So like... why is Ishar trying to do that?

[coolsnow7]

I haven’t seen this discussed in the forums yet, maybe it has been and I missed it. But I find this simply baffling. Anyone have a clue what this could possibly be about?

[Karger he/him]

Well, firstly, he is nuts.  I personally think he is trying to figure out how to turn people into spren and vice versa believing it will help him attain godhood.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Well, as a Cognitive Shadow, he is, sort of, a spren. I imagine he is trying to learn something about himself. 

[Raven Wilder]

As the Bondsmith Herald, his insanity has likely caused him to become obsessed with uniting people, just as Nale has become obsessed with the law. He may have some deranged notion of humans and spren all living together in the same Realm, united, rather than living apart.

[Awakened Cremling he/him]

My theory is he is trying to determine how to get a physical body to move his soul to since he is a cognitive shadow. Possibly to try to leave Roshar. Although I don't get the vibe he is that interested in leaving but possibly he is trying to figure out how to be able to tell someone else, possibly Kalak.

[Aglaia]

So I can think of three options:

1. He is just insane.
2. He is insane and wants to bring himself back to life (no longer just a CS) so he can leave Roshar.
3. He is insane and ( my slightly crazier idea) since Ishar sees himself as a God and "bearer of the Oathpact" it may fit with his madness to try to create an "improved" Oathpact. The Oathpact had a problem (besides the fact that some people are tortured forever ...): The heralds can break their oaths. Spren don't change as quickly as people do and so the chances of them breaking an oath are therefore less. (OB 38 HONOR LET THE POWER BLIND HIM TO THE TRUTH—THAT WHILE SPREN AND GODS CANNOT BREAK THEIR OATHS, MEN CAN AND WILL.)To get them included in an Oathpact, however, they may need a connection to PR. Kalak mentions something that might indicate that in RoW 92 „The bond is what keeps us alive. You sever that, and we will slowly decompose into ordinary souls—with no valid Connection to the Physical or Spiritual Realms.“  If he can get the spren across successfully, why should they agree? I don't know, maybe he just expects you to do what he says.

[Bri-Y]

Not really answering the question asked in this forum, but as soon as I heard Kaladin was going after the Herald doing mad experiments with spren, I thought how Sylphrena is a spren, and an honor-spren at that, which just so happens to be the most viable type to turn human...

Edited December 6, 2020 by Bri-Y
Word

[Serack he/him]

On 12/6/2020 at 6:48 PM, Bri-Y said:

Not really answering the question asked in this forum, but as soon as I heard Kaladin was going after the Herald doing mad experiments with spren, I thought how Sylphrena is a spren, and an honor-spren at that, which just so happens to be the most viable type to turn human...

yah, I've seen another topic showcasing this as a potential ship.

[Allomancer Jak]

Don’t know why he is doing it but I predict that his brief Connection to the Stormfather will help him bring the SF Spren into the Physical Realm, where he will die (not necessarily at Ishar’s hands).

With Honor’s last splinter destroyed, Honor’s shard can finally be taken up by a willing vessel - queue Dalinar.

This is foreshadowed by Dalinar (not the Stormfather) accepting Kaladin’s Words for the 4th Ideal.

[Frustration]

19 hours ago, Allomancer Jak said:

Don’t know why he is doing it but I predict that his brief Connection to the Stormfather will help him bring the SF Spren into the Physical Realm, where he will die (not necessarily at Ishar’s hands).

With Honor’s last splinter destroyed, Honor’s shard can finally be taken up by a willing vessel - queue Dalinar.

This is foreshadowed by Dalinar (not the Stormfather) accepting Kaladin’s Words for the 4th Ideal.

That would make it harder to take up the shard of Honor not the other way around.

[Sparks]

I like the other replies that are hypothesizing that Ishar is trying to reverse the process of becoming a cognitive shadow, i.e. getting his old body and existence back so he can leave the Roshar system.

In another post about this, I also hypothesized that Ishar was trying create artificial Surgebinders, by bringing Radiant spren into the Physical Realm (notice how it's only Radiant spren that he's experimenting on), and dissecting them.  I believe Ishar is trying to find out if there is something about the Radiant spren themselves that enable the Nahel bond and Surgebinding, and if so, try to remove it and use it to Surgebind without having to bond a Radiant spren.  In essence: can Ishar create more Honorblade-like devices?

It's a concept that Brandon explored in his Reckoners non-cosmere series.

[Dreamwa1ker she/her]

Crack theory: hemalurgy. The Heralds madness seems to be opposite of what they originally stood for, e.g. Ash destroying artwork. For Ishar, he seems to have been the one that instituted the concept of Radiant bonds requiring oaths to bind the Surgebinders to having restrictions or needing to follow certain ideals. Could he therefore now be going after transferring powers to people without oaths through hemalurgy? 

They have notes on how long the spren lived, and I believe one of the challenges with hemalurgy is keeping the victim alive long enough to complete the process.

Ishar also seems to have been quite Cosmere-aware even compared to the other Heralds based on Ash and others comments, so he may have been aware of hemalurgy and Scadrial.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Dreamwa1ker

[Orlion Blight he/him]

From a story perspective: it hints at how dangerous he is. 

It's implied that his free Bondsmithing heavily contributed to the destruction of Ashyn. Could be that unregulated bondsmithing could also be destructive on Shadesmar.

 

[Kitch]

8 hours ago, Dreamwa1ker said:

Crack theory: hemalurgy. The Heralds madness seems to be opposite of what they originally stood for, e.g. Ash destroying artwork. For Ishar, he seems to have been the one that instituted the concept of Radiant bonds requiring oaths to bind the Surgebinders to having restrictions or needing to follow certain ideals. Could he therefore now be going after transferring powers to people without oaths through hemalurgy? 

They have notes on how long the spren lived, and I believe one of the challenges with hemalurgy is keeping the victim alive long enough to complete the process.

Ishar also seems to have been quite Cosmere-aware even compared to the other Heralds based on Ash and others comments, so he may have been aware of hemalurgy and Scadrial.

 

So a forced bond.  Bring a honorspren into the PR, spike it into a recipient, and you have a windrunner not bound by oaths. They won't have plate or blade, but there's plenty of those to go around.

[XeGnome]

It seems to me a certain cognitive shadow from a different CR would very much like to have a physical form again.  
 

Spoiler

When preservation looks in his eyes in Secret History and imbues power to K, he comes away feeling like he has a heart again ( racing pulse) and a felt like he had a semblance of a body.  Could a huge burst of investiture and “intent” be stapled on his connection?

 How hard would it be for the “Lord of Scars” to convince and have some crazed Harold do some fantastic and ruinous experiments to see if it could be done.

Edited January 1, 2021 by XeGnome

[UdSaturn6]

well I have a small theroy that is probably wrong. Taln, in his interlude of Radiance, states "Ishar is trying to figure out how to retain knowledge between desolations". What if this is a result of those studies, being renewed due to the current desolation. could the spren, if fully removed from the cognitive realm, still be imortal. if so they could be trained as world singers like an army of sigzils which speak of the events as if fresh in their minds forever unable to change or alter their perceptions

[Elite01]

Tough to say why... Ishar's main goal is to defeat Odium right? That is why he tried to take the stormfather from Dalinar so how does physical spren help with that? It could be the physical body theory but I am not sure if he is trying to escape. 

I like the theory of artificial surgebinders. He is nowhere close to it but if he could bring spren into the physcial world and they retained some surgebinding that would be an interesting army to fight against the fused.