mdross81

Ah, ok, now I see what you were saying. Then we're in a position where one side doesn't produce a champion at the appointed time. That would be a problem.

I don't read the language to apply to neutral forces so I don't know that that would have an impact. In terms of why someone from Dalinar's own forces might harm him, I guess it matters how broadly we define "forces." I imagine there are any number of humans from coalition countries that may have been wronged by the Blackthorn at one time or another (heck, the Mink lost his family fighting against the Dalinar-led Alethi forces). If someone like that is part of Dalinar's forces and they exact revenge on him, does that count? From a narrative standpoint, that's probably way too out of the blue. Then again, it kinda ties in with Odium's strategy over the years of hanging back and letting the humans destroy themselves.

Fair point. When it was Rayse, I would have thought that this: would rule out the possibility of keeping the other side's champion from showing up (even indirectly) or provoking someone on other side to harm the champion. He did say he'd hold to the spirit of the deal. With Taravangian, I'm less certain. But just as I was reviewing that line, another thought occurred to me. It doesn't say unharmed by the other side's forces. It says "unharmed by either side's forces," which suggests that neither side's forces can harm either champion. If someone on Dalinar's own side harms Dalinar or his champion, wouldn't that violate the terms? Or am I getting too tied up in the language?

I've sorted through what I think are the 5 possible outcomes of the contest of champions based on the terms discussed, and which seems most likely. Possibility 1: Dalinar wins Impact on Roshar: Odium returns Herdaz and Alethkar, but keeps the other lands he's conquered. Odium vows to cease hostilities and maintain the peace Impact on wider Cosmere: fairly minimal; although Odium does say that he will be able to focus his attentions on sending agents to the rest of the cosmere using what he had conquered Narrative impact on SA back 5: kinda boring; it's hard to see what the conflict would be and why the back 5 would focus on the Heralds (whose original purpose was to seal away the Fused) Likelihood: moderate to low Possibility 2: Odium wins Impact on Roshar: Odium keeps everything he's won, but will still cease hostilities. Impact on wider Cosmere: greater than with Possibility 1; Odium remains bound to the system but now has a wider pool of Rosharans to send out as agents, most notably the terrifying prospect of Fused Dalinar (assuming Odium can figure out the Connection problem) Narrative impact on SA back 5: less boring; sets the stage for a longer-term rebellion by our remaining heroes; although Odium still offered to cease hostilities one imagines that would not continue if the humans continue to fight; fits with the focus on the Heralds and possibly trying to reforge the Oathpact to seal away the Fused again Likelihood: moderate to high Possibility 3: Odium breaks the contract Impact on Roshar: pretty freaking big; Odium would be in Dalinar's power and would have a hole in his soul that would allow Cultivation to kill him Impact on wider Cosmere: also big; removes the biggest known threat to the remaining Shards Narrative impact on SA back 5: again this would seem boring; what's the conflict unless Cultivation does something crazy? Likelihood: very low, too much has been invested in the danger of Odium as a Shard and Taravangian as a vessel Possibility 4: Dalinar breaks the contract Impact on Roshar: big; Dalinar would be in Odium's power and the restrictions Honor placed placed on him - chaining him to the Rosharan system and preventing him from using his power on most individuals - would be void; Odium would no longer need to cease hostilities but we know that he mainly wants out of the Rosharan system, so maybe not super terrible for Roshar Impact on wider Cosmere: terrible Narrative impact on SA back 5: it becomes harder to imagine any kind of effective rebellion against Odium, which would make it all the more satisfying if they could pull it off Likelihood: moderate to low, I initially considered this just low, but given the prevalence of the child-champion theory (to which I do not subscribe, but which I think properly belongs in this category: one champion is capable of killing the other but refuses) I bumped it up to moderate to low Possibility 5: The contest results in a tie; no winner; some other shenanigans Impact: ??? ??? ??? Likelihood: moderate to high, if only because it's been heavily foreshadowed and seems to keep the most options open for where the story goes, both for Roshar and the wider Cosmere That's where I come down. Most likely outcomes are tie/shenanigans or Odium winning the contest. Are there other possibilities I'm missing?

