Fifth of Daybreak

To clarify, I think that Nohadon is bound to a different Bondsmith spren than the Stormfather, the Sibling that withdrew as noted by the Elsecaller. I think that Nohadon is possibly in on Honor's plan to splinter himself as a means of helping to defeat Odium. It happens during the Ascension scene at least. Dalinar is separated from the Stormfather: Then later away from the Stormfather That first one either comes without the Stormfather from Dalinar, or from an outside source, such as Nohadon.

This is my favorite list.

Something strange is going on with Nohadon. I trust Dalinar when he says that it's a vision and it's unlike the rest. Nohadon, inside that vision, speaks to Dalinar with familiarity, and directly addressed the manifestation of the thunderclast. The Stormfather also says that Dalinar was shown all the visions of Nohadon. And yet, in the vision, Nohadon addresses Dalinar directly: This is something that has not happened before. This is also the first time we see the question "what is the most important step a man can take," which will have great significance later on. Before I go any further, I want to extend some thank yous to the folks who beat into my head the possibility of this being a thing over on this thread. It took a lot of hard convincing but they finally won me over, so thanks for sticking with it everyone, especially @hoser and @Paragrin So the essence of that thread was trying to figure out who Odium was referencing when Dalinar Ascended and he said "No, we killed you." While I'm supposing that person is Nohadon, I don't want to get into that discussion per se, but rather, the proofs behind whether it's possible and what people think about him on a broader level, as a quick search didn't show a Nohadon topic. To boil things down, I think that Nohadon was a Bondsmith, and he was bonded to the Sibling. I think that after he died, he bound his cognitive shadow to the spren in a similar way to what Honor did, preserving him for the future and allowing him to connect with Dalinar. There is some textual evidence to support this theory. First off, of any order, the Bondsmiths would be the ones who would be able to accomplish something like this. The Way of Kings is also very much about unifying people. It's the book that inspired Dalinar to become a Bondsmith. Nohadon exhibits those traits of uniting instead of dividing. But let's continue on past this point. The evidence is not hard, but plausible, that Nohadon could both be a Bondsmith and accomplish such a task. We know there are only three Bondsmiths. In Oathbringer, we learned a few more things. So one Bondsmith that generation. They fear it's because Honor is changing. I put forth that it because this is when Honor intentionally splintered himself into the Stormfather. I say this because we know that Dalinar is the first to bond the Stormfather since the change. This means we can infer they had been previously bonding the Stormfather and one other spren since they were aware of their concerns with Honor. We have this information from an Elsecaller, saying that one Sibling had withdrawn. I put forth that this Sibling was bonded to Nohadon, and she discovered that Nohadon had preserved his cognitive shadow inside of it. Paragrin has solid evidence that with Connection, you can interact with people from the spiritual realm, even without it having a direct influence on the way the text formatting is displayed, or the internal voice is distinguished in the character's mind. I'm still going through my reread, but, in the chapter 'Bondsmith,' I found another little piece that made me think Nohadon was nudging Dalinar along. Dalinar has his reaction, the Stormfather rumbles around, as he is want to do, and then there is a disappointment beyond that. Which is what I am putting forth to be Nohadon's Cognitive Shadow bonded to a spren, using Connection to interact with Dalinar. He does this again later, answering the question he gave Dalinar earlier as Dalinar struggles for meaning against the pain of his past and questions the answer he came to so easily. On a more personal note, the way Brandon answers this question makes me feel like he wanted to see if they had picked up on some foreshadowing he had put into place, but I haven't scrutinized WoK or WoR, and this is from when WoR was published. He's reacting similarly to the when I asked about Helaran not being bonded to a spren during the WoR signing. So, brief wrap up, plausible evidence that it could be possible using a Bondsmith's power, Nohadon displays the right temperament to be a Bondsmith, Nohadon interacts with Dalinar in a way that could not be a vision and Dalinar recognizes to not be a dream, we have evidence that using Connection a character can interact with another in a way that doesn't alter book script, and the italics during Dalinar's Ascension pick up right where they left off conversing in the dream, where Nohadon answers the question he posed to Dalinar.

The history from the song Eshonai's mother sings seems to indicate Stormseat was destroyed before the Last Legion was sent there. I ran into this problem when I posted a similar theory right before Oathbringer released.

