teknopathetic

Possible for sure! But Shallan is mad is a particular way. Full on sensory hallucination isn’t something we’ve seen besides this event. Shallan will actively repress something, but this story about seeing the light would be an all together separate thing from what we normally see her do. This is her adding something to the story instead or repressing details. The light would be an active hallucination or fabrication, which is not what Shallan is ever seen doing again. I’m also curious that a lightweaver is seeing strange light while other dont seem too (besides Lin Davar who is caught looking towards the room a lot). Personally, I think we shouldn’t dismiss the light as insanity seeing as Dawnshard events and Dalinar both have seen strange light, too. We also know there is another secret, so why not the strange light in the safe? On a meta level, why does Brandon need to make up a delusion for Shallan involving glowing light at all? It doesn’t match her other issues, so what’s the point there? and why have Lin do something similar at looking towards the room at odd times? We dismiss it because we dismiss Shallan as credible, but that to me is a lot of narrative time waisted by Brandon on an overly specific hallucination. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Brandon to add a glowing light, make us discount it, and then bring it back as relevant 3+ books later? He doesn’t seem the type to mention magical glowing light and trapped mother-souls without circling back on that eventually. Brandon clearly has planned out a twisted fact trail for Shallan, so this likely is a clue in some way.

Shallan is blinded by the amount of light that safe gives off, and no one else can see it (though Lin Davar might be able to as he often is caught looking towards the safe as well) And I agree! Testament easily could be dismissed and recovered. But as far as I know, dismissing a blade would not return it back the that safe? And if it can be dismissed and summoned, Shallan has no reason to think the blade is stuck in that safe. Shallan’s memory doesn’t hold up imo. If she went to unbond Testemant in the garden, then I don’t believe her story about her father putting the sword in the safe. I think, personally, that he put whatever a herald used to form a new body (perhaps a gemstone?). Now that would be something traumatic and that would explain the glowing, it being a soul, and would allow for Shallan to go to the garden and see Testament without Shallan having to summon her all the while believing Testament was trapped in the safe glowing like the sun. I think time passes and Shallan represses her mother being a herald, and conflates Testament with her mother’s soul, followed by another repression of the whole thing.

Main Debates 1. Eye Colour Shallan's Mother and Chana in artwork have different eye colours. This is the strongest argument in my opinion and isn't something I can answer without reaching into other things. However, Vorins are pretty specific about eye colour, and Taln is a dark eyes, but do Vorins believe he is a light-eyes? The Vorin church did change a lot to fit their ideology. . Is it possible Chana's eyes changed colours when she used her powers/blade, but then they reverted back to a different colour like what happens to a regular darkeyes with a bonded blade that is lost? It is also unclear if Heralds have access to any returned-style shapeshifting. No one knows the imbued powers of a Herald, so it is up in the air. 2. Everstorms Some think Ulim and the Everstorm caused the desolation, so there is no need for a herald to break in the first place. Others think a herald broke and then the Everstorm was just a non-essential but super helpful tool for Odium (fixing parshmen and preventing souls from going to Braize). 3. The Body and The White Carpet and the Glowing Safe - Some think Chana's body should have ascended or teleported away if she was in fact a herald. -Others think it is odd that no one [edit: the servants or brothers etc] noticed Shallan's mother had burned out eyes post-death. Though there was a body for a bit, it is unclear what happened after, what would happen to a herald body in general, or what the whole deal is with Shallan thinking her mother's soul in in the safe. - There is also some confusion about Shallan's constant mention of the white carpet with blood stains. Was the body on that? Was that after the body moved? Is that a clue the body disappeared and the white carpet remained? - And why does Shallan think her mother's soul was Testemant the blade? Shallan knows that isn't true? What led her to that conclusion? Didn't she unbond Testemant AFTER the death, so what was in the safe? This is my biggest one. If Shallan believes Testement is trapped in the safe, then how did she go yell at Testamant? Something else was in that safe. Something that glowed. edit: I know testemant can be summoned, but can she be dismissed back into the safe? And that would mean Shallan clearly knew testemant was not in the safe? It is weird and those ideas don’t connect well enough making this a likely spot for another secret. Shallan is crazy, but child Shallan wasn’t crazy at that point, right? She represses, but her telling is just plain wrong as we have it. There is just too much odd and noteworthy about the whole safe glow garden thing. Newer Edit:@serack Mentioned that the blood on the carpet set actually congruent with a shardblade wound. If Shallan killed her mother with a Shardblade, that blood could not have been Shallan's mother's since Shardblades don't cut the skin the first time. Perhaps that blood was the paramour's or Lin Davar, but Shallan never seems too broken up about those two in this incident. Why would she constantly think about the blood on the carpet if her mother had not actually been cut? Her father's blood or the lover's blood seems pretty far down on the list. What this implies - I am not so sure? Maybe Lin cut something out of Chana? 4. Killing a Herald - Some think the heralds seemed pretty confident they couldn't die to mortal humans, so how could Shallan have killed a Herlald with a shardblade? - Others think an unexpected shardblade to the heart might be enough to kill Chana as herlalds often died during desolations. 5. The Quote A chapter of WoR opens with "The world ended, and it was all Shallan Davar's Fault" which then goes directly into taking about the white carpet with blood stains. This seems like strong evidence and foreshadowing imo, but maybe it meant just her world as a child (though it does say THE world and not HER world). 6. Red Hair and Chana's Resemblance Shallan is said to have red-hair from horneater interbreading (historically). However, Chana has red hair and looks like Shallan quite a bit. Is that a clue? 7. The Brothers If we accept Shallan to be a child of Chana, what of her brothers? Is there anything special about a herald child (like how Vivenna has some powers and aptitudes due to being the child of a Returned). Is Shallan unique in some way or are all the Davar children potentially special? 8. Another Secret - Shallan has another secret and it probably has been foreshadowed. It likely has to be “better” than the other ones or risk being anticlimactic. Radiant confirms there is a secret Shallan isn’t ready to admit yet we have a confirmed clue that it involves a Seon box, which basically means it is about Shallan’s secret-society mother in some way or is something completely bizarre, but Shallan’s mother is very likely connected to the box seeing as she was involved in secret societies. -We also have Mraize feeling foolish for not suspecting Vail was Shallan since Shallan’s family is connected to other events, which means the Davar’s were big enough that Mraize had heard of them. Yes it could be about Lin and the soul caster being not returned, but that begs the question why Lin was given one at all or why the family had a Seon on the property ten years go? It’s very odd and is being talked about so little that it must actually matter later Extra Evidence in Favour WOB 1- Chanarach has been seen onscreen during TWoK and/or WoR WOB 2 - Heralds can have children though maybe not in the usual way WOB 3 - Shallan's step-mother is confimed to just be a rural light eyes with no interesting connections, but Brandon says "Shallan's mother on the other hand..." However, was before WoR came out, so it could just be about what we saw on screen and nothing more.