Yeah, I'm not saying I buy the implication. Just saying with a chasmfiend-sized IF, that it would be impressive IF it were the case.

I was reading through all of the WoBs I could find on Odium recently, and have a question based on them and a certain passage from RoW. The question is this: At present, can Odium send agents to or otherwise exert influence in any way on other planets in the Cosmere? Background This question is based on the following WoBs: and This question is also based on the following passage from Dalinar and Odium's conversation setting terms for the contest of champions in RoW 112: Questions There's some ambiguity in the wording above as to whether or not Odium is currently able to send agents to the rest of the cosmere. Is he able to send agents, but just can't focus his attention on it because he's at war with Dalinar's forces? Or do the prohibitions Honor placed on Odium not currently allow him to send agents to other planets (assuming, or course, that he has any agents who are not constrained by Investiture ties to the Rosharan system)? Supposing Odium has some agents out there from his previous exploits in the cosmere, can he send them around to do his bidding at present? Can Odium even make contact with them? Or is it a matter of him not having any agents and he wants to be able to send humans from Roshar because he can't send Fused or Regals who are bound to Roshar? I mean, we know that right now there are some humans on Roshar who have willingly joined Odium. Could Odium, at present, task some of the these humans with going out and doing his bidding in the wider cosmere by traveling through Shadesmar to other planets? Aside from the question of sending agents, is Odium able to exert influence in any other way on other planets right now? We know that the restrictions placed by Honor prohibit him from traveling to other systems in the way he would need to in order to shatter any other Shards, but are there any other ways that he can nevertheless exert influence from afar? If not on his own, perhaps through an alliance with another Shard? Implications if Odium is fully shackled If Odium is not able to exert influence from afar, and has been unable to since Honor placed the restrictions on him, that has interesting implications for the timing of when Odium had influence on Scadrial. We know that Mistborn Era 2 takes place after the first five SA books, and 341 Scadrian years after the Catacendre. The contest of champions is slated to take place in the year 1175 on Roshar. If MB era 2 begins right after, then we can figure out roughly what year it was on Roshar when the events of MB era 1 took place. Scadrian years and days are roughly the same length as Earth years/days, so converting 341 Scadrian years (assuming 365 24-hour days) to the 500-day (20 hours/day) Rosharan calendar yields about 300 Rosharan years (298.716). So then Mistborn Era 1 wrapped up around the year 875 on Roshar. It's safe to assume that Odium's shackling has been in effect at least since Honor died, which happened shortly after the Recreance, which Jofwu's timeline places in the year -828. For the sake of nice numbers, let's call it -825. So counting back from the end of era 1 in 875 to -825 is 1,700 Rosharan years during which Odium would have been unable to influence other planets in the Cosmere. That's roughly 1,940 Scadrian years. If Odium has truly been unable to exert influence outside of the Rosharan system for all of that time, then that places Odium's influence on Scadrial more than 900 years before Rashek even Ascended to become the Lord Ruler (he had ruled for 1,000 years when era 1 started). That's kinda crazy to think about, and impressive if the influence had a lasting enough impact to have anything to do with Kelsier's hatred of the nobility (as implied by the questioner in the 2nd WoB above). Of course, all of this could be off if Odium is somehow exerting influence in the cosmere by working in league with another Shard who is not similarly restrained. I grant that we probably just don't know enough yet to answer many of the questions raised above, but I'm curious what folks think.