I really enjoyed this piece of foreshadowing. We're supposed to think Glys wasn't certain he could make a Blade when really he's not certain he can work the Oathgate, and having his blade be forged as if of multiple metals to represent the conflicting investiture is just a great touch. I've kicked myself in the head so many times this book for how little attention I've paid Renarin up until now.

Hmm, I guess that all depends in the timeline for Nale retrieving his Blade. If he retrieved it and met back up with the Skybreakers in secret before the Recreance, which seems most likely imo if the Skybreakers portion of Mraize's note is to be believed, I'd say it's a reference to Aharietiam.

I wonder if Nalan's reference to clusters of Voidspren being found in hiding is at all related to the false desolation as well?

I've been mulling that over, but I haven't seen any hints of her having any large amounts of investiture which is usually a requirement to becoming a cognitive Shadow. I think the more likely candidate to be pulling the strings would be Nohadon. We know he was a Surgebinder so he's got the investiture to have survived longer in transition and found a way to preserve his cognitive Shadow. He's also the only other character that should be reliably dead who has communicated with Dalinar recently. Is Nohadon possibly another Bondsmith who then bound his cognitive Shadow to another sibling perhaps?

Taln had a moment of lucidity before when confronted with familiar investiture being used. Relatively obscure? Dalinar's entire arc is about his wife, she's been teased for the past two books and it's because of her death that Dalinar almost became Odium's champion. That's hardly 'relatively obscure.' Relatively obscure is Sheler, not a character who has huge amounts of influence on three of the protagonists and who's shadow has been cast over the events of an entire book. Which, to quote you, happens at the same moment Odium goes crazy. I've tried to establish several times, we know that Odium was not afraid because he could not fight Dalinar personally and win, he's beaten Honor before. His scene with King T tells us that his concern is directly because he's agreed to a contest of Champions and he has no champion. We have no evidence he is actually scared for any other reason than his entire plan has been flipped on it's head and now if his champion loses his desolation gets nipped in the bud.

Rick Martin figure AND a stick reference??? OH STORMFATHER Alternate Dust Jacket Spoilers:

Yup. this is the solid piece of evidence I've been searching for. I'm on board now. Who picked up Honor? Nohadon?

Seems convincing, leaning towards rescinding my argument. looking into it further

I specified a synonymous intent. The first time that Syl talks about what kind of spren she is, she says "I bind things Kaladin...I am honorspren. Spirit of oaths. Of promises. And of nobility." I am interpreting her putting forward "I bind things" first as significant towards the true intent of the shard, as we know the intent of a shard can be filtered by the person who is holding it. Unity binds people together just as much as Honor does, and it it very fitting with his current personality, and so matches with him filtering a Shard with the intent of binding things together. Is he hearing a command, or is he telling that to himself? The words are in italics like regular thoughts inside his own head. The one that would make me think most he is conversing with someone else happens before the text that would signify the change that allowed him to contact an outside force. The text changes to resemble a Shard's voice only after Dalinar is in the act of Ascending. I don't see enough definitive evidence, either way, to show it's coming from an external source, and from what I see, I'm leaning towards it all coming from inside. My interpretations added in Bold/parenthesis. This doesn't say to me he's terrified. This says to me he can't believe this is happening and is verbally denying what his eyes are telling him. You don't step toward what you are terrified of initially when you recognize it, even if you stumble back later. You run immediately in terror. In my opinion, if you're terrified, you don't take the time to stop and say "this isn't physically possible." It takes a moment for him to realize the implication of what happened to understand that he needs to flee, not because he's scared for his person, but because, as King T points out later, he's now bound in a contest of Champions in which he has precisely zero champions.

I've always remembered seeing you ready to step in and help people when they had questions or concerns back in 2014 when I was active. While we haven't interacted much since I've been back again, that's about the most wonderful thing I could ask of a person anyhow.

I hope this isn't funny to just me, but I thought of a hypothetical that made me laugh.

