What did Ishar do to the original Oathpact?

[+mdross81 he/him]

Looking back through the notes from my re-read of RoW, I was struck by this bit from the Syl interlude:

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“Your abilities are what made the original Oathpact. And they existed – and were named – long before the Knights Radiant were founded. A Bondsmith Connected the Heralds to Braize, made them immortal. A Bondsmith bound other Surges and brought humans to Roshar, fleeing their dying world. A Bondsmith created – or at least discovered – the Nahel bond: the ability of spren and humans to join together into something better. You Connect things Dalinar. Realms. Ideas. People.”

See how Syl just casually mentions the original Oathpact there? As in there is more than one Oathpact: original flavor, and Oathpact 2.0. So this got me thinking that it wasn't just the abandonment of Taln and the Honorbaldes and the parting of the ways that we see in the Prelude that changed the Oathpact. Rather, some other affirmative step was taken.

I find other evidence for this theory from the following:

Nale in OB Chapter 106 (emphasis added)

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“I worked for thousands of years to prevent another Desolation, Nin continued. “Ishar warned me of the danger. Now that Honor is dead, other Radiants might upset he balance of the Oathpact. Might undermine certain … measures we took, and give an opening to the enemy.”

Leshwi in Row, Chapter 14

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“They somehow found a way to shift the Oathpact to depend on a single member.”

Ulim in Row, Chapter 73

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Bah, it was a fluke. We couldn’t break the last Herald, and the humans found some way to pin the whole Oathpact on him.

Add in the fact the several times Ishar refers to himself as the "bearer of the Oathpact," and I think there's pretty solid evidence that some additional action was required beyond just abandoning Taln and hoping he would continue to be a bad ass.

So what did Ishar (and perhaps others) do to shift the Oathpact onto just poor Taln? One thought I had was that maybe they ceded some of their minds in the process and that's why (above and beyond the millennia of torture) they're all suffering insanity. I don't love this idea though because I feel like it's been done before in the Cosmere (I'm thinking of Scadrial here). Interested in others' thoughts on what might have been done to shift the pact onto Taln.

On a final note, I'm struck by just how much the Oathpact was driven by the Heralds (and if Shalash is to be believed, pretty much just Ishar). The Heralds (Ishar at least) went to Honor, and he gave them this right, this oath. A Bondsmith (presumably Ishar) Connected the Heralds to Braize, and made them immortal. It all sounds a bit like Ishar cooked the whole thing up and just needed Honor to sign off on him forging the pact. I mean, yes, he gave them the Honorblades and a conduit to his power, but Ishar was really the driving force.

 

 

 

 

 

[Brgst13]

I suspect there is more here.  Just remember, never believe anything a Herald says.  Ever.

[KSub]

Great research @mdross81

I think when Syl says the original oathpact she is referring to the time before they abandoned Taln. It is a little suspicious though.

You're right.  Ishar is always differentiated from the Heralds. The Binder of God's,  Herald of Heralds, Founder of the Oathpact. If I interpret what I've read correctly, he may have created the oathpact with Honors help on Ashyn, it may even be the reason humans were allowed to come to Roshar. Then after humans came to Roshar and the Singers became the Fused the other Heralds joined. So maybe it was a second oathpact.

In RoW, we see Ishar take Dalinars bonds to . It's possible he may have given the Heralds bonds to the Oathpact to Taln. 

[+mdross81 he/him]

59 minutes ago, KSub said:

I think when Syl says the original oathpact she is referring to the time before they abandoned Taln. It is a little suspicious though.
 

I agree with this; I just meant that the phrasing indicated that there was a significant enough change to the Oathpact later that it warranted her specifying the "original" Oathpact when talking about Bondsmith abilities.

[KSub]

12 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

I agree with this; I just meant that the phrasing indicated that there was a significant enough change to the Oathpact later that it warranted her specifying the "original" Oathpact when talking about Bondsmith abilities.

Thats what I was trying to say.

Although by the end of my post I had talked myself into believing Ishar had created another one before the Heralds.

[Part of the One]

2 hours ago, KSub said:

Great research @mdross81

I think when Syl says the original oathpact she is referring to the time before they abandoned Taln. It is a little suspicious though.

You're right.  Ishar is always differentiated from the Heralds. The Binder of God's,  Herald of Heralds, Founder of the Oathpact. If I interpret what I've read correctly, he may have created the oathpact with Honors help on Ashyn, it may even be the reason humans were allowed to come to Roshar. Then after humans came to Roshar and the Singers became the Fused the other Heralds joined. So maybe it was a second oathpact.

In RoW, we see Ishar take Dalinars bonds to . It's possible he may have given the Heralds bonds to the Oathpact to Taln. 

I think this is definitely a likely point, that the Oathpact was changed and the bonds were all transferred to Taln. 

I was also wondering if this was a catalyst that might have led to the splintering of Honor. Not quite a broken oath, but enough of a deviation that it allowed Odium an opening, or that the shift took an even greater part of Honor's power to bind Odium and so left him weaker like Preservation in MB. The timeline would indicate that Honor was dying during the time of the false desolation, which is after the Heralds abandoned Taln. 

[KSub]

2 hours ago, Part of the One said:

I think this is definitely a likely point, that the Oathpact was changed and the bonds were all transferred to Taln. 