While I’ve got a post about the Unmade going, I’m planting down a flag that Chemoarish is the Unmade that was impacting the Davar family. We don’t know exactly where the Davar estate was but it seems reasonable that it would be relatively close to Valath because that’s where Helaran was camped out when Lin sent assassins after him. Valath is pretty close to Bavland. Bavland is notably dusty and they curse by the Dustmother, Chemoarish’s nickname. Chemoarish is the Dustmother, Chanarach is patron of the Dustbringers. One of Chana’s attributes is obedient. As Lin Davar grows angrier and angrier he always complains about how no one obeys, no one listens to him. Done. Sold. edit: forgot to mention the mining connection as further support for the Davar estate being near Bavland edit2: a big theme with Shallan has been sorting lies from truth and Hessi specifically mentions the difficulty of sorting lies from truth surrounding Chemoarish

Yeah...this is the weird part to me. There's a lot of conflicting info on voidbinding and whether Odium-aligned magic can grant access to all 10 surges or just 9. On one hand, it's clear that Adhesion is Honor's surge. No band of Fused has access to it, Raboniel's futzing with the Tower can't inhibit it, there's no Bondsmith (who's main focus is Adhesion) aligned Unmade. On the other hand, BAM really seems like she's related to Adhesion, Kriss says there are 10 levels of voidbinding and the voidbinding chart does have an inverted Adhesion glyph. This could just an example of Vorin editing of texts. Like how many of the Heralds have been renamed to have symmetrical names (like Nalan from Nale) or how they drew voidbringers as chasmfiends. 10 is a super important number, so it might be assumed to be more correct by in-universe historians. Or I guess it could be longer-term foreshadowing for a secret 10th Unmade show up in a future Sanderslanch. With ROW and OB it seems like Unmade were created by Odium corrupting unique spren that already existed (like Cusicesh), uplifting them in way possibly similar to what Honor/Cultivation did the three Bondsmith Spren. Responding to this point, that was also raised by @LewsTherinTelescope. I share the uncertainty about whether there are truly only 9 Unmade, but I guess I was just working with the 9 that we kinda know about. Something odd is definitely going on with the Voidbinding chart and the Ars Arcanum discussion of the levels of Voidbinding. I just don't have any clue what it is. One thing I wanted to mention about the Voidbinding chart. I know it's been around a while and I can't say that I have followed all of the analysis of it over the years. But have people noticed that the Adhesion glyph in the Voidbinding chart is modified in a different way than the glyphs for all of the other Surges? For all of the others, the voidbinding glyph takes the left half of the surgebinding glyph and flips it top to bottom. With the Adhesion one, however, the left side is flipped top to bottom and then flipped left to right as well. Just wondering if this is something that's been discussed. As for the reason I chose to omit Taln in matching the Heralds up, I did so because the particular view of Herald madness I'm discussing is the madness that has come from the nine Heralds who abandoned the Oathpact dealing with the fallout from that. In particular their mental state reacting against peoples' perception of them. While Taln undoubtedly has his own madness going on, I don't think he would suffer this particular form because he's spent 4500 years acting more or less consistently with Rosharans' perception of him. I'm curious what others make of the line in Hessi's Mythica about the Unmade being "from the days before human society and civilization." Is this saying that the Unmade pre-date humans' arrival on Roshar? If that that's case, the Unmade would have to have been made/Unmade on Ashyn I guess? Somewhere else? Because Odium came to Roshar with the humans. I think it more likely that the line is referring to something more like modern human society and civilization. But I don't know when that would be. As has been pointed out, we've seen in a vision that Yelig-Nar killed all of Nohadon's scribes back before the Knights Radiant had even been founded.

I may have mixed up there being no Fused equivalent of Bondsmiths with there being no Unmade corresponding to Ishar. Thanks for pointing out. I’ll edit.

Given what Jezrien says about “letting them in” when I say the Unmade are drawn, I’m suggesting that exhibiting the madness/coping mechanisms the Heralds do brings the Unmade’s attention upon them (or others exhibiting similar behavior). That the Unmade are correlated to torment the particular Heralds with which they’re associated, but may also impact others who behave the same way too.