1: Evi is presumed to have passed beyond having shown no obvious signs of investiture to become a cognitive shadow, so her contacting Dalinar from a place beyond space and time is significant in itself, as the WoB we have show Shards have a difficult to impossible time accessing/communicating with the beyond. 2: Evi was the biggest obstacle while Dalinar was alive to him being a full creature of Odium. Without Evi's influence, The central theme of the book is how her influence tempered Dalinar's addiction to the Thrill, how her death catalyzed the drive to seek out the Nightwatcher, which eventually allowed him to become the man Evi wanted him to be. Her death at the hands of Dalinar was supposed to be Odium's weapon. To see his Ace in the Hole become Dalinar's redemption is enough to make you care. I would liken it to approaching Megneto with a gun and finding out just how fruitless that labor is. I would care about that. 3: I very much like the things Paragrin had to say on the matter about Odium not being able to even comprehend her forgiveness. The shock factor of this, along with seeing his vision of the future be proven wrong, surprised him, and Evi was the cause of that. Her forgiveness ruined his prophetic powers and changed the future as he and Renarin saw it. As Harmony puts it: The disillusionment Odium feels as his plan fails would cause him to resent the person responsible, especially if he killed that person already, a lot. 4: Dalinar has become even stronger because of her forgiveness. The ally of my enemy is worth my consideration. Did he run because he feared harm to his body? The scene with Taravangian implies that he is scared of Dalinar now because he agreed to a contest of Champions and he's been robbed of his chosen champion. With the Assassin in White taking the field on the side of Dalinar, I wouldn't put my money on Amaram either. His plan has been crippled and he can now be forced into an unfavorable match that will cost him more time when he's finally put his plans into motion. Better to hope his minions can get in a lucky shot and kill the Bondsmith and void the agreement then be bound by the agreement made when Odium assumed he had the upper hand. Would you mind laying out the reasoning behind why you say so? Unity to me sounds like a synonymous intent for Honor. Tanavast is in no way present in the scene in any way that should have surprised Odium, and Odium was already aware of the possibility that Honor's shards could be used in some way against him, and by his conversation with King T it seems likely he knew that Dalinar had the possibility of Ascending. I don't see any evidence of anyone else present in the scene who has died before this.

A few weeks ago I would have said the same thing about creating a perpendicularity and Ascending at the very moment an enemy god is recruiting him using his moment of greatest shame as a fulcrum. Also keep in mind this was a 2009 question. But I'm not even convinced it was all Dalinar. Dalinar might have just made the conditions possible for Evi to reach across to contact him, reaffirming Odium's shock at how she can partake in events when they killed her. But this also demonstrates that it is within a Shard's power and is not evidence of Adonalsium.

This isn't necessarily true. Mistborn spoilers. "He might yet" implies it is within a Shard's power to access beyond.

The biggest culture shock I think will come from learning about the notations women have been making without men knowing or narrating for years. I can see that causing some huge trust issues and schisms, especially if high profile rulers come to find out their scribes have been contradicting them in their records.

I narrowed it down to a very simple statement. There are only two possible things that I could be disagreeing with: We know that there are no unintentional splinters of Honor We know that there are no intentional splinters. The second is absurd, given the quote you offered and our knowledge of the Honorblades. So there is only one thing I could reasonably be disagreeing with: #1. So, while it was obvious to me at the time what I was disagreeing with, in retrospect I see that I could have been clearer. I agree that none of my quotes directly contradict the thesis, which is why I just stated that I did not know this. For me, the quotes contradict the the "we know" part. You may "know," but I sure don't. The quotes were just intended to suggest why I might doubt the conclusion that there weren't any unintentional splinters. In any case, you could have simply asked for clarification rather than going off on me as you did (quoted below): Yuk, what a mess. I don't really want to argue with you. Please let me try something different. I found your initial interpretation about the lack of unintentional splinters of Honor to be unsupported by the evidence. I didn't like being told that I agreed with it: "We know ..." I could have stated my initial disagreement more clearly. I think you could have asked for clarification more pleasantly. I could definitely been more constructive in my next 2 responses. Maybe you could have also, Thanks for accepting my apology. There is a lot of back and forth here that I don't particularly care about except that I am sure some of it could have been better said by me and I'm not sure that you couldn't have said some things better. I want to apologize for my part, but I don't want to say that it was all my fault. Does that seem fair enough to you to go forward with? If we can get past the defensiveness, I would like to try to summarize the Cosmere-related parts of our spirited discussion. Your thesis is that "we killed you" means "Dalinar and Odium killed Evi's physical body." I will edit in more later I'm willing to own my snark. We both exhibited behavior that caused each other frustration. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of non-verbal communication. I'm sorry for my part as well. I would very much like to move past it and continue the discussion.

