Ripheus23
-
Posts
1318 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
5 Followers
Ripheus23's Achievements
1.1k
Reputation
Single Status Update
-
Ah, well, if Taln is the Herald of War, then per the theme of War as it will unfold in the back half, hmm... There's probably/maybe something to the matter, but I'll be damned if I know what that is.
Maybe the idea will be to expand the principle of the original Oathpact as reflected in the way Honor had sealed Odium on Braize in an important way. But instead of doing something lunatic like inducing nuclear fusion in one of the gas giants to create a new star for Retribution to over-Invest in, the idea will be to map the shadow of Retribution's Spiritual power, manifested in the duality of the Heralds and the Unmade in concerto, into nine of the outer planets, so Taln's exempted (in honor of him never breaking). That is, Retribution will be re-sealed not on Braize, but in nine of the outer giant planets.
Other options, though, hmm... I'd assume most that Jes would be the one certainly large enough to be able to be turned into a star. Like, if it was the crazy idea I thought of, about ramming Braize into a gas giant, I'd pick Jes to be the one. But now I don't totally like that image, because it would be like a metaphor for Kaladin killing himself, even if it was also like a metaphor for Kaladin Ascending or some other dramatic thing.
Or maybe Nale's planet is, indeed, great enough. Maybe this was something deeply known, even: it was long known to Honor that Jezrien's and Nale's worlds could be turned into stars, with whatever other significance this would imply. Maybe theirs and theirs only were such candidates. So not even Ishar's world, definitely not Taln's?
... and maybe Roshar/the inner worlds will become a Hidden Elf Village protected from the meddling of all the Shards whatsoever at that point. Like, whatever becomes of the rest of the cosmere, or almost whatever goes thusly, Roshar will (probably) be safe, afterwards. What Taravangian wanted for Kharbranth, what Urithiru and Azimir got, will become the motif of all Roshar as such.
-
Maybe Kaladin would face a certain dilemma in the back half: he and Nale learn that they can arrange things so that their outer worlds turn into stars, which will be one thing they might be willing to try to stop Retribution. But Kaladin and Co. will also know that there might be a chance of getting Retribution to Invest, not in one star, but in nine of the outer giants. So the first option would have a higher chance of success but at an immense cost in sheer destructiveness, maybe not close enough to any life forms to be morally questionable on that level, but still in a way that would disturb the order of the cosmere on some deep level.
And the second option would be more pure-hearted, so to say, except infinitely more difficult to execute correctly. The whole ploy of bonding with the Unmade to balance the power of the Honorblades and the Oathpact with the character of the Unmade as a shadow of Retribution's unity, so then to divest from Retribution unto nine of the outer worlds, would be very hard to achieve, or very complex or something like that...
-
OR, more dramatically, hmm...
Suppose each Unmade was somehow correlated with the Spiritual desecration of an outer planet, by the breaking of the Heralds in the time before the Unmade. Like, the more they broke, the more desecrated their planet became, until finally an Unmade could be summoned from the Spiritual abyss corresponding to those broken worlds and their Heralds. Something like that. Right off the bat, then, which planet corresponds to Mishram?
Let's suppose, for apparently almost no reason whatsoever, that the four moons of Roshar correspond to four of the outer giants. One represents an outer giant that is no longer in the equation in the same way as the others, kind of like how one of the Dawnshards "isn't like the others." So, Taln's again, I guess. Let's guess that Salas goes with Ash/Shash and Nomon with Nale? Then Mishim goes with... hmm...
So Mishram wasn't the one the Radiants of old feared the most, reportedly, but that was Sja-anat, yeah? So maybe Mishram was born from the desecration of Ishi, the outermost giant. Which one came from Jezrien's breaking? I guess I'd be theorizing that that's where Yelig-nar "came from." I'd map from my theory about Heralds and Unmade pairings to a theory of Herald/Unmade and planet pairings. Hmm...
This would also have to do with the level of mind/personhood of the Unmade, then? Forget the size of the outer planet in question, or even the external mass, focus on the density. The denser of those would be the ones symbolizing the Unmade with greater mental powers/presence. Ishi would be the densest, then, so Mishram would be the most intelligent, etc.
Anyway, so, to be drastic, maybe what Kaladin and Nale would decide would be: we do have to turn our planets into stars, both of us do that is, and only both stars with seven other outer giants will have enough Physical mass/energy to subdue Retribution in the way that Braize was used to bind Odium before. Or, the only way to make a star is by merging Kaladin and Nale's planets, so there'd be one star and the seven outer giants, so only eight planets figuring in Retribution's binding. (I could see some logic to this: depending on the mathematical specifics of the number 4 in the patterning of Adonalsium and the Shards, having an 8-fold super-magical structure established might be a good numerological way to bind a di-Shard.)
-