So I know there have been a number of attempts over the years to match up the Unmade with the Heralds. In this post, I also try to match them up, but this isn't another theory about the Unmade being corrupted versions of or split off from the Heralds. Rather, I'm positing that the Unmade are drawn to (or maybe represent, or exacerbate) manifestations of the various forms of madness being experienced by the Heralds and the mal-adaptive ways they are trying to cope with their madness. I got the idea from a side tangent in another thread about whether a Bondsmith is necessary to entrap an Unmade. I think the consensus opinion there is that you don't necessarily need a Bondsmith, but you definitely need someone with a deep understanding of the particular Unmade. For example, Shallan is able to see that Re-Shephir is afraid of her because at some time in the past Re-Shephir had been imprisoned "by a Lightweaver like Shallan, who had understood this creature." (OB 30). This got me thinking more generally about how artifabrians have to attract spren with something they know in order to trap them in gems. But that idea of attraction also reminded me of something Jezrien (as Ahu) said during a drunken conversation with Dalinar in Oathbringer: Jezrien here seems to be drawing a line between the Heralds' madness and the Unmade. From context here, I take it that the "we" in his statements refers to the Heralds and the "them" to the Unmade. So, what might the Heralds have done to attract the Unmade? I think has something to do with the way the Heralds' minds are experiencing a sort of cognitive dissonance with human perceptions of them, and with the different ways that the Heralds are trying to cope with that madness. Here's a WOB on the subject: Shalash is the clearest example of this. Vorinism associates her with the divine attributes of creativity and honesty. But she knows the Heralds were dishonest, and is driven to destroy depictions (copies) of her. Her madness is characterized by the opposites of her attributes: Creativity - Copying; Honesty - Lies. This matches up pretty neatly with Re-Shephir, who we see is drawn to Shallan's lies (her illusions) and spawns copies of the violence she sees. Further, given Jezrien's belief that Dalinar had attracted the attention of an Unmade, I'm wondering if maybe the Unmade are not just drawn to the Heralds' madness or coping mechanisms but to others who exhibit the same behavior. Reasoning along these lines, here's my attempt to match up the Unmade with the Heralds. Of necessity I begin with the Heralds we have actually seen. After that, the theory obviously breaks down a bit, but I still try to find matches based on what we know about those Heralds: Shalash - Re-Shephir: discussed above, I don't think this pairing is controversial at all Jezrien - Ashertmarn:No longer protecting and leading, Jezrien deals with his madness by excessive drinking. This matches up with Ashertmarn, the mindless Unmade who urges people to indulge to excess and abandon their lives and responsibilities Nale - Dai-Gonarthis: Nale's madness manifests as a near-total lack of emotion. It's almost like a void that has consumed all emotion, which I think matches up with what little we know of Dai-Gonarthis (The Black Fisher holds my sorrow and consumes it!). Also we see conjecture that Dai-Gonarthis was involved in the scouring of Aimia. Given what we've learned about the dangerous secret hidden in Aimia, the scouring reminds me of Nale's mission to find and kill proto-Radiants. Ishar - Ba-Ado-Mishram: I feel like these