Jasnah explains my worldviews better than I do...

Stone Shaman!

I think the most redeeming aspect of Jasnah is she is aware of her faults and would probably agree with most of your assessment. I did find that her treatment if Shallan bugged me, but it was more from the standpoint if I understood her approach to be completely wrong than I felt she was being completely unreasonable all the time. For instance, the scribe example, Jasnah didn't assign it to her because she thought it was beneath either of them, but because she thought Shallan could grow from the experience. Jasnah does not view scribing as below her, but as a useful task and something Shallan can grow from doing And she does have a point, as Shallan was not able to pay attention and complete the task. You have to be able to do the basics before you can move up in ranks, and taking notes in a meeting is something she'd need to be able to do to become a scholar. In the confrontation about it, Jasnah makes an effort to soften her normally harsh demeanor. She also makes an effort to make amends for disappearing and admits fault for dismissing Shallan's drawing talents earlier, which is a huge out of character step for Jasnah to take. Jasnah also understands that she is not able to provide the proper instruction to Shallan to grow, and it frustrates her, and she struggles to keep that frustration from bubbling over into Shallan. That takes a certain amount of self-awareness that I have a lot of respect for: Her exchange with Ivory shows that her actions are not out of a list for control or out of a superiority complex, but because she truly is trying her best to figure out the best course of action to give Shallan a chance at the future her potential promises. In some ways, Shallan is also responsible for their situation. She is unwilling to commit to either becoming Jasnah's ward again or severing the relationship. When Shallan brings it up again, it's as a question if they can call it finished, ignoring Jasnah's lessons that she should be confident and poised and maintain control. Instead, she flits between being her Ward and rebelling, unwilling to choose either, which is exactly what Jasnah is concerned about: Shallan is letting her impulses control her. Had Shallan approached Jasnah and commanded her situation, stating that given their experiences it would be prudent to reexamine their relationship and the power dynamic between them, Jasnah would respect that and would prove Jasnah didn't need to worry. Jasnah's exchange with Amaram parallels Shallan's earlier exchange with Janala. I think that Jasnah is mostly worried that she sees herself in Shallan and that's part of why she's so harsh with her. She doesn't want Shallan to push people away in the same fashion, especially seeing that Shallan is already more sociable, so she tries extra hard to stamp out that same sort of intellectual elitism that pushes people away. The drive to stop people from making your own mistakes can make you come across especially harsh as well.

