cometaryorbit

Soulcadting changes the Cognitive too, and we've seen Jasnah kill with that. So unless turning somebody's cognitive aspect to the cognitive aspect of smoke or crystal doesn't count as "damage", I don't think she'd see it that way. The question of pain and suffering would be relevant, but she'd want to balance that against the gains achieved (she was willing to put the Heralds back on Braize). So it would depend on what you'd gain. Spiking Surgebinding probably wouldn't work anyway since the spren would break the bond, and deadeye issues mean it could cause way more suffering than spiking a human could (spike through the heart would be fatal rather quickly, and non-Shadow dead humans go Beyond really quickly, but a deadeye might suffer forever). So she probably wouldn't do that. But in a situation where Jasnah's in contact with non-Rosharan System magics (which bringing in Hemalurgy already implies) I think she'd be in favor of spiking, say, Miles or Push/Pull from Era 2 Mistborn. Same for a murderer with an useful Nightwatcher Boon, or something like that. Same for someone terminally ill with powers agreeing voluntarily to be spiked. At least in the current apocalyptic war situation. In peacetime, perhaps not, since receiving a spike also has potentially bad effects on the recipient. But not losing potential useful powers would probably seem really important right now.

I am skeptical that there is actually an Allomancer breeding program. Post BoM that seems likely to be Wax's flawed assumption. BoM makes it clear the Set uses Hemalurgic spikes granting Allomantic powers, they had to get the Allomancers for that, and we know they kidnapped Allomancers..

They don't strike me as a natural pair - they're neither directly opposed like Ruin/Preservation nor clearly similar. But I think they *could* merge. Kelsier didn't have the right Connection to Preservation, but that orb let him make it work anyway. And the way its worded in Secret History, I think it might be more about the Vessel than the actual Shard(s). So if you could find a person with sufficient Connection to both, or something like that orb, I think you *could* combine any two Shards. But it might not be a very functional combination; Harmony is having trouble acting. Cultivation+Preservation could become a concept like causing change to achieve an original state or perhaps an ideal state, after which change is no longer needed. The first could be Restoration, not sure about the second ... Progress? But that doesn't have the implication of an end state where change stops the way Restoration does. Or that combination could become unable to act (need to change/cause growth vs need to maintain stasis). It might go either way depending on the Vessel. I actually think adding Cultivation to Harmony would work better, balancing out the negative aspects of Ruin and perhaps producing a form of change less directly opposite to Preservation- something where the future grows out of and preserves aspects of the past.

I agree with this, I'm just not sure Jasnah would see executing a genuinely dangerous criminal with powers using Hemalurgy as a problem. She'd probably say they're going to be executed anyway, so no additional harm is happening, and their power is being saved, so it's actually less loss to society than a conventional execution. I would be against this because of slippery slope issues, but I'm not sure Jasnah would be. And the issue of possible afterlife implications of Hemalurgy soul damage would probably be less convincing to her as well.

Historically, yeah. But with Sja-anat no longer working for Odium... Also, are the Unmade actually Odium's spren (i.e. Splinters of Odium) or are they native Rosharan spren (either of Adonalsium or Honor/Cultivation) corrupted or Unmade by Odium? If the latter is true, it might not be any more of a problem than bonding an Enlightened/corrupted spren like Glys. If they are actually Odium's Investiture, it might take Bondsmith shenanigans to make work, or might be possible now that Odium's tone is one of Roshar's pure tones. ...Hmm, if Odium is actually invested in Roshar now, does that mean potentially 7 Bondsmith spren? Honor = Stormfather Cultivation = Nightwatcher Honor+Cultivation = Sibling Odium = ? (Ba-ado-Mishram???) Honor+Odium = ? Cultivation + Odium = ? Honor+Cultivation+Odium =? (Sja-anat maybe?)