two match up given they're both very knowledgeable about Connection, and they both used Connection to serve as leaders of their respective organizations. Ishar's madness does manifest in opposition to his attributes of pious and guiding, as Ishar now blasphemes by claiming to be god and misleads both humankind and the other Heralds rather than guiding them. BAM also arguably blasphemed by trying to play the role of Odium in the False Desolation. Turned out to be a rather misguided plan. Kalak - Yelig-Nar: This one I'm not totally certain about, but there are connections. There's the Amaram connection. Kalak (as Restares) led the Sons of Honor, an organization in which Amaram played a prominent role. There's the amethyst connection. That's the polestone associated with Kalak's order, and Amaram bonds Yelig-Nar by swallowing an amethyst, and then grows carapace and amethyst crystals from his body. Kalak's madness manifests as indecisiveness, which is opposed to his resolute attribute, but I don't know if I see a Yelig-Nar connection there. The other attribute is builder, and Yelig'Nar seems to consume/destroy his hosts which fits. Battar - Moelach: I really don't have much on the madness theory with this one, but there are other reasons to match these two. First there's Battar's involvement (as Dova) with recording the Death Rattles. Moelach was said to grant visions of the future most commonly at the transition point between realms, when a soul is approaching the Tranquiline Halls. Battar's order, the Elsecallers are those most skilled at navigating the transition between realms. Battar's attributes are wisdom and care. If I wanted to stretch I could say that Moelach, as one of the mindless Unmade fits with the opposite of wisdom. And the actions of the silent gatherers certainly cut against the attribute of care. Vedel - Nergaoul: Although we don't know whether we've seen Vedel on screen at this point (Liss?) Nergaoul, the Unmade that inflames emotions and provokes bloodlust, war, and violence, seems a pretty good opposite to Vedel's attributes of loving and healing Pailiah - Sja-Anat: Again, it's unclear if we've seen Pailiah on screen. (Brandon supposedly wrote in a signed book that she was the aged ardent in the Palanaeum in Way of Kings, but later seemed to back away from that). So I can't describe her madness except to say that I would expect it manifest as someone ignorant and selfish, the opposite of her attributes learned and giving. (Total side tangent crackpot theory: who exemplifies selfish ignorance more than Ialai? And the letters of her name are right there in Pailiah, but I digress, plus RIP) But again, I feel pretty good about this pairing given Sja'Anat's involvement with Pailiah's order, the Truthwatchers. Sja-Anat is the taker of secrets and the Truthwatchers are the most secretive order. Sja-Anat enlightens spren; Pailiah is learned. Sja-Anat can only be seen in reflected light and mistspren resemble the shimmer of light reflected through a crystal. Lots of connections. Chanarach - Chemoarish: just about the only thing we know about Chemoarish is that she's sometimes called the Dustmother, so matching with the patron of the Dustbringers just makes sense. Plus she's the only one left if you don't count Taln. That just leaves out Taln, who didn't have a chance to attract an Unmade with his madness on Roshar because he was holding down the fort in Braize for 4500 years. So there you have it. A somewhat different approach to trying to match up the Unmade with the Heralds. Interested in others' thoughts.