I don't think we have the same understanding of what caused this desolation. To me, the order was. 1. Odium starts pulling the Everstorm to Roshar - this takes hundreds or thousands of years. This is done so that when a Herald does break, Odium has a huge advantage this time around. 2. Ulim manages to get smuggled out. He is knows as The One Who Escaped 3. Venli bonds Ulim 4. A herald breaks and Taln shows up at Kholinar. Now the desolation can begin but this takes some time to ramp-up. Historically, Heralds showed up before the Fused. 5. Venli manages to get the Everstorm started. 6. Odium allows the Fused to start returning post-Everstorm so that this desolation is easier for him to win. I don't think Ulim or the Everstorm did anything to start a desolation. I think a Herald still had to break, it is just Odium was lining up a lot of pieces to make sure this desolation was the last one.

What has been proven wrong?

Wow interesting. Not sure I believe it, but am open to it!

In the distant past the heralds probably managed to play the hide and seek game a bit longer. They talk about how they’d hide on Briaze and if one person was caught, the other 9 could share the agony of the torture. Likely, Odium learned to check under the bed so to speak. Since desolations happened so quickly near the end, the game of hide and seek seems to have stopped dragging things out at all. It makes sense desolations were more drawn out at the start because Odium didn’t quite know how the heralds returning to Braise functioned, heralds took longer to find during hide and seek and that they could share the pain between them if someone was caught, that the heralds had more willpower near the start, and that Odium hadn’t quite figured out what would break the heralds he had found.

Imagine you are torturing someone for 4,000 years and they never break. What is the new thing at year 4001 that actually makes the person crack? That's weird. If Taln did in fact crack, what's it that Odium found to use? And Odium seems MAAAAD. Odium trashed the Taln temples above all to the point where the Theylans even noticed it. Was Odium pissed at Taln for holding out for 4000 years, or was he mad Taln never broke at all? I am saying that Taln breaking at year 4001 makes little sense to me. What if he never broke? Some people think the Everstorm somehow made Taln's torture moot, but I am saying what if another herald was sent to Braize (Shallan's mom) and then that Herald broke? The idea Taln broke at year 4001 is weird, and the idea the Everstorm made the Oathpact moot also doesn't exactly work. Taln came back before the Everstorm crossed into the physical, and since the ever storm took millennia to tug across Shadesmaar, I just don't buy that that the everstorm caused Taln to return.

