neshua_kadal

I might be misremembering or mixing up a few series, but aren't heralds sterile? Did Brandon confirm this?

17 hours ago, I Just Shard Myself! said:

Gavilar had anti-voidlight (or anti-stormlight) near concurrently with the real life final killing of one of the Heralds- Jezrian. This took place before Navani’s discovery. I suspect that Gavilar may be linked to that knife and the stone that powered in some way.

“Hnanan sent Leshwi to bring him to her rooms. She met him on the balcony, hovering over the edge looking at the city. She gave Moash a yellow-white knifeand sent him to murder Jezrien in the Beggars' Porch.”

“The man trembled for a moment more, then jerked once, going motionless. When Moash pulled the yellow-white knife free, it trailed dark smoke and left a blackened wound. The large sapphire at the pommel took on a subdued glow.” 

 

As you're in RoW full spoilers section, I will assume you've read the whole book. We now know from Kalak's epigraphs that the Fused didn't intend to kill Jezrien but just to trap him. He died because Honor, the deity who made his connection to Roshar was dead and shattered, and upon losing the connection he held from his body too, Jezrien's soul (or spren or clone spren) faded away. This wouldn't have happened if say he was bound to cultivation or to Roshar itself. He wasn't killed like Moash killed Teft's spren or how Navani killed Raboniel. The dagger was also explained and it had nothing to do with Gavilar. The Fused realized its design this return only because they didn't know that sentient spren could be captured like this until Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured by the Radiants in False desolation, which happened after the last return.

6 hours ago, GroundPetrel said:

I read him as a power-hungry emotional abuser who severely damaged his wife and kids, and possibly even his brother, then precipitated the apocalypse for what appears to be a desire for personal power and/or a lasting legacy.  He definitely had contact with numerous worldhoppers, and treated Dalinar like an attack dog who he used and abused for his own ends.  He emotionally abused his wife to an almost cartoonish degree, ruined his son (Ehlokar is very clearly a kind and decent person beneath the chip on his shoulder and paranoia and emotional issues) by providing a bad example and teaching him the wrong lessons (note that Dalinar, who is probably the least justice-focused Kholin protagonist (in that he's not willing to break things to fix them as much as Jasnah is or as "storm the rules, this is evil and I gotta stop it" as Adolin is), thought that Gavilar's judgement of Roshone was much too merciful), abused his daughter and tried to force her into marriage with a self-centered sociopath who I'm about 80% sure tried to rape her, then probably committed Jasnah in retaliation (not 100% sure since we know little of Jasnah's backstory, but her reaction to Amaram reeks of instinctive terror covered by personal insults, and I wouldn't put anything past Gavilar at this point), used Dalinar like a Rottweiler on a chain to the point that Dalinar is still clearly screwed up by it and gaslighting himself DECADES later...

Basically, what I'm saying is that Gavilar was clearly a vile person with good PR.  The difference between him and Amaram seems to primarily have been age and ambition.  

All of that is true, and some of the things you guessed at are my guesses too, but I mentioned that he was evil to his family and my discussion isn't about Gavilar being a bad father/husband/brother, but why did he have anti-voidlight and maybe his goals weren't as simplistic as bringing fused back so heralds will come back and Vorinism will rule again. That's what I wanted to speculate here. We can create another post to vent about how bad Gavilar was with his family.

On 11/29/2020 at 11:07 PM, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

Since Odium got an upgrade in RoW I’m expecting some big things . I absolutely have no idea who it will be . But there are some interesting options 

 

1. El : this Fused is so feared his name is not to be spoken . Even the Pursuer watched his mouth around him . I suspect he is of a type we have not seen yet . One that uses Division !

2. Moash even though he is blinded . I expect Odium can grant him an ability to compensate for loss of eyesight . Like sonar kind of like Daredevil . 
 

