Yet another BAM theory

[Brgst13]

Things we know:

1. The imprisonment of BAM hurt the Sibling more than the Stormfather or the Nightwatcher.

2. The Sibling was created to bring humans into harmony with Honor.

3. The effects of the Recreance have a parallel with Elantris.

4. Melishi was necessary for the capture of BAM, and the plan involved the nature of the Heralds and their divine duties.

5. Kalak claims that the event broke him.

6. The Heralds are inversions of their personalities.

7. The Oathpact keeps the Heralds as Cognitive Shadows, and is at least partially still functioning.

8. The spren chose to take part in the Recreance but did not expect to die.

9. The Singers are closer to the Cognitive Realm than humans.

What can we infer from this?  Well, in the Elantrian example, the change in the shape of Elantris blocked the flow of the Dor and prevented the transformation into a full Elantrian.  What would be the parallel to the Chasm on Roshar?

First, let's examine the effects.  The Singers were not only bereft of the forms of power, they were bereft of all forms and cut off from the Rhythms of Roshar.  Gavilar was astonished to see the Listeners able to hum the same rhythm in time when at great distances, so this could not be a Parshman trait.  Second, something changed in the Heralds.  The Heralds appeared to be sane after the abandonment of the Oathpact, but insane by the time of the Prologue.  Age alone does not appear to cause insanity, based on Hoid who is much older than the Heralds and what we know of Kelsier.  This effect can be reversed when a Perpendicularity is opened, or when a KR swears an oath, both of which bring the three Realms together.  Third, there was a change in spren that affected how they behaved after oaths were broken.  It seems that in the past, spren whose Radiants broke their Oaths reverted to the Cognitive Realm, where their minds could still function.  Now it seems that the spren are largely locked in the Physical Realm as a Shardblade, and their minds no longer function.  We know that Spren brought into the Physical realm die rather quickly, so the deadeyes are still anchored in the Cognitive, but they cannot think or function, and will follow commands as Shardblades in a way similar to a slave form Parshendi.

We also know that Forms of Power do not require Odium or BAM, since Venli achieved Stormform simply by bonding a stormspren.  So what did Melishi do?  It seems that there were two parts to what happened: the imprisonment of BAM and the removal of forms of power.  We know how the first can be done; we saw it with Neragoul and Re-Shepir.  Imprisoning BAM might not be sufficient to remove the Forms of Power. The Singers Connected to BAM were all disconnected violently.  The effects of this hit the spren, Heralds, and Connected parshmen.  The connections were broken, the Heralds were inverted, and spren were largely trapped in solid rather than gaseous investiture.  Melishi was the Sibling's Bondsmith, and likely knew about pure tones.  My theory is that Melishi either inadvertently or intentionally blocked spren from hearing Odium's tone and in the process also blocked Honor and Cultivation's.

[Inquisitor #5]

3 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

Age alone does not appear to cause insanity, based on Hoid who is much older than the Heralds and what we know of Kelsier. 

I think Rhythm of War offers a couple counterpoints:

Quote

Be wary of those Fused, kid. The longer one of us exists, the more like a spren we become. Consumed by a singular purpose, our minds bound and chained by our Intent. We're spren masquerading as men. That's why she takes our memories. She knows we aren't the actual people who died, but something else given a corpse to inhabit. . . .

-Rhythm of War, chapter 15

Quote

Midius once told me . . . told me we could use Investiture . . . to enhance our minds, our memories, so we wouldn't forget so much.

 

Instead I think, if I were to remember my life in detail, I would become even worse. Paralyzed by my terrible actions. I should not like to remember all those I have failed.

-Rhythm of War, chapters 84 and 89, epigraphs

These, plus Hoid's displayed use of Investiture for memory storage, imply a few things.

Over time a Cognitive Shadow will warp, just like a Vessel, to be more in line with the power suffusing them and a human (or human-adjacent) mind is implied not to be able to deal with the amount of data that multiple lifetimes provide.

Kelek writes that the centuries blur together for him, so it seems likely that external storage (or expanded mental capacity) has to be employed to avoid degradation or replacement of memory.

