Theory: Cultivation was involved with Ba-Ado-Mishram

[Benkinsky they/them]

Preface: I'm definitely not super sold on this, but the thought came to me so I wanted to put it down in the best place to get other people to either shut it down or upgrade it)

I thin Cultivation might have been involved in enabling the False Desolation.

By which I don't mean she wanted it, but that she had something to do with Ba-Ado-Mishram. (TL;DR/theory in a few sentences at the bottom)

The facts that lead me to this thought:

- Ba-Ado-Mishram's ability to grant forms of power and Voidlight in the False Desolation was new, somehow. She didn't do that in previous desolations.

- She's the only Unmade with two hyphens. Yes, it's time for a bit of morphology. She's also referred to by Kalak as "Mishram". This might be refering to what BAM was before being Unmade, and maybe Unmade Mishram was Ado-Mishram before becoming what she is now.

As dumb as this sounds, I think the second hyphen might indicate involvement by another shard.

At first I thought "hm, but who? Cultivation I guess, because she's the only one left", but a few more pieces of information might play into it.

• BAM gained new abilities somehow, which she didn't have before. These include being able to create Voidlight.
  • Cultivation is able to do something similar. She both a) created a magic system together with Honor that uses Honor's Investiture but not hers and b ) gave Lift the ability to fuel her Surgebinding with Lifelight anyway.
• BAM was something before she was unmade. I like the idea that Odiums truest/signature Surge is Division, so I'm postulating that "Unmaking" isn't exactly a unique process, but Odiums Version of "changing an invested Being" or something like that. Point is, Odium isn't the only one who can change Spren, but Unmaking is just his version. (For exmaple, if Ruin were to do something similar, it'd end up with a Spren weaker and "less" than it was before, due to Ruin's nature) Another Shard could be able to do that too. We know that Ruin isn't the only shard able to control someone with spikes, so it can be argued that just like Future Sight and SpikeControl, any shard - whose intent wouldn't inhibit that - can corrupt or change investisture.
• Cultivation is training the Nightwatcher to understand human's better, for a reason we don't really know. This hasn't always been the case, but is a fairly recent development. (I can't find a source for this but I remember it being this way, I'd welcome any WoB or quote that either proves or disproves this).
• Cultivation, like Honor, was a god of the Singers and Spren before they swapped with Odium. Singers and Spren were affected by Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment, but at that point in Time Odium was the god of only one of those groups, not both.
• Cultivation's plans have involved an Unmade on-screen once already. Cultivation is said to have excellent Future-Sight, and we have not heard from Sja-Anat that she was in contact with Cultivation, so Sja-Anat leading Odium to Nightblood (whom Cultivation might also have had a hand in creating) was either something they planned together or, more likely, part of Cultivation's plan.
• From a Meta Standpoint, the dead Shard Honor has been much more present in the fight against Odium than the alive shard Cultivation so far, and I think that that is not because she's inactive, but because her plans (as we saw with Taravangian in RoW or Dalinar in OB) are slow and long.
• Ever since Secret History, it's clear that Shards aren't easy to group into "good" and "bad". Preservation was good in comparison to Ruin, but would've been happy with an enternity of the Lord Ruler ruling Scadrial. Cultivation herself acknowledges she can't always control what happens to things she helps grow. To put it meanly, a Cancer cell is pretty aligned with Cultivation's intent, growth for the sake of growth is growth nonetheless.

 

Now, to put the theory into words:

I think Cultivation changed the Unmade that we now know as Ba-Ado-Mishram somehow. In a time of Odium's Absence/occupation with torturing Heralds, Cultivation "enhanced" (her version of the process which is "unmaking" for Odium) the Unmade, granting her new abilities in the process.  As one of the godesses of Spren and  Singers and Roshar itself, this process made Ba-Ado-Mishram more connected to those than she had been before. Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment didn't create Deadeyes and Slaveform because of what she was before being Unmade, but because of the new part of her that was of Cultivation.

So, the timeline of BAM would be like this:

1. "Mishram", whatever she was before being unmade. Kelek refers to her as this in a respectful/appreciate way, possibly because he knew what "Mishram" was before,

2. "Ba-Mishram", one of the 9 Unmade for the longest time.

3. Ba-Ado-Mishram, now changed once more by Cultivation, granted new abilities. The "ado" in her name comes from "adoda", meaning Light- A kind of pseudo-sibling, with both Odium and Cultivation's touch in her. She starts the False Desolation and her imprisonment taints all the other beings touched by Cultivations presence on Roshar.

 

The Nightwatcher probably became Cultivation's "main project" only afterwards. Whether the false desolation was an intended or unintended consequence, I have no idea. Whether BAM wanted to betray Odium or even usurp him and came to Cultivation because of that, or if Cultivation "hijacked" BAM, I'm unsure.

 

What do you guys think? Tinfoil hat theory, or might there be some merit to it?

Edited September 9, 2021 by Benkinsky

[Frustration]

25 minutes ago, Benkinsky said:

BAM was something before she was unmade. I like the idea that Odiums truest/signature Surge is Division, so I'm postulating that "Unmaking" isn't exactly a unique process, but Odiums Version of "changing an invested Being" or something like that. Point is, Odium isn't the only one who can change Spren, but Unmaking is just his version. (For exmaple, if Ruin were to do something similar, it'd end up with a Spren weaker and "less" than it was before, due to Ruin's nature) Another Shard could be able to do that too. We know that Ruin isn't the only shard able to control someone with spikes, so it can be argued that just like Future Sight and SpikeControl, any shard - whose intent wouldn't inhibit that - can corrupt or change investisture.

Technically the procsess would be called "corrupting" reguardless of what shard does it. Unmaking is likely a specific name Roshar gave it, similar to calling every magic Surgebinding.

 

However, the name change at the false desolation doesn't make sense, Why would Radiants use the new name, and how would Hessie know, wouldn't she use the older name instead?

[Benkinsky they/them]

yeah, I think "unmaking" might be corruption just like a Rosharan would see Allomancy and say "storms that's some weird Surgebinding"

I'm not sold on the name change, and I'm not sure when Hessi wrote, so yeah that might put a dent in that part of the theory. Then again, why would Kelek call her Mishram?

[mathiau he/him]

11 minutes ago, Benkinsky said:

Then again, why would Kelek call her Mishram?

I don't know how it's done in America but in France persons with a compound noun are generally called by only on of the names in that compound

[Mat he/him]

I mean, I think the theory still works even without the name change. It's an interesting line of thinking, one that I hadn't thought of or considered before.

[Benkinsky they/them]

1 hour ago, mathiau said:

I don't know how it's done in America but in France persons with a compound noun are generally called by only on of the names in that compound

okay yeah, true, same here in Germany. Still, i wonder if the double hyphen has more to it than just "it's unique"

[Legui01010 he/him]

I've never putted much attention to Ba-Ado-Mishram before, but your line of thinking is an interesting one. Maybe your theory could be proved false by WoB, or maybe proved true, but regardless of that, I strongly believe that Cultivation has big plans for the Cosmere. Maybe she's being controlled by the intent of her Shard, without her realizing.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Legui01010