Shardcast: Ba-Ado-Mishram and the Recreance

I don't know why you disregarded WoBs, here are some that directly address the questions discussed.

From Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015):

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Q. Was Honor Shattered before or after the Recreance?

A. I believe after. I'm pretty sure. I mean, he has memories of the Recreance.

From the Skyward Houston signing (Nov. 19, 2018):

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Q. How close is the enslavement of the parshmen to the Recreance, timeline-wise? 

A. Um, fairly close, as timeline issues go, but still many decades.

Q. Did it play any kind of factor in the decision?

A. Absolutely. But we're not talking about it happening next year. But it was a factor, how about that?

From Skyward release party (Nov. 6, 2018):

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Q. Is the vision that Dalinar of the Recreance; is that how it actually happened?

A. You can assume that even though it was a recreation, that it is accurate.

From YouTube Livestream 23 (Dec. 17, 2020):

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Q. Was the reason Radiants could safely break oaths before the Recreance, without resulting in deadeyes, because the Bondsmith broke the bond for them?

A. RAFO! Good question!

And finally from Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018):

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Q. At the time of the Recreance, were there any Bondsmiths?

A. This is a plot point. You are supposed to be asking that question.

Q. I was mostly trying to find out if the Sibling was bonded, and if the break in the bond is what caused the Sibling to go into slumber.

A. Let's just say this is a RAFO with the promise that I intend to answer the question relatively quickly.

23 minutes ago, Parallax said:

Q. How close is the enslavement of the parshmen to the Recreance, timeline-wise? 

A. Um, fairly close, as timeline issues go, but still many decades.

Q. Did it play any kind of factor in the decision?

A. Absolutely. But we're not talking about it happening next year. But it was a factor, how about that?

That WoB doesn't even make any sense with the information we knew at the time. The recreance happening many decades after the parchment enslavement doesn't fit with the people at Feverstone Keep thinking that the Radiants were fighting demons on the front lines. I think this is just a case we ignore the WoB. Even without RoW, it just doesn't match the information in the books.

The only case the WoB might make sense is if it means that the parshmen being enslaved happened decades after the Recreance, the Recreance being a factor in the decision to enslave them. Though that might work, the WoB under that interpretation isn't really relevant here.

@Chiberty there reasons why I don't think Brandon made a mistake:

1. The plan to capture Ba-Ado-Mishram (BAM) appears in the gem archive but there is no hint of anyone wanting to abandon their oaths among what is recorded. 

2. Capturing BAM did not end the war immediately. In the gem archive capturing BAM is meant to give the Knights Radiant "an edge in combat". The most likely implication is that without BAM there would be no new Regals, but the ones she had created were unaffected (Regals don't need Voidlight to use their powers). The ordinary parshmen forced into slaveform would still serve Regals, their creation would motivate Regals to fight the humans until the bitter end and other Unmade could have assisted in the fight afterwards. 

3. The humans defeated their enemy in the False Desolation, if the Recreance happened decades before how did they do it without the vast majority of Knights Radiant?

Easy to forget some WoBs sometimes, but also, they aren't everything. The first WoB, we already knew and is obvious from the books. The accuracy of the vision one is a good one. The RAFOs don't really matter  So one important one missed for sure.

I find that enslavement of parshmen one to by highly suspicious. 

11 hours ago, Parallax said:

2. Capturing BAM did not end the war immediately. In the gem archive capturing BAM is meant to give the Knights Radiant "an edge in combat". The most likely implication is that without BAM there would be no new Regals, but the ones she had created were unaffected (Regals don't need Voidlight to use their powers). The ordinary parshmen forced into slaveform would still serve Regals, their creation would motivate Regals to fight the humans until the bitter end and other Unmade could have assisted in the fight afterwards. 

I would think if Ba-Ado-Mishram directly Connected with the singers to grant forms of power, wouldn't those singers (those Regals) be the primary singers to instantly go into slaveform? You're definitely making a big assumption that the Regals would remain in tact after her binding. I would assume if there were pockets of Regals that still existed after her binding that some would survive somewhere on Roshar. 