I am not sure, because I don't exactly understand how her utilitarian side - e.g. her immediate suggestion to go kill the Heralds to send them back to Braize, as soon as the Oathpact is explained to her in Oathbringer - fits with the whole "life before death, journey before destination" thing. It must work -- since she is a high ideal KR how she approaches the world must fit Ivory's take on what the First Ideal means -- but I don't think we've seen enough of *how* to extrapolate confidently. It is possible that by spren rules, that doesn't "count" as a "life before death, journey before destination" issue since by the terms of the Oathpact the Heralds "should" be in Braize though. Given her killing those criminals by Soulcasting, I think she'd be totally OK with using Hemalurgy to execute genuinely dangerous criminals so the power isn't lost. She'd just see that as sensible, and I don't think the risk of that becoming a slippery slope would mean as much to her as it would to most people. I'd also expect her to be OK with "weaponized" Hemalurgy (like @Oltux72s suggestion of spiking Fused so they don't come back).

I actually just meant she might be the only Unmade who would want to have a Bondsmith. Bondsmith-ing isn't really Odium's thing.

Well, she's the only Unmade who switched sides. Though now that some Radiants are fighting on the other side, I suppose another Unmade could be involved.

I would say that if this ability persists at all, it's lessened enough that Nale can't get significantly more Stormlight than a normal KR could hold (IE maybe he could get Investiture without spheres/gems, but not huge quantities). I think that is a generally good analogy, and I think I've used it before myself, but I do have one question/issue with it - we know the Heralds could be killed, and per Kalak's POV in the Prelude, apparently by simply being physically smashed by thunderclasts. When Vin is I don't think a thunderclast could have killed her then. This might be a limit of the Honorblades' lesser healing, though, like not healing Shardblade wounds - perhaps if they're just outright killed it doesn't work? But why doesn't near infinite Stormlight boost their physical enhancement to the point that they can break thunderclasts barehanded? How could the Fused ever capture and torture them - why weren't they just tossing Fused aside like rag dolls, breaking chains, etc.? Can they still only hold X amount of Stormlight at once, even if they can resupply infinitely?

Yeah, the chapter title is fairly definitive here. Other 'mystical' or archaic characters in the Stormlight Archive talk like this too - Zahel and the Stormfather contrast "spren" with "men", for example.

Szeth's physical enhancement: maybe, but I'm not sure. Kaladin's statement that it doesn't "greatly" improve strength means there is still some enhancement, and Szeth is trained in kinds of martial arts Kaladin and the other Alethkar area Radiants aren't, so he could probably do more with the strength. Plus Szeth even by WoK has been using a Honorblade way longer than Kaladin has had his powers. Using Investiture, especially in dangerous amounts, can change you. (And if Szeth is holding those dangerous amounts, does that amp-up his physical enhancement?) So I don't know if this is a Honorblade / Radiant difference or a Szeth / Kaladin difference. -- I don't think Honorblades "eat Investiture" as Nightblood does, no. -- The Heralds may totally retain some ability to draw on Honor. But probably not the near-infinite Stormlight they had before.

Given that Sja-anat is now working against Odium, a Bondsmith of hers seems possible. Maybe an altered version of a Bondsmith like how Renarin is an altered Truthwatcher?

This seems analogous to Mistborn things: But as Taln is a Cognitive Shadow, he's probably worse off- his Cognitive aspect is presumably itself damaged, not just blocked from connecting properly to his Physical self. But if you could permanently connect Taln to the *Spiritual* Realm more fully, maybe he'd be more coherent in a lasting way? -- Rosharans use the word "spren" pretty broadly - there's a WoB that they'd probably call Adonalsium a spren, and another one that they use that word for regular Cognitive aspects ("everything has a spren", etc). So Cognitive Shadows are spren to them (eg when the Stormfather calls the Fused "the spren of the dead") though Khriss etc. would draw a distinction. Re the contradicting quotes on Odium's ability to break an oath: the Stormfather's understanding may be imperfect here, as he is a spren himself. The Shards are held by human Vessels; the Shard of Odium itself is a cosmic force "like pressure, gravitation, or the movement of time", but with its Vessel... This may matter more in the next book, as Taravangian is a new Vessel not yet heavily shaped by the Shard.

I believe the idea is that the ash being magnetic makes it linger near the magnetic pole, so the magnetic pole receives less solar energy and is therefore cooler. This isn't exactly how it would work in RL, I don't think-- for one thing, the primary cooling effect from major eruptions is due to aerosols in the upper atmosphere (e.g. sulfates from sulfur dioxide/trioxide gas) rather than the actual volcanic ash. For another, the Ashmounts being there seems sufficient to make most of the ash be there, no magnetism needed. But then, the Ashmounts aren't normal RL volcanoes, they're artificial ones created by someone temporarily holding godlike power.