3. Nale seeing how he is a Herald and handle Szeth like an unruly stepchild this is almost the worst option for Dalinar . He would be outmatched in fighting skill for sure 

 

4. Adolin : I predicted Adolin to be Odium long ago . Born under the sign of the nine . Pissed at Dalinar for killing his mom . But mostly because he is the one person Dalinar would not want to kill which sounds like Todium all day . I like Adolin a lot so I hope this is not the case . But I would be wrong not to consider him 

5. Someone we haven’t seen yet . My least favorite guess . As this is totally not like Brandon. To not foreshadow this .

 

 

Lastly I don’t like Dalinar being his own champion . I keep thinking about the old lawyer adage . The guy who represents himself has a fool for a client . Dalinar doesn’t have shards and baring him gaining an Honor blade he won’t have shards . Sooo he would be better off letting. Kaladin do it . Or maybe using his bond smith powers to connect himself to Taln and try and borrow his abilities perhaps . I really would like Taln restored to be Dalinar champion but hey Dalinar seems dead set on kicking ass himself .

 

what do you guys think ? Who will be Odiums champion ?

Adolin is too much of a good guy at this point. He literally said in RoW that the incident with his mother hasn't made him feel hatred or anything negative towards his father. Unless the world turn on itself and a parallel universe emerges where, I don't see Adolin becoming Odium's champion.

On 12/4/2020 at 0:09 PM, joesleepsalot said:

Whoever the champion of Odium is, Dalinar is gonna die in book 5. The setup is too neat: a second bondsmith ready to fill the gap, and the amount of detail and emphasis to Dalinar and Odium’s treaty, should Dalinar lose, is not an accident. 

There’s a WOB somewhere talking about certain unnamed characters not surviving the first five books... my money is 100% on Dalinar. 
 

The question then becomes “who can kill him?” Szeth handled non-radiant Dalinar very easily in WOR. Neither Szeth nor Dalinar can compete against any herald—— if we talk heralds, my money is on Nale, as he’s literally fighting for Odium. Plus we had a foreshadowing moment with those two.

El is too random and new... there’s zero attachment to him for the readers.

Thaidakar aka K-Money is a possibility, we just don’t know yet.

Wit is also a possibility, pending what happened in that epilogue.

Overall, Kaladin “should” be chosen... it’s beyond obvious that he’s the biggest bad *** in the series. Dalinar simply made a bad deal and bad champion choice, books 6-10 are gonna be a level 5, 35-40 year old Kaladin redoing the job the right way and becoming the new version of Adonalsium. And he’s gonna have to face-down and kill evil odium-owned Dalinar in the process. My 2 cents

It's clearly stated in the book that Thaidakar or

 can't travel from wherever he is, so no, he can't be a champion for anyone on Roshar. This feels like a big plot point in future cosmere books so I'm pretty sure the travelling thing won't be resolved in the next book in 10 days. 

On 11/19/2020 at 1:37 AM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

It may be an automatic effect of having Breath, which would explain how Vasher did the same thing (wipes part of someone’s memory) in Warbreaker. Memory may auto-default to being stored in Breath of people who have them.

On 11/20/2020 at 7:37 AM, biscotti said:

I think it's both.

Mr. T definitely removed Hoid's memory of their first conversation, because Hoid does the same thing over again, and Mr. T gets a do-over conversation.

But there's a key sentence right at the end: 

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After all, Wit's first face-to-face meeting with Odium in over a thousand years had gone exactly as he had imagined.

This seems to me to imply that Mr.T knew how Hoid imagined the conversation going.

The whole modifying/peeking at of memories stored with Investiture reminds me of (Mistborn Spoilers) 

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Ruin modifying the Terris copperminds

I would conclude from that last line and from the fact that we have an example of something like this happening before that he can read the memories as well as remove them.

The thought of Mr.T with so much power and Hoid's knowledge is very, very scary though.

I'm sorry I might be forgetting but is the MB spoiler true? I remember it as being impossible.

17 hours ago, Hayama said:

Yeah, I realize my reply is more of a hot take than an actual response to the discussion. I certainly don't think he was just trying to keep Navani at arm's length, though. He may very well have been being influenced by an Unmade, but I don't think it's just that. War changes a man, and so does discovering there is more out there, especially when that more are forces allowing one to become immortal and not only conquer Alethkar but far, far more than that. It's also possible that Navani has changed for the better over the years; we know Dalinar has. Our view is being tinted by the lens we're seeing him through; it could just be that it's less a change in Gavilar as it has been through Dalinar and Navani, at least partially. And the Stormfather is unlikely to know the type of man Gavilar really was - he'd just be able to see on the surface, I think, choosing the man that the rest of the world sees him as.