Regals surviving in tact does not match Ulim's account in chapter 73, where he says she Connected with the entire species, and "everyone’s souls got seriously messed up." Of course, the listeners are an exception, but I absolutely do not think the Regals at the time would be.

I have a theory on Ba-Ado-Mishram: What if it’s a similar situation to Yelig-nar, where the unmade is actually inhabiting someone? I.E. what if the unmade was actually Ba-Ado and the container was Mishram (who in my head is a Singer)? A successful merger, unlike we’ve seen with Yelig-nar.

This could explain why Kalak refers to her as Mishram (wanting to see the person more than the unmade) as well as why Raboniel swears to Ado (possibly Ba is a title, and therefore dropped in the curse), i.e. it’s just an old Singer curse when only Ba-Ado existed.

So my very rough timeline would be that Ba-Ado existed (separate) prior to the False Desolation. Mishram was a Singer (known to the heralds, or at least Kalak), and was looking for ways to get an edge up on the humans. She finds Ba-Ado and successfully joins with them, becoming Ba-Ado-Mishram. The joining gives her the powers of a bond smith (maybe not fully, but enough to provide Voidlight).

(this is evolving as I type)

So BAM Connects to Roshar (i.e. the Spren of Roshar), in order to start generating Voidlight. Then BAM Connects to all Parsh in order to form a conduit where Parsh with forms of power can get a supply of Voidlight 

This kicks off the False Desolation because Regals are returning. Bunch of more intense fighting happens, until finally Melishi figures out a way to capture BAM, ripping the Connection out of the Parsh and Roshar. Kalak (and maybe other heralds) was there because they knew Mishram before, and saw it as putting down an old friend who had gone mad 

Further speculation: the method of imprisonment is similar to the knives from RoW, perhaps originally used to just drain Stormlight, was repurposed by Melishi to extract BAM (cannot be unmerged now) from the body.

(As a counter to something said above, Regals for sure use Voidlight. I don’t think BAM granted forms of power, but granted the fuel needed instead)

Edit: Let’s go even farther and crazier: I thought I heard someone mention an Aon Ado (but it isn’t on the coppermind). And I’m also vaguely remembering someone saying that the Seon are unique. So what if there was an even farther back Seon Ado, who was unmade by Odium, and thus became Ba-Ado, the Unmade. (I don’t know that I believe this edit, since I couldn’t find an Aon Ado, but throwing it out there).

58 minutes ago, Govir said:

(As a counter to something said above, Regals for sure use Voidlight. I don’t think BAM granted forms of power, but granted the fuel needed instead)

Well, both the Radiants at the gemstone archive believe that BAM provided the forms of power, and Ulim's recount of the situation says that as well.

28 minutes ago, Chaos said:

Well, both the Radiants at the gemstone archive believe that BAM provided the forms of power, and Ulim's recount of the situation says that as well.

I will defer to your knowledge in this regard, but I still think the main thing was that she could also provide Voidlight to fuel the forms of power, something only Odium could do previously.

2 hours ago, Chaos said:

Easy to forget some WoBs sometimes, but also, they aren't everything. The first WoB, we already knew and is obvious from the books. The accuracy of the vision one is a good one. The RAFOs don't really matter  So one important one missed for sure.

I find that enslavement of parshmen one to by highly suspicious. 

I would think if Ba-Ado-Mishram directly Connected with the singers to grant forms of power, wouldn't those singers (those Regals) be the primary singers to instantly go into slaveform? You're definitely making a big assumption that the Regals would remain in tact after her binding. I would assume if there were pockets of Regals that still existed after her binding that some would survive somewhere on Roshar. 

Regals surviving in tact does not match Ulim's account in chapter 73, where he says she Connected with the entire species, and "everyone’s souls got seriously messed up." Of course, the listeners are an exception, but I absolutely do not think the Regals at the time would be.

