physical or cognitive realm. (map of Shadesmar calls cog-Urithiru "Nohadon's Stairways")

- Recreance happens/Honor dies/Deadeyes ARE

Is this even right? The last step is definitely the muddiest - did imprisoning BAM lead to Honor dying? Or did the Recreance lead to honor dying? OR is his death the reason these things were able to happen? Was the Dawnshard involved in his 'death' or just BAM's imprisonment?

 

 

[ftl]

Wow. Steps crafted for heralds being Urithiru, and used by Melishi to bind B-A-M, would mean that B-A-M is probably hidden somewhere near Urithiru. Maybe in Shadesmar-Urithiru? We haven't explored that at all, and it's so active and bright on that side that a massive bit of investiture like B-A-M in a gem could be hidden there.

[Technomagus]

Big question:  if Raboniel could possibly corrupt or un-make the Sibling using Voidlight, could Radiants restore the unmade with Stormlight/Towerlight/Lifelight? How would you keep an unmade around to do it? The Sibling was attached to Urithiru so there was a conduit. Are there similar conduits to other unmade (lost Dawncitiy ruins?) or could it happen while trapped in a gem?

I would bet it would require an experienced and powered up Bondsmith. C'mon Dalinar or Navani!

 

 

[Darth_Hel]

A couple things that I think need answers to fully understand what exactly happened with BAM.

1. Melishi was a Bondsmith, did they use the abilities that Ishar showed during the scenes with Dalinar to really mess with connections during BAM capture. Could Melishi have accidently or on purpose bound BAM to all the Spren on Roshar, or to Honor/The Sibling as part of the plan. Melishi not noticing the consequences.  Naze-daughter-Kuzodo worries about the consequences and this may come from knowledge the Shin had gained from training with Ishar's Blade.

2. Why were at least Nale and Kalak present at the binding. Nale being a Radiant as well as Herald might explain him, but seems weird that the Herald's were there when Melishi's plan is mentioned as "related to the very nature of the Heralds and their divine duties, an attribute the Bondsmiths alone could address." What exactly about the Heraldic duties was required.

[Brgst13]

Tl;dr: Melishi swapped the Heralds' Connection to Honor and BAM's Connection to the Singers.

Warning: what follows is a combination of fact, guesswork, and speculation hammered into a theory.  Lets throw rocks at it and see what we can knock down.

What if...Melishi swapped the Connection of the Heralds and BAM?  We know the Heralds were sane when they abandoned Taln.  Now we have mindless Singers, Deadeye spren, insane Heralds, and a missing BAM.  We know that BAM was connected to the Singers at the False Desolation.  The Heralds were tied to Honor.  The Singers relied on BAM for Voidlight, and the Heralds and spren relied on Honor for Stormlight.  We assume that BAM was simply ripped away and the Connection severed.  But why would that leave the Singers unable to think or take forms?  And why would that require the Heralds and their divine duties?

Now let's consider that something more profound happened that day.  Perhaps simply severing the Connection would not be enough, or perhaps BAM could not be imprisoned in her current state.  The Heralds' divine duty was to imprison the Fused on Braize.  If Melishi was able to replace BAM's Connection with the Heralds, it is possible that the Singers' Cognitive aspect was trapped in the Cognitive Realm.  On the other hand, Voidlight may have partially corrupted the Heralds' Cognitive aspect, resulting in the madness that leads them to take up the opposite of their attributes. 

Ishar had placed constraints upon the Nahel bond when the orders were formed, and it is likely that he did this by creating a Connection between the Heralds and the spren.  Prior to the Recreance, it seems that if an oath was broken, the spren returned to the Cognitive realm.  Since the Recreance, spren seem to be split between realms, where their Cognitive aspect is trapped as a blade (hence the screaming) and their physical aspect is sent to the Cognitive realm as a deadeye.

It is not clear to me if the Connection between Heralds and spren was simply broken (which seems unlikely), or if it was transferred to BAM.  If it was transferred to BAM, her imprisonment might have significant effects on the Nahel bond.  This could explain the Recreance, since Ishar forced constraints upon the Nahel bond in order to avoid a repeat of what happened to Ashyn.  If this control was severed, then it could have scared the spren and Radiants into abandoning their Oaths.  Additionally, this could have been the reason Urithiru shut down, as Honor's waning tone was obstructed by his Connection to BAM instead of the Heralds.

I still feel like there is one component missing here.  None of this quite seems like damage to the "soul of Roshar".  Ideas, anyone?

 

[Darth_Hel]

I actually had thought about most of those, the one thing I couldn't figure out is why the present day oaths are so constricting again if the old ones hadn't been. If the nature of the connection was permanently switched then the new oaths should have the weakened/no constraints like the old ones. 

[Haze]

13 hours ago, Technomagus said:

Big question:  if Raboniel could possibly corrupt or un-make the Sibling using Voidlight, could Radiants restore the unmade with Stormlight/Towerlight/Lifelight? How would you keep an unmade around to do it? The Sibling was attached to Urithiru so there was a conduit. Are there similar conduits to other unmade (lost Dawncitiy ruins?) or could it happen while trapped in a gem?

I would bet it would require an experienced and powered up Bondsmith. C'mon Dalinar or Navani!

 

 

Imo the reason raboniel was able to unmake the sibling was because the sibling had manifested themself into the physical realm in the same manner that ancient fabrials like soulcasters were created (physical manifestations of spren). So I think for someone of lower than shard level power to "remake" (deunmake?) one of the unmade it would have to have physically manifested first.