Gavilar having the anti-Voidlight doesn't really make anything clear, I don't think. In fact, it raises a lot more questions. Navani was only able to create it under strange conditions, and with the "help" of a Fused. I'd think anyone else creating it in that way would need the aid of a singer at the very least. Or are there other ways to create it?

Hmm yeah it could be that Navani and Dalinar have become beter versions of themselves. Regarding the SF's choice, I don't think that the spren only looked at the surface, or Syl would have gone for Amaram rather than Kaladin considering his talk of honor this and honor that. May be this is an extreme example, but we would have seen atleast some of neutral people becoming WRs. 

Gavilar having anti-voidlight doesn't prove one requires a singer. All the native rosharan creatures hear the tones of Roshar. And as we know, all singers except for listeners were blocked from the tones anyways, so I don't think he had a listener helper. It could have been a void-spren, as Ulim was able to attune the rhythms, but it seems unlikely that a void-spren of Odium would give such a weapon to Gavilar who was a potential bondsmith.

5 hours ago, IndigoAjah said:

Whether he had outright evil plans or not (I assume not, that he's had a decent plan at least that was either sabotaged by baddies or by mistaken goodies or because he had arrogantly missed how badly his plan would go), I'm confident, based on how he treats people, on saying he's a pretty crappy person. 

What people except Navani have we seen him mistreat? And even there, Navani said the change was quite recent. Yeah I think you're judging too quickly. He could be a crappy person, but he could be under some sort of influence too. We can't regard Roshar where supernatural forces have such a big hand on people's minds as our world. Anyways, I gave other arguments regarding his crappiness to Navani above, go through them and maybe you'll understand why it might have been something else.

10 hours ago, Hayama said:

His emotional and physical (not seen but mentioned) abuse of Navani firmly puts him in the evil camp to me. Having personally seen the long-term effects of such, and having it reflected so accurately in Navani's own psyche years later, this alone makes Gavilar despicable.

Oh that's true of course, I've seen this in my family as well, so no argument there. But a person who is an A to their family isn't necessarily also the super villain and commits every evil possible, that's what I was saying. Also as Navani mentioned, he changed and wasn't like that before. From my personal experience at least, I've never seen people go from good to evil like that. So there must be a reason he became that person. We know Jasnah would never have supported a person we saw through Navani's viewpoint ever, which meant Gavilar was a good guy at one point and then something happened. May be it was an unmade. Or maybe, he was trying to keep Navani at arm's length to keep her safe from getting entangled in all of it. It's just a theory, there's nothing to do until Wax and Wayne 4 comes out.

16 hours ago, kaellok said:

Secret societies gonna secret.  There's any number of reasons that mostly all boil down to different organizations want different things, even if they had been allies up until that point.  Maybe the Ghostbloods were only after proof of concept of an idea, and once that had been obtained, had no further use for the Sons of Honor and little wish for renewed conflict.  Maybe literally the only thing they cared about was getting the gem containing BAM, and seeding Roshar with voidspren was the price they had to pay, but then Gavilar reneged on the deal.  Maybe they wanted a return of the Heralds and Desolations and a final war that actually ends, but they didn't want Gavilar becoming an effectively immortal Cognitive Shadow.

Gavilar not mentioning BAM directly is somewhat interesting because his mention of the storm explicitly states that that is what will restore the minds to the Singers stuck in slave-form.  Which, given what we know of Kalak, doesn't seem like it would be the preferred method if they had it available; if nothing else, surely Amaram would have freed them if the gem was available.  I can kinda see an argument that Gavilar was after a Human v. Singer fight to extinction, and not concerned with Everstorm.  Given his sources of information, though, it's hard to realistically believe that he could separate them out.  And whether he was responsible for the Everstorm, I believe that he did plan on using it.

And I tend to give strongly worded replies, as I subscribe to the Assuredness Movement of scholars for myself (but hypocritically find fault with others for doing so, because in my infinite wisdom only I know the exact degree to which it is permissible), so want to call out specifically that I think it's great to look at things from different points of view than the prevailing theories or what seems to be suggested by the books.  There's a lot of misdirection going on that we experience because of the differing viewpoints.  It's wonderful and great, and could entirely be in keeping to slowly have our opinions shaped from Gavilar Is A Great Man shift to Gavilar Is Super Not Cool and then back to Gavilar Wasn't So Bad After All.