The Lord Ruler is indeed said to have "Ascended". And at least according to kandra beliefs Rashek/TLR, Kelsier, Vin, and Harmony are all said to have "held the power of Ascension" (VenDell, in Ch 3 of Bands of Mourning). TLR held the bulk of Preservation's power briefly, becoming a Sliver afterwards, but was never exactly the Vessel. Kelsier's case is special. He couldn't take up Preservation without help due to lack of Connection - but the Ire's orb bypassed that limit. He was a poor Vessel due to his lack of Connection to the Physical Realm, but I think he really held the Shard, though only briefly. He willingly gave it up to Vin; I don't think it's clear she could have taken it otherwise.

I like Alloy of Law, but then I like pulpy stories, and found Shadows of Self rather too dark as a follow up (I like it better now, but on a first read it was a shock, as I was expecting something closer to Alloy's tone than Era 1). I figured BoM did answer the kidnapped Allomancers thing, that they were the source of the Set's spikes.

She says "at the poles", but unfortunately that is ambiguous- geographic or magnetic poles? -- I think it works best with Era 1 having a somewhat lower axial tilt than Earth, the Final Empire being outside the smaller arctic circle but still very high latitudes, but Era 2 being a closer earth analogue, with Harmony moving the continental plate to put Elendel in a much warmer area. (For example, continuing with the Britain comparison, London is about 51.5N and Edinburgh is about 56N - about 10 - 15 degrees from Earth's arctic circle at about 66.5N. If Era 1 Scadrial had a 10 degree tilt and its arctic circle was at 80N, Luthadel might be at something like 65-70N.) Elendel in Era 2 is probably somewhere in the 30s latitude, somewhere between a Mediterranean climate and a humid subtropical one. (Usually you get humid subtropical on east/southeast coasts, but I think the Basin is not dry enough for a true Mediterranean climate.) - I'm most surprised by how large the Final Empire is. I always imagined it as maybe the size of Texas or a large European country like France or Germany. But I suppose given the population and harshness of the land, it needs to be large.

Yeah it is the same Fortune ability that Hoid uses to know where he needs to be (not that Hoid is necessarily using Feruchemy, but the same Cosmere mechanism). The connection to atium/electrum is interesting. Sounds weird at first, as one would expect there to be no baseline "future sight" to store, but if it's a gut instinct sort of thing... Or alternately it might be less direct future sight, more a feeling about how things are going and what I should be doing right now. -- Where does another 300 year time jump come from? Era 3 is supposed to be 1980s tech and Era 2 is early 20th century tech, so I'd expect more like 70-80 years, maybe less if the interaction of Basin and Southern technology accelerates development.

Wouldn't that just be because he is essentially becoming a spren of Endurance? The other Heralds represent different ideals, so becoming less a person and more an ideal would not give them more endurance- but it would do that for Taln. I think this transformation is a pretty general Cosmere process, like Ati/Ruin being once "a kind and generous man" and ending up as what we see in Hero of Ages. I think Zahel comparing himself to a fossil and talking about the nature of Cognitive Shadows in RoW, and the Fused spiritual/mental "decay", are big hints towards this. The Heralds are not really human any more, just as the Fused are not really singers any more (the Stormfather calls them "the spren of the dead"). I expect Taln's flashbacks to be deep past, Ashyn migration or early Desolations era, when he was much more human. Present Taln doesn't need to be much of a character for the flashbacks to work (like Eshonai's in RoW). The Stormfather specifically said they expected it to be forever. He also specifically says "They were wrong. Honor was wrong" with reference to its lasting forever. And that it was meant to be a permanent end of war (so cyclical Desolations were definitely not intended). So I think the plans for the Returns / Desolations must be later, after it had gone wrong the first time. I don't know that anyone had to be stupid. It's possible there was no way to know that would work until it was actually tried- torturing the Heralds might have been a low probability desperation move by the Fused that turned out to work. Maybe they wouldn't have expected coercion to "count" for purposes of the oath. Or maybe they were expected to be disembodied Cognitive Shadows on Braize, and so didn't expect it to be possible at all (but the Fused discovered something unexpected).