Ulim is famous as the one that escaped, so that implies what he did was unique and somewhat against the rules imposed. He isn't known as the one who broke the Oathpact, so I think it is safe to say what Ulim did was more espionage than overthrowing the Oathpact

Actually ... the body doesn't get described much. Shallan instead tends to describe the white carpet with red stains more than the actual body and that has always seemed weird to me. When she has a PTSD flashback, it is always about the stained carpet or the soul trapped in the safe. Why does Shallan see a glowing light and why she is convinced her mother's soul did something weird are not really fully explicable based on the events that occurred. Shallan knew Testament was not her mother's soul, so what gives? There may have been a body for a time, but she really goes on and on about the stained carpet and veers around there being a body (despite talking about other bodies she has found later in life). We never do find out who moved the body of if people knew about the burned our eyes? It is a bit odd no one noticed she had her eyes seared.

They would know Nightblood is a sword if they knew talking metal existed at all, so I believe this is something different.

It would be interesting if that were actually a Spren fairytale about someone making it to the physical realm for a while and having children.

The only Taln death rattle on the copper mind is "The burdens of nine become mine. Why must I carry the madness of them all? Oh, Almighty, release me", which doesn't seem too time-sensitive imo. My apologies if there is a death rattle I am not seeing (they aren't all on the coppermind it seems). As well, Deathrattles can be inaccurate somewhat. Such as the one about Shallan and Khaladin coming out of the chasm, but it says "Two men" likely being because Shallan and Khal looked like grubby men when they emerged.

It doesn't seem supernatural, but they do seem to have a distinct political or social agenda that is a ticking plot device. I would be surprised if Odium tempted them in some way, but I don't think it is required.

Shai figuring out how to get Soulstamps to work off world and then becoming a Stoneward would be amazing, and I WANT IT, but it seems unlikely. It does seem odd that Brandon spent time asking a character named Zu about their past though... But as Shai is extremely not Iriali, it seems odd she would choose that group to Soulstamp herself into when she could have likely pulled off an Eastern ethnicity. I guess we don't know what/who the Iriali are, so maybe there is something there.

There are also drops to make an eye colour darker, so maybe there are drops to change blue to green or green to blue? Seems like something a Herald might do to be a little less blatantly themselves. As far as I know we dont have drops that do this in real life, so who knows how that is working. And again, it is unclear what Chana's eye-color would be after not using stormlight or a shardblade for so long (if she indeed cannot use stormlight). Plus on a meta level, Shallan is the only confirmed character to know about the drops now, so that could have been a breadcrumb leading up to this reveal.

Chana got sniped by a surprise shard blade to the heart. As they say, a stray arrow can take down anyone.

Thanks for researching all that! My theory is that Chana was the herald who insta-broke, and that Taln never did. This still means the oath pact was working, but that Chana had absolutely zero intention of holding out to torture. So when Chana was killed by Shallan, she broke her oath immediately, and then whatever happens so Heralds on Braize at that point happens. Then Odium uses that moment to turn on his storm as was predicted successfully by Odium and Renarin.

I don't think Kelek is correct. From Wobs it seems Kelek is mistaken, but I admit this is a point of contention between Ishar and Kelek.

When has anyone said it is shattered? Aren't we told repeatedly that the Oathpact is "weakened" but still functional in some way? From the Coppermind: While the Oathpact still remains,[8] how much is unknown. Ishar implied that there is a way to reset the Oathpact when he shortly regained sanity. He instructed Dalinar to meet him in Shinovar and let a Radiant swear an Ideal near him to proceed.[9]

This is debated. I was under the impression that the oath pact is NOT broken, and therefor the Herald give-in rule still applied. The Everstorm didn't change the oath pact, but instead allowed the Fused to respawn during this desolation. If the desolation were to end, everyone would be sent back to Braize until the next Herald broke. The Everstom was a tricky way to circumvent the Oathpact DURING a desolation, but I still think the Oathpact works. Maybe this worked because the Oathpact is so weak? We are told repeatedly that the Oathpact is weak but still active.

Dalinar does see a light when he hears Jasnah read The Way of Kings. Some people theorize that that, along with weird Nohadon visions, is related to the Dawnshard Unite.

Whooops. My bad

Chana's attributes are Brave and Obedient. Loving and Healing = Vedel Edit: Whoops, got confused.

I feel like we are being set up to have Cultivation+Odium vs Preservation+Ruin. Neither of those are great.... Odium+Honour = War Cultivation + Honour = Science Odium + Cultivation = ??? (Maybe History?) All Three = Culture?