All of what you said could also be true, but Axindweth was committed until the very end to bring about the Everstorm, I don't think she backed out and that's what made Gavilar think of her as a traitor. The anti voidlight in Gavilar's possession also makes it clear that he wanted to end Fused. If Ulim was in cahoots with him, he would have know about anti-voidlight, and the whole Raboniel/Navani arc wouldn't have happened. Also the stormfather argument, as I said, there were a number of leaders he could have chosen from. Why Gavilar and then Dalinar? And if it were king of Alethkar reason, coz Alethkar is Alethela, then Elhokar should have been chosen afterwards. If we believe that Gavilar was indeed evil, then choosing Elhokar over him should have been easier as Elhokar was a good person, if a little misguided and stupid. And Gavilar could just be mentioning the storm that Tanavast talks about in these visions. I don't think he knew about Everstorm in Shadesmar. We'll know more once the next book comes out.

2 minutes ago, Eris said:

It could be like someone else said and they wanted to bring Taln out of Braize but not bring back the Fused. It could have been a misunderstanding that Gavilar meant Taln as their god not the Fused. Therefore, Axindweth would have been working against him and why she was chased off the planet. 

Yes exactly, hence he and Sons of Honor didn't want Odium back in such power, or the Fused permanently on Roshar from Braize. Because it seems really stupid now that he wanted this, specially since Stormfather thought him worthy enough to show the visions. There were other leaders in the world, he could have shown them the visions, or even Dalinar. If it were the king of Alethela thing, then Elhokar should have received the visions after Gav's death.

2 hours ago, kaellok said:

Maybe earlier on he did.  But by the time he died, he wanted to be immortal.  And not just in the way of his legacy and what he'd leave behind (as Dalinar tells us in Oathbringer), but likely something much more literally eternal--akin to the Heralds.

That does not, at all, sound like the words of someone who is interested in doing good, but instead has a different focus.

Specific mention of the storm.  A desire to ignite a new war.  Again, this is incredibly on the nose.  Maybe Gavilar 6 years ago didn't want this, but Gavilar did on the day he died.

Yeah so he refers to Mishram here, obviously. The new storm could be Everstorm, but if he wanted to bring it, why would he think Axindweth was a traitor to his cause when she's the person who first brought a voidspren from this storm. May be he meant something else when he said the word storm. Most probably it was from his visions. As we know, SF first showed these visions to Gavilar and in these visions, Tanavast does mention the new storm quite a lot.

Edit: Also, yeah Gavilar is looking for power here, obviously. The purpose of my post was to discuss the Odium aspect of it all as we all thought previously, maybe Gavilar wasn't responsible for Everstorm and Odium returning in such power. 

11 hours ago, LiftIRL said:

If he really wanted to just free the singers, he would have released Ba-Ado-Mishram. We know he had conferred with the heralds, which, as we see with Kelek, know about the situtation with the unmade and the minds of Parshmen. I cant even remember if we canonically know he thought about the parshmn being released as ""voidbringers""- surely if he did he would have thought of some precautionary measures for the safety of his rule, like Jasnah did in the earlier series, right?

Pretty sure Kelek and others, and hence Gavilar, didn't know where Mishram was/is, or they could have done that. Mishram was imprisoned after heralds had given up on the Oathpact, honor was shattered or like Leras was at the end (probably) and Nale would have released it by now if he knew considering his siding with singers for the war. Anyways, it's just a theory. We probably won't know until book 5 (or even 10 if the prologue format continues to back 5) what his motivations were.

15 hours ago, Eris said:

In my opinion. The more we hear about the dinner party, the more I am seeing Gavilar as an arrogant, egotistic, paranoid maniac. Eshonai hated him for daring of bringing back the old gods and there wasn't really a need to bring them back. He had pushed Navani away when these behaviours started the fester. It could be possible that the shift in personality was influenced by something we are unsure of at the moment. But Gavilar to me was never really "good" or felt anything akin to compassion or sympathy. Dalinar even warned Eshonai that Gavilar would cross them and fight them when he saw fit in the treaty. This warning is in a flashback in RoW

Yeah but as I said, it shifted a little this book. We know now that "Gods of Listeners" are fused, not Odium as he'll be referred to as "THE God". I think that that Gavilar just wanted to bring back Taln from Braize via worldhopping. That would have of course, released the Fused bringing back the said Parshendi gods. But Axindweth, the one who gave Venli Ulim and was