This does seem the simplest model - but I think the WoB that Voidbinding "not always, but usually" comes from the Unmade rules it out, because if that model is true it would "usually" come from less powerful sapient Voidspren like Ulim, not the Unmade.

I agree and disagree. I definitely don't see her as "perfect", I think her ethics are at times dangerously off - they lead her to do some great things, but also lead her in pretty dangerous directions. IMO she is too quickly willing to kill and to sacrifice others for a perceived greater good (admittedly she let herself get talked out of "let's go kill all the Heralds" - or at least talked into waiting and gathering more information - but that being her first proposal doesn't say great things about her). I think why she seems "perfect" is that she is both hyper competent & follows her own ideals much more completely than most people do. But I don't think she is more so than is possible for RL people, though at the extreme end of what is possible. And we haven't seen much of her POV outside a research situation; what we have seen suggests that she is not as completely put together as she presents herself as (eg her reaction to the Heralds' madness in Oathbringer). And I think @Namelessis correct that Jasnah is much further along her character arc than other Radiants we've seen.

Yeah. This quote is weird. And seems inconsistent with what we see from Szeth and know from WoBs. OTOH the Stormfather does say "men do not understand, and cannot". So the Blade may have potential abilities that a current era user can't generally use, which would make it consistent. Perhaps in an era with Splintered Honor, there'd be a way to use it to access more power (kind of like the "Bondsmith unchained" thing) but it would take way more Realmatic/Cosmere knowledge than anyone actually has? Or maybe you'd need to be a Cognitive Shadow (which the Heralds are. And the Stormfather too, besides being a spren) to get the full effect?

I suppose it could be a pure-Odium system of Roshar, yeah. I was kind of going on the assumption that Odium originally didn't really Invest in Roshar, that's more recent. While some of the voidspren may be true Splinters of Odium, mostly Odium seems to work through corrupting existing things (the singers, Unmade, Sja-anat's corrupted/enlightened spren, etc.)

Yeah, the Regals do some similar things (according to the WOR Epigraphs, one of the forms of power grants some kind of future sight) but I don't think this is exactly the same power/magic system as Voidbinding. I think it's related but distinct, kind of like how various Rosharan animals (chasmfiends, skyeels, etc.) use spren bonds to lighten themselves. This is manipulating Gravitation in a sense, but not quite the same thing as what a WIndrunner/Skybreaker is doing. I think the Regal abilities/Forms of Power are Odium adding his own spren into the natural spren-bond magic that's a part of Roshar's biology - it's not really a "magic system" in the usual sense, at least not the kind humans use. This may deserve a full theory thread, but I think that what the Fused are doing is actual Surgebinding, but accessed through Odium's 'lens', kind of like (Mistborn Era 1 spoilers) Venli can power Surgebinding with Voidlight, but she doesn't really know why she can do this. Renarin, I think, is using Voidbinding - still ultimately based on the Ten Surges, but a different way of using the same basic powers. Another Mistborn analogy: Since there are "ten levels of Voidbinding" per the Ars Arcanum, not nine, I think this is a Honor/Odium or Honor/Cultivation/Odium magic system native to Roshar, not a pure Odium one native to Braize. As for why Voidbinding was never fully explored in the past - there are only nine Unmade, and some of the Unmade are mindless anyway and couldn't do anything but their "basic" effect (like Ashertmarn's reduced inhibition thing), so the full set of ten powers was never available. This may be why Voidbinding is so strongly associated culturally with future sight, if that was one of the few powers actually seen.