It was bugging me that I couldn't remember how the scene with Shallan and Re-Shephir went down, so I went back and re-read it. Shallan saw that a Lightweaver (full stop) had previously trapped Re-Shephir. Now, just because there's no mention of another Radiant being involved doesn't mean one wasn't, but I think the text fairly strongly indicates that a Lightweaver, alone, was enough: This seems to support @LewsTherinTelescope's point that the main requirement to trap one of the Unmade is a person who has a strong connection to - or understanding of - the Unmade. So, as he suggested, it could be that Melishi used Bondsmithing to forge that connection with BAM. Alternatively, it could be that, being a Bondsmith, Melishi's understanding of the ins and outs of Connection helped him to fully understand BAM, whom it appears was also something of an expert at Connection. This makes me think about what types of people would be needed to trap other Unmade. Is there some overindulgent glutton out there who could nab Ashertmarn? A sorrow-consuming fisherman for Dai-Gonarthis? (I'm mostly kidding but who knows)

I don't know that we have confirmation of when they were Shattered, but both Shallan and Navani seem to think it happened during the Last Desolation. WoR 60: WoR 77 (Navani speaking): There's another reference I had forgotten about as well, that I think supports the idea that sound may have been involved. This is from the epigraph to WoK 40:

I certainly agree that knowing the tone would be helpful in draining Breaths. And I wasn't trying to say that I think using the tone is necessary to drain Stormlight using a raysium spear. But there is at least one instance where I'm pretty sure a tone/rhythm facilitates the draining. In the excerpt I quoted above (RoW Chapter 6), after stabbing Sigzil, Leshwi started humming and then the gem started to glow and the Stormlight started draining. With what we learn later in RoW about using a tuning fork to draw out Stormlight, I assumed that the rhythm she was humming was Honor's rhythm to draw the Stormlight out more quickly. I imagine that the difference between using the spear alone and humming while using the spear is the same as the difference between the slow, empty-gem-vacuum method (the Arnist method) of drawing Stromlight out of a gem and using the tuning fork, which is much faster. I only suggested that the tone/rhythm might be necessary in the case of Breaths because they're sticky and I wasn't sure whether the same vacuum mechanics that I imagine are involved when using the spear alone would work on Breaths like it does with Stormlight. Which goes to your question - which I share - about whether Breaths can be stored in a gem. I mean, it's gaseous Investiture right? Setting aside for a minute the issue of stealing someone else's Breath, it seems like it ought to be possible, with a Command to put a regular Breath that you currently hold into a gem. (For a Divine Breath, I'm not sure. Someone above indicated that they are a large amount of Investiture, so if it worked you might need a huge, flawless gem).

I don't think you're being dense. There is obviously still a lot we don't know about what went down with imprisoning BAM. I take the Words of Radiance quote about the process being "related to the very nature of the Heralds and their divine duties, an attribute the Bondsmiths alone could address" to mean that it required someone with an understanding of Connection. The Heralds were Connected to Braize and to each other. So familiarity with Connection may have been necessary to understanding BAM's Connection to the Singers, or it could be that part of the process of trapping BAM relied on the ability to forge/exploit Connections. Frankly it could have been both. Maybe it wouldn't usually require the ability to manipulate Connection to trap an Unmade, but in this instance the Connection to the Singers made it a more complex task.

There's always been something fishy about this in-world Words of Radiance excerpt: Even if Ishar was not Melishi, I could see it being Ishar who conceived of and taught Melishi how to implement the "different strategem" (the imprisonment of BAM) related to the unique abilities of Bondsmiths and the very nature of the Heralds (clearly a reference to Connection). We already know that his pals Nale and Kalak were there for that.

I only meant that it might be a requirement to drain Breath. It’s clearly not a requirement for Honor’s Investiture, which we know can be drawn into an empty gem and stored in a gem.

That compass symbol has popped up in a bunch of the in-word art. It's discussed toward the very bottom of the original post in this thread on glyphs which also has a link to a second thread that lists the specific locations it's been seen:

I think one of the spears could be used to drain Breaths. My reasoning depends on a theory I subscribe to that raysium can perform Spiritual Division to sever Investiture from someone who is stabbed. I lay out some thoughts on the theory in this thread: Basically, I was trying to tease out the mechanics of how being stabbed with the raysium dagger severed Jezrien's Connection. I eventually settled on a theory that the process of having his spirit pulled through the raysium dagger is what severed the Connection. If that theory (which, I admit is speculative) holds then I think a raysium spear could sever Breaths and conduct them as Investiture. It would likely also help if the user of the spear knew Endowment's tone/rhythm because to facilitate the flow as we see in RoW Chapter 6: Knowing the tone might, in fact, be necessary because I don't know that a gem would work as a vacuum to pull in the Breaths otherwise, or even whether Breaths can be stored in a gem at all. Breaths always seem heavily reliant on Intent too, so there'd probably need to be an Intent/Command involved as well.