Yes, and if you had articulated that in your first post, which is what I asked you to do in my reply to your post where your only statement was "I disagree, consider." Had you been specific in you reply initially, I would have agreed with you that it's not definitive, even as I stand by my interpretation. If you would care to look at my last reply, it is evident that I have, in fact, internalized your criticism and softened that word choice. While I don't agree with your chain of logic here, you apologize below for the statement in question the ad hominem originally refers to, so I don't want to drag this down further. Thank you for the apology, I accept. Incorrect. This is the only explanation you provided: Had you been more specific in your disagreement, I would have agreed with you right away that my wording was too harsh, and backed it down, as I did in my previous post once I understood the nature of your disagreement. Personal interpretation is not hard evidence. Brandon specified in that quote those splinters would not cause Honor to be considered incomplete when he was alive, which is why the first part is relevant. The entire paragraph is why I don't understand how it can relate to your point, when it seems to back up mine. My entire thesis is that we know Honor was not splintered by Odium in the same way Devotion and Dominion were. This WoB makes the distinction that the Splinters of Honor, when he was alive, do not make him less whole. His splinters are entirely removed from whether or not his mind is fractured, which is the criteria Brandon is using for whether or not a Shard can be considered whole, context we would not know without the entire WoB. This is as implicit as my "only" is implicit. In fact "he was working his way down the list...until he got stuck on Roshar" can actually be interpreted as he Splintered Shards up until he went to Roshar. This is not definitive in any way, it is personal interpretation. Which is evidence that Honor died, as he said, not that he was splintered. Broken is not Splintered. This is not evidence of splinters of Honor beyond those we have seen, nor is it evidence Odium splintered Honir. As I said, we have no evidence that Odium has splintered Honor, only speculation, and all evidence we have shows that the only Splinters of Honor were made by him intentionally. The hard evidence, the WoB that aren't ambiguous, are all pointing a certain way. Brandon even says in that first one that it is not heading in absolute correct directions before saying that the shattering of a shard transcends all three realms. I'm interpreting that as the not correct directions is that Honor and Ruin weren't shattered or splintered. I think it's very relevant to whether Odium splintered Honor that we have absolutely no hard evidence of any further splinters of Honor beyond that ones that were created intentionally. If Honor was splintered in a similar way, I would expect similar splinters and a similar trapping in the cognitive realm to prevent Sentience/Ascension. Honor is Splintered, we have definitive proof of that. My interpretation is that Honor has only splintered himself and those splinters are completely unrelated to whether or not he is whole. His death at the hands of Odium was also completely unrelated to being Splintered. Consider this WoB: The four we know that we're splintered also are the four who tussled with Odium, yet Honor's splinters, from all evidence we have, were intentional, and we know of no other splinters definitively. We also know from the other WoB that Honor's splinters didn't diminish him and we're similar to Ruin and Preservation. We know that Odium locked Dominion and Devotion in the Cognitive Realm to prevent future problems. We know that he originally thought he could leave the splinters of Honor alone, but that it will now cause problems. I agree the terminology is loose. Maybe we should move the discussion to what we mean by splintering? Is it just killing the shardholder or is it scattering its power? I agree Honor is splintered, where I don't agree is that Odium has splintered him, as the three previous examples we have show much farther reaching consequences. With Ambition, it affected multiple planets: Reject it if you want, I've provided an argument for why in this specific instance it was especially topical. Do with it what you will. I'm not attempting to control your behavior, only make it easier to engage with you, as it's incredibly frustrating to have to dig up quotes to find out that they support what I'm saying to begin with: that the Splinters of Honor that we know about are not at all similar to those that we know were splintered by Odium. The first time you articulated this argument I changed my wording accordingly because, as I said, I agree with you. You ignored my broader thesis (the evidence shows what happened to Honor is not comparable to Aona and Skai) to attack minutiae (only splinters.) You don't address the points that he should not be surprised by someone taking up a shard that's not held, you didn't even address the two points that are directly quoted in that paragraph. If there was ever an unhelpful paragraph, it's one where you ignore my request to address specific points that haven't yet been addressed to complain you're addressing my points.

When asked if Honor has another splinter, directly correlated to splinters of Devotion/Dominion (Not sure which they are, not as versed with selish theory) he offered specific information and stated they were intentional splinters. If you want to interpret that as him leaving it open ended, I find that hard to believe. He provided information beyond the scope of the specific question. I don't see any reason for him to have wiggled out of the question. Had he simply answered 'yes' I would agree. If you think the points and the arguments I make aren't relevant, please articulate the reasons why. You did not do that until I challenged you further. Yes, Mistborn spoilers We have no evidence Odium splintered Honor, and all evidence shows that the only splinters of Honor we know about were created by Honor intentionally. Yet you quoted the end of it without quoting the earlier context of the conversation. If it's not useful earlier, why is that ending part useful? The unmade are splinters of Odium It should not be confusing because I have provided proof that all of Honor's splinters we know of were created intentionally, something you said you ignored because you didn't think it's relevant. Are you arguing that Honor is diminished? That seems pretty self-evident from the WoB that Honor isn't diminished by his splinters. Please articulate what about my interpretation you disagree with. I provided no evidence for the 'beyond' claim, I have provided evidence here. This ad hominem attack is beneath our discussion. Please attack my evidence and not my character. I think it can be universally agree that you should not cut off words of Brandon mid conversation. Especially in this instance, when the earlier parts of the questions directly reference topics that are in this discussion, as Devotion and Dominion both are central points in my arguments and were both in that WoB. It was also directly about splinters. It is not unreasonable for me to ask you to include the full quote when it comes to WoB. If this were a book quote, I would not be so stringent, but there is no excuse for cutting off a WoB mid-quote, especially when it is obviously topical. If you would like, at some point, to stop ignoring my actual arguments and evidence and resume discussion on the topic, I would be interested in your opinion on the further evidence I have provided, such as Odium locking Devotion and Dominion in the cognitive realm to prevent Ascension, as well as him directly telling Dalinar that he realizes his mistake in leaving Honor's splinters alone.