So, there is something very weird and not yet revealed about the timeline for the human migration from Ashyn to Roshar, the Heralds, and the Oathpact. From what we are told in Oathbringer, humans came to Roshar and were granted Shinovar to live in, eventually they wanted more land and fought against the singers/Dawnsingers, starting the wars that became the Desolations. But most if not all of the Heralds were born on Ashyn, before the migration to Roshar, with the only possible exception being Shalash. And the Heralds became Heralds when they were the age they now physically appear to be. (See the WOBs at the bottom of this post...) This puts a fairly tight constraint on the time scale for these events; probably no more than 30-35 years or so, if Shalash was born around the time of the migration. Yet it seems this must have taken a very long time. Shinovar is a pretty large land, and much more favorable to human life than most of Roshar - there wouldn't seem to be an immediate need to move beyond Shinovar. And the humans from Ashyn presumably arrived as refugees, not immediately ready for a war of conquest. And furthermore, it seems the Oathpact couldn't have been a response to the initial war with the singers. The Stormfather says (Oathbringer chapter 38; I'm not copying his ALL CAPS): So the Oathpact didn't happen until after: - humans fought a war with the singers - the dead singers became the Fused to fight against humanity further, and were repeatedly reborn - this process continued long enough for it to become clear that humanity couldn't win the war unless something drastic changed That pushes the timeline out even further, as these wars probably lasted years (maybe many years) by themselves. This seems to be a major timeline issue. But do we really know that the Heralds became Heralds at the same time as the Oathpact was formed? The Stormfather says (same chapter) that the purpose of the Oathpact was to seal the Fused spirits in Braize: But then, why do they get Surgebinding powers and Honorblades? How does that help? (This question isn't original to me- wish I could remember who brought it up - but I've seen it used as evidence that repeating Desolations, and thus a need to fight, was Honor's plan. But the Stormfather made it very clear that it was supposed to "end the war forever", ie no more fighting needed...) We do know that the Honorblades were given to the Heralds as part of an oath (Oathbringer Chapter 16, the Stormfather speaking:) But perhaps there is more than one oath involved. One maybe 30 years after the migration to Roshar, when the Heralds stop aging, get Surgebinding and Honorblades. And a second one, the actual Oathpact, after decades of war with the singers, becoming an endless losing battle as the Fused arise and reincarnate endlessly, which doesn't involve Surgebinding but does trap the Fused spirits on Braize. WOB #1: Post-TLM Update: I think the Honorblades were originally granted by Honor to provide a limited, controlled form of Surgebinding to replace the destructive Ashynite form. Mistborn TLM Spoilers: I think their granting also made the Heralds into Avatars of Honor, and stopped (or greatly slowed) their aging -- before they ever became Cognitive Shadows. If their original granting created Avatars, that could explain the Stormfather's cryptic comment that Jezrien's Honorblade is much more powerful than Dalinar realizes: "you would be a Windrunner unoathed. And more. More that men do not understand, and cannot. Like a Herald, nearly." From what we know so far, a Honorblade's powers are strictly worse than a 3rd Ideal Radiant's - same Surges and Shardblade, but much worse healing. And by 4th Ideal, with Plate, the Radiant is ridiculously far ahead. But if there were an unknown way to use a Honorblade to become an avatar - maybe one requiring Shard/Sliver/Avatar expanded mind ("men do not understand, and cannot") - it would make sense. More timeline anomalies Raboniel says (ch 76 RoW) that she wasn't around when humans arrived, but her grandmother told her about what it was like, in a way that implies her grandmother was around to see it. Essu, Raboniel's daughter, became a Fused, so given that apparently (according to Raboniel) all the Fused were "elevated" at once, and presumably Odium wouldn't have chosen a baby or young child, Essu was probably already adult or at least close at the time the Fused were created. So there were probably about 3 singer generations between human arrival and the elevation of the Fused. Singer generations are shorter than human ones, so that could be argued to be compatible, but it's a stretch. Singers are considered adult at 10, so if that's equivalent to human 18... human generation times in a pre-industrial society are probably something like 25 years, so maybe 13-15 for singers? 3 generations would still be something like 40-45 years ... and according to the Stormfather, the Oathpact was created because humans couldn't win a war where their enemies kept reincarnating, which means there was more war between the creation of the Fused and the beginning of the Oathpact. There is no way the younger Heralds are physically 50, or even 40. It's not completely definitive, because it's possible that Raboniel's mother was alive - maybe even adult and just somewhere else - at the time of human arrival, and that Essu was made a Fused before full adulthood. If Raboniel was born only a few years after the arrival (say 3 years), and Raboniel had Essu at say 12, and Essu was made a Fused at maybe 8, and only two years passed between the Fused being created and the Oathpact... then Shalash could be like 25 at the time of the Oathpact. But that seems like a stretch.