I find it not unlikely that sheer age/information overload might account for some of the Heralds' mental states and the warping to align more with their intent isn't unlikely to be responsible for some of it as well.

We also know from a WoB that Cognitive Shadows are affected by people's perception of them:

Quote

Questioner

The Heralds seem to be insane in the ways of their Divine Attributes, at least somewhat. Is this because they're Heralds? As Cognitive Shadows, they're subject to people's perception, like how spren are?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a very astute question, and yes, that is influencing them quite a bit. I'm doing something here with the Heralds. Like, I want the Heralds "madnesses," as we call them, to be magical diseases. And the contrast of something like Kaladin's depression, which I'm trying to treat very real-world. I'm trying to treat them as these things that couldn't exist in our world. They're fantastical mental diseases, like we have fantastic physical diseases in Elantris. So I did make them thematic, and I would say part of the reason for that is people's perception of them and their mental state reacting against that. And that should be a theme among all of the Heralds.

San Diego Comic-Con@Home 2020 (July 23, 2020)

So the Heralds are plausibly experiencing at least four different things that might take a toll on their mental states.

1, they've simply lived too long without a mental out, like memory storage

2, they're warped by the Intent of the power that made them Cognitive Shadows

3, they are affected by perception and as major historical and religious figures there's a lot of thinking about them

4, they spent a long time dying, being tortured, being reborn, repeat

So while not every Cognitive Shadow is at risk of going quite as bananas (fresh from Shinovar), point one should apply to any mortal who lives for too long and points two and three would be potential problems for any Cognitive Shadow.

So age alone might not cause insanity, per se, but I'd say it definitely looks like a probable cause of mental degradation.

4 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

2. The Sibling was created to bring humans into harmony with Honor.

The Sibling was meant to be the bridge between men and spren, not men an Honor.

4 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

Now it seems that the spren are largely locked in the Physical Realm as a Shardblade, and their minds no longer function.  We know that Spren brought into the Physical realm die rather quickly, so the deadeyes are still anchored in the Cognitive, but they cannot think or function, and will follow commands as Shardblades in a way similar to a slave form Parshendi.

That's an interesting idea, though to me it looks like Deadeyes are more closely tied to the Cognitive than living Nahel spren are, an unsummoned Deadeye is in the cognitive, an unsummoned Nahel spren is in the Physical.

There's also a difference between being bodily brought into the Physical, being manifested as an object in the Physical and transitioning Realms. Syl spent a long time nearly mindless in the Physical without dying, for instance, and I don't think that a Deadeye would necessarily fare any better than a live spren if bodily brought into the Physical.

4 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

The Singers Connected to BAM were all disconnected violently.  The effects of this hit the spren, Heralds, and Connected parshmen.  The connections were broken, the Heralds were inverted, and spren were largely trapped in solid rather than gaseous investiture. 

I don't think the effect on the Heralds can have been instantaneous, I'd hazard that they were injured in a way similar to the spren, in that they've aquired a blockage or frailty that hinders healing or exasperates damage.

Honestly, it fits thematically that all the entities touched my the imprisonment lost their minds, quite literally for the singers and Deadeyes, more figuratively for the Heralds.

The sealing of Mishram also didn't cause the Nahel spren to precipitate out as Blades, so I'm not sure I follow the Investiture state thing, especially when Shardblades predate the Recreance.

4 hours ago, Brgst13 said:

My theory is that Melishi either inadvertently or intentionally blocked spren from hearing Odium's tone and in the process also blocked Honor and Cultivation's.

That doesn't really make sense to me.

Most of the Nahel spren didn't have every mature spren bonded at the time of the Recreance, so several types should have had members who noticed that the Pure Tones were gone.

The Sibling can also hear Cultivation's Tone still, though this might be because Cultvation helped them regain it while Honor was busy being insane, though then Cultivation should have helped the rest of the spren too, which would still end up with a discrepancy in what Tones the spren could hear.

I also find it likely that the normal Rhythms exist between the Tones of Honor and Cultivation and if Melishi managed to block those from all spren the Listeners would have been without too.

 

 

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