Yeah, that WoB doesn't line up with what we know from the books and it doesn't line up with other WoBs. Sometimes Brandon says things that aren't correct. Unless Oathbringer is an Honorblade becaue he said it on a stream one time it must be true. 

Very fun episode! In my head, every time I hear a phrase along the lines of "the strike on Ba-Ado-Mishram" I end up thinking of it as "the strike (not at Shayol Ghul but) on Ba-Ado-Mishram." 

I'm truly curious how much of the capturing of BAM and its unintended consequences was possibly influenced by that amazing short work by Robert Jordan from 1996.

2 hours ago, Govir said:

I will defer to your knowledge in this regard, but I still think the main thing was that she could also provide Voidlight to fuel the forms of power, something only Odium could do previously.

I can provide quotes! Not a problem. 

Gemstone archive (OB epigraph chapter 80): ""Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow Connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her."

Ulim in chapter 73: "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. So we got stuck on Braize. Eventually the Unmade decided to start a war without us. That turned out to be exceedingly stupid. In the past, Odium granted forms of power, but Ba-Ado-Mishram thought she could do it. Ended up handing out forms of power as easily as Fused give each other titles, Connected herself to the entire singer species. Became a little god. Too little."

I think this is very explicit, especially with two different references from opposite sides both saying the same thing.

17 hours ago, Chaos said:

I would think if Ba-Ado-Mishram directly Connected with the singers to grant forms of power, wouldn't those singers (those Regals) be the primary singers to instantly go into slaveform? You're definitely making a big assumption that the Regals would remain in tact after her binding. I would assume if there were pockets of Regals that still existed after her binding that some would survive somewhere on Roshar. 

Regals surviving in tact does not match Ulim's account in chapter 73, where he says she Connected with the entire species, and "everyone’s souls got seriously messed up." Of course, the listeners are an exception, but I absolutely do not think the Regals at the time would be.

Forms of power are singers bonding non-sapient voidspren. BAM connected to all singers to offer them bonds (i.e. make them Regals) but once someone bonded and became Regal there was no reason for BAM to hold onto the connection, its purpose was achieved. 

Regals don't need voidlight or BAM, the listeners had to attain stormform before summoning the Everstorm and all they needed for that was voidspren to bond with during a highstorm. 

What Ulim says doesn't imply Regals also turned into slaveform. For Regals it could refer to inability to hear certain rhythms or attune others. Why would capturing BAM affect a non-sapient voidspren's bond with a third party? How did the stormforms who summoned the Everstorm function?

This way of looking at it gives answers to a bunch of questions: (1) If Odium's tone is a pure tone of Roshar why aren't there any non-sapient spren with Odium's investiture? They existed but their existence was sustained by BAM, so the ones that were not bonded ceased to exist after she was captured. 

(2) How long was the Recreance? A single day. Here is why: BAM is captured, the side effects surprises the Radiants, the Tower stops functioning, the Radiants evacuate and all this is going on while a dying Honor is ranting and raving and the False Desolation is still going on. During these decades a consensus builds up and everyone aside from Skybreakers agrees to break their bonds but they also agree to postpone that until the enemy is defeated (which is why the people in Feverstone Keep don't know, the war ended so recently the news hasn't gotten there yet). 

13 hours ago, Chaos said:

I can provide quotes! Not a problem. 

Gemstone archive (OB epigraph chapter 80): ""Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow Connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her."

"[BAM] facilitates forms of power" fits nicely with her acting as "the bondsmith of Regals". I don't think facilitate is the right word if the forms of power depended on continuous connection with her. 

______

There is a more information in the other WoBs (not the first which I included for the sake of completeness): the fourth suggests that maybe all Adolin and Maya need to do at this point is to book an appointment with a bondsmith! Maybe this is the power Dalinar gets once he swears the next ideal, it could be the same power that would enable him to repair the Oathpact. 

The last WoB is further confirmation that capturing BAM happened decades before Recreance. That Melishi the bondsmith captures BAM is known, but whether there was a bondsmith during Recreance is a plot point to be addressed. 