I was also wondering if this was a catalyst that might have led to the splintering of Honor. Not quite a broken oath, but enough of a deviation that it allowed Odium an opening, or that the shift took an even greater part of Honor's power to bind Odium and so left him weaker like Preservation in MB. The timeline would indicate that Honor was dying during the time of the false desolation, which is after the Heralds abandoned Taln. 

It's possible. I wonder if the Heralds breaking an oath could be enough to open Honor to attack though. 

[Jofwu he/him]

Stumbled into this from the "Taln didn't break--Chana did" thread.

And yes, this was absolutely my impression as well. Honestly, seems like I was under this impression even before RoW? But RoW made it very clear to me that Ishar must have tweaked the Oathpact in some way.

We got the mechanics of the Desolations explained more clearly than ever. We learned that the Fused are able to come back to Roshar even if they die during a Desolation. The only thing that stopped them from doing this was the Heralds returning to Braize. All of them. Or else all the Fused slip by and a Desolation starts all over again. Taln alone shouldn't have been enough to do this, with the Oathpact in its original state, I think.

[+mdross81 he/him]

41 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

The only thing that stopped them from doing this was the Heralds returning to Braize. All of them. Or else all the Fused slip by and a Desolation starts all over again. Taln alone shouldn't have been enough to do this, with the Oathpact in its original state, I think.

Yeah, it was definitely nice to get a little bit more of an explanation of how a desolation ended in RoW. I probably should have included this in my post as well. It comes right before the Leshwi quote in my original post about shifting the Oathpact onto Taln:

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“You mistake the cycle, simplify it,” Leshwi said softly. “We were only locked on Braize once the Heralds died and joined us there. Until then, there would often be years or even decades of rebirths during a Return—during which time the Heralds would train humans to fight. Once they were confident that humans could continue to stand, the Heralds would give themselves to Braize to activate the Isolation. The Heralds would need to die for this to work.”

It’s not necessarily explicit, though heavily implied, that ALL the Heralds had to return to Braize to activate the isolation.

So one of two things must have happened at Aharetiam. Either Ishar and the others found a way to activate the Isolation remotely or Taln eventually realized the others weren’t coming and, stand up guy that he is, activated the Isolation on his own. My money is still on the former.

I also wonder whether the Heralds could, like the Fused, return multiple times prior to activating the Isolation, or if once they died they remained on Braize until the rest died and came. If it’s the latter it might have been better to die early and just chill on Braize. The Fused would likely be more focused on returning to Roshar to fight than finding and torturing whichever Heralds were on Braize. 

[mathiau he/him]

On 29/01/2021 at 5:20 PM, KSub said:

In RoW, we see Ishar take Dalinars bonds to . It's possible he may have given the Heralds bonds to the Oathpact to Taln. 

The Stormfather implies stealing Sprens was not possible when Honour was alive, granted a Nahel bound is probably different than the Oathpact bound so it's possible that was possible but it's unlikely

On 29/01/2021 at 7:33 PM, Part of the One said:

I think this is definitely a likely point, that the Oathpact was changed and the bonds were all transferred to Taln. 

I was also wondering if this was a catalyst that might have led to the splintering of Honor. Not quite a broken oath, but enough of a deviation that it allowed Odium an opening, or that the shift took an even greater part of Honor's power to bind Odium and so left him weaker like Preservation in MB. The timeline would indicate that Honor was dying during the time of the false desolation, which is after the Heralds abandoned Taln. 

Why would either event directly wound Honour? And the Recreance happened because Honour was already dying and too mad to calm the Radiants down

[NickHunter]

Below is my pure imagination and likely contradict various canon facts. I just would love for it to be this way.

In my mind the 'original' oathpact is formed as part of the deal to let the Ashyn human come to Roshar. Honor 'bonded' the original 'surge' to limit Human power. The Honorblade are keys to let the human access some of those locked up power in a regulated way (this is why it's less efficient than normal radiant). I also believe Honor did not welcome Odium and bound the human god to Braize to make it hard for Odium. Of course Odium likely did not agreed. The human saw no choice and use part of the Oathpact power to contain Odium to Braize. Honor gave Shinovar to human. I.e. Human agreed to give up Odium in exchange for exodus to Roshar. In return human likely obtain clause from Honor to not treat human differently from Singers or to not intervene in human-Singers agffairs. 
 

After a while human 'expand' their influence outward. Honor could not intervene because of the non-intervention clause above. Singers had no choice but to turn to Odium for help. Odium corrupted a lot of sprens to give Singers forms of power with the help of Singers. This is the Singers betrayal to the sprens. The sprens turn to bond with human to get back at Singers/Odium. 
 

However, Odium has a secret plan. He didn't want to win. He want his binding to end. So he manipulate the Singers to undermine them secretly. Human was about to exterminate Singers. Honor could not stand his children being wipeout and lend a hand. Honor broke an oath. As he is Honor, this broke him and let Odium shatter him. To the horror of Odium, this does not free him since the Oathpact power that bind him was not entirely from Honor. Just Honor using original surge to shape the Oathpact.

 

Odium then change his plan to help Singers eliminate human and Heralds to try to be free from Oathpact. Thus the cycles of Desolations.

 

So to answer OP's original question. I think Ishar created the original Oathpact to limit human access to surge and to bind Odium to Braize in exchange for asylum on Roshar. Later he changed it to let sprens bonded to human access to surge to create Knight Radiants. Then as you said he modified it so Taln apcould bear the Oath alone.

 

Just my private fantasy run wild. Haha.

Edited March 8, 2021 by NickHunter