Ever since Dawnshard, I've been paying a lot closer attention to any mentions of paintings, murals, and other in-world depictions. This led me to notice that many of the major SA characters have, at some point, been described as resembling a kind of painting, either by others who are observing them or by themselves. There are only two times this happens before RoW, but then it seemed like it became a recurring motif (along with blindness/sight and references to standing on the edge/precipice) in RoW. Here's a rundown of the times that various characters have been likened to a painting. Shallan An obvious place to start, Shallan is the first character ever described as a painting. In WoK 42, Kadash put his pickup lines to work for the Ghostbloods, comparing Shallan's isolated childhood to a painting hung facing the wall. A little while later, Shallan notes that Lin Davar was exactly the kind of person who would hang a painting like that: In RoW 26, Shallan also gets in a reference to herself as a painting. Specifically she likens having all of her lies and flaws exposed to hanging an unfinished painting: Navani and Dalinar In OB 4, Dalinar worries that he's a little underdressed for his wedding, and compares he and Navani as follows: Gavilar Speaking of Navani, here she is in the RoW Prologue likening Gavilar to a painting of old Alethkar come to life (which is more than a little ironic considering that his imminent death would usher in a new era for Alethkar): Kaladin Kaladin gets two painting references. First, in RoW 2, he likens himself to a painting hanging on the wall watching life pass by: Then in RoW 80, when Wit pulls Kal into a small protective oasis during the nightmare Odium has sent, Wit manages to get in both a dig at how crappy Kal looks and at Odium's artistry: Zahel In RoW 15, Kal comments on Zahel's seemingly intentional appearance of disarray with a painting metaphor: A "splintered" frame. I see what you did there, Brandon. Cheeky. Taravangian In RoW 19, Navani envisions Taravangian as a guru in a shrine contemplating storms and the souls of men (perhaps more accurate than she thought, he will certainly have plenty of time to pontificate now): Maya Adolin gets in on the painting metaphor action in RoW 22, describing Maya's Cognitive Realm appearance: Modern-Day Humans In RoW 66, Taravangian bums out Dalinar by not only promising that they will lose, but by saying that they are merely copies of copies of something great: Vaiu Ok, so not really a main character, but for the sake of completeness I thought I should mention him. In RoW 75, Adolin likens his honorspren jailor to an ancient depiction of a Herald: *** Those are all of the ones I found. But I thought it might also be fun to imagine how other characters not included above would be described as paintings. I'll kick things off with Lift: Lift stood out among the assembled Radiants. Seeing her there was like seeing a painting by a drunken chull in an exhibit of Oilsworn masterpieces.

I can get on board with a more nuanced interpretation of “Honor let the power blind him” than what the young Stormfather thought. And I get your other point about the Heralds having physical bodies and Honorblades when they return to Roshar. You’re saying that Honor knew it was possible - though disappointing - that they would break and so he built in a contingency plan. But I’m not sure I follow where you come down on the question of whether the Heralds knew going in about the possibility of breaking and what the consequences would be. Relatedly, I’d be interested in your thoughts on who delivered the warning that if any of the Heralds lingered, instead of voluntarily returning to Braize, that it could cause a disaster. Kinda wish this post was in the RoW boards because I think there’s some stuff that’s relevant that we can’t go into here.

This line about Honor letting the power blind him to the truth, coupled with the Honorblades and the power they provided, makes me wonder whether Honor simply believed that the Heralds would be so capable/powerful that they could withstand whatever was thrown at them on Braize. Consider what the Stormfather says next: That reads to me like the Heralds all did their best Gandalf impersonation; they said "YOU (VOIDBRINGERS) SHALL NOT PASS!" but that there was an understanding from the get-go that if any of them let a Voidbringer pass, the seal would lose its effect. Honor (and apparently the Heralds as well) just didn't think it was likely to happen.

I think this passage from OB Chapter 38 is relevant to the discussion: Who delivered this warning? I had always assumed it was Honor, but maybe it wasn't? Could have been Ishar or the Stormfather.

That’s a really good point that I hadn’t considered; the relative stature of humans on Scadrial and Roshar. Certainly casts doubt on Dechamp and Rial being the same person.

I like this idea, and agree that the feelings of warmth likely involve making contact with the Spiritual Realm. But is there an entity responsible for sending the feelings to Dalinar and pulling him slightly into the Spiritual or is he doing it on his own? If it's Dalinar doing it, maybe this is what Tanavast meant when he said "Act with honor, and honor will aid you" in the Starfalls vision.