My take is the Sibling chose to kick the Radiants out before the strike and shut off the heat to enforce it. The Sibling is like a party host signaling everyone should go home by unplugging the stereo and flicking the lights on and off rapidly. 

The thing that makes the timeline so confusing is that the Sibling says they "banished" humans from the tower in RoW Ch. 40, but the Radiants mention in the gem archive that the heat doesn't work and they don't understand why. Did the Sibling kick them out and in conjunction with that shut off the heat to enforce it, but not tell the Radiants that the Sibling still had the ability to power the Tower if they wanted to? Remember the Sibling loves to pretend. They were pretending to be dead for thousands of years. They were quite upset that Navani figured out they were still alive. 

They even convinced an Unmade they were dead. A dumb one, but still. 

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"You were supposed to think I was dead. Everyone was supposed to think I was dead"

"That Unmade infected me for so many years, the one your Radiants frightened away? I remained hidden from her all that time, never fighting back, and so she thinks I died." (RoW Ch. 40) 

They like to pretend so people leave them alone, but then they took damage that caused them to lose the abilities they were pretending they didn't have up until that point? I think this is what happened, but it muddles everything. 

On the "worthiness" quote. I used to think as David does that their worthiness isn't why the Sibling is withdrawing. But the Sibling tells Navani she is not "worthy" in RoW at a crucial moment. Both their lives are on the line Moash is about to finish off Navani and Raboniel is close to Unmaking the Sibling and the Sibling still says she's not worthy at first. It really seems like the Sibling told these Radiants to get out because they are not worthy.  

The gem archive seems to have been made specifically to leave something behind because they were leaving Urithiru. That's the impression I get from them as a whole. Different orders used them differently, some to say they love their family, some as therapy, some as scholarly notes. They were making a time capsule to leave behind. None of them seem like they were made before the Urithiru exodus was decided on, none mention anything that would indicate the strike had happened yet.  

From all this I can only conclude the Sibling kicked them out and began shutting down the heat and other important functions to make sure they left. Then the Radiants did the strike which hurt the Sibling.  

Parallax, I think you're just making an assumption about the Regals. I mean... you're perfectly entitled to feel that way, but I don't think that's very supported. Maybe, but I currently don't think that is well supported.

I find that WoB about the timeline highly circumspect; we've been chatting about it on Discord for the last day and it just... really does not make sense to me.

6 hours ago, Chaos said:

I find that WoB about the timeline highly circumspect; we've been chatting about it on Discord for the last day and it just... really does not make sense to me.

I am struggling to see why you think that way given:

1. The WoB is fairly recent (Nov. 2018).
2. We have the audio for the WoB.
3. In response to the follow up question Brandon reaffirms the timeline which all but eliminates the likelihood of a mistake. 

Maybe you think I am misreading the WoB. The only alternative to my reading I see is the one Chiberty proposed but that creates significant issues as I explained above. Do you have a third reading of the WoB? Or do you think Brandon was deliberately misleading the questioner?

7 hours ago, Chaos said:

Parallax, I think you're just making an assumption about the Regals. I mean... you're perfectly entitled to feel that way, but I don't think that's very supported. Maybe, but I currently don't think that is well supported.

That Regals are singers who have bonded non-sapient voidspren is canon, the only assumption I am making is about BAM's relation with Regals.

If you disagree with my reading you start having issues: who are the demons the Radiants are supposedly fighting at the front lines in the Recreance vision if not Regals? If the time interval between the events is much shorter why is the existence of a bondsmith during Recreance in doubt? 

On 12/28/2020 at 5:34 PM, Child of Hodor said:

Yeah, that WoB doesn't line up with what we know from the books and it doesn't line up with other WoBs. 

Could you be more specific about the other WoBs or what is in the books?

I mean, Brandon can still make mistakes even in audio (mistspren, Gavilar's spheres being known after OB). Those are also fairly recent and also totally wrong  This book shows WoBs mean less than before. I think the WoB is weird. 

Your assumption is that the imprisonment of BAM does not put the Regals in slaveform. I very much believe those singers were put in slaveform. I do not agree with your assessment there, so we will leave it at that. I strongly believe every singer that was not a listener was placed in slaveform at that moment, and I think the text definitely implies that is the case.

The issue with your analysis is the Blades. If deadeyes were new, so were dead Blades. Under the assumption that the Recreance took more than a few days, remaining Knights would have investigated the sites. And they would have found lots of corpses with their eyes burned out, That alone would have freaked them out, as ending the bonds should have ended the possibility of Blades in their minds. Do you really want to say that no Knight Radiant would have recovered a dead Blade? Yet as soon as they had a dead Blade surely one of them would have touched it. And then they would have heared the scream.

Are we to assume that they just continued after that? Without a significant number of exceptions? It seems to me that the assumption that the Recreance happened  simultaneously within a few days at most is inescapable.

On 12/29/2020 at 9:37 AM, Parallax said:

Regals don't need voidlight

Where does this info come from? My understanding is that they use Voidlight, but the source is either always plugged in or they can get more directly whenever by attuning to Odium’s rhythm.

Which is my point in the False Desolation. BAM connected to *all* the singers in order for them to get Voidlight from her, instead of Odium (who was locked away on Braize)

And I’m still iffy on False Desolation Regals, i.e. it makes more sense (to me) for BAM to “provide” voidspren than to say she was giving forms of power directly (e.g. without voidspren). OR maybe it’s an adapter situation. Singers have a socket X. Voidspren have a plug Y. BAM provides an adapter of plug X and socket Y, something Odium would normally do. This would give a reason why capturing her would remove the Regals as well.

I think we need more information about BAM to say for sure, because both your quotes could be read as “gave them voidspren”, @Chaos.

On 12/31/2020 at 6:34 AM, Govir said:

Where does this info come from? My understanding is that they use Voidlight, but the source is either always plugged in or they can get more directly whenever by attuning to Odium’s rhythm.

The listeners needed to adopt a form of power (stormform) to bring about the Everstorm and they do so without using Voidlight.

7 hours ago, Parallax said:

The listeners needed to adopt a form of power (stormform) to bring about the Everstorm and they do so without using Voidlight.

Ok, you’re right. I am conflating Forms of Power (aka Regals) with being able to use the surges, but that’s reserved for the Fused. This is probably because we mostly see Venli as a POV character who is a Regal, but can use surges (via Timbre).

16 hours ago, Parallax said:

The listeners needed to adopt a form of power (stormform) to bring about the Everstorm and they do so without using Voidlight.

We just do not know that. For all we know Odium supplied them, respectively their Voidspren with Voidlight. All we know is that they did not put Voidlight into gems or took it out of gems.

On 1/4/2021 at 11:45 AM, Oltux72 said:

We just do not know that. For all we know Odium supplied them, respectively their Voidspren with Voidlight. All we know is that they did not put Voidlight into gems or took it out of gems.

To my recollection no Voidlight was used, I double checked with Coppermind which says the same (Regals don't need Voidlight to function). 

All of this is very confusing. It definitely doesnt make sense that some singers survived BAM's imprisonment to fight at Feverstone Keep (I dont buy Parallax's theory that Regals were unaffected, it just doesnt strike true - all singers except the listeners were Connected to her). At the same time, the imprisonment cant have happened after the Recreance because there no Radiants to do it. Something is fishy here, regardless of that WOB. The only possibility I see is that the Recreance WAS a protracted event and the Radiants at Feverstone (not necessarily their entire orders) were not part of the imprisonment. Why wasnt their act mentioned in the archives? Well, the archives also dont mention Honor rambling. Because... we are not seeing the full archive after all. We are seeing a couple of the entries.

I'd just like to give a shout-out to Ian for that point about the Deadeyes not appearing in Shadesmar while the Blade is summoned. 

Really, it gives a narrative purpose to that plot point of them not knowing how to bond blades at first- it meant that it took a lot longer for the Spren to figure out that Deadeyes were a thing. Which is why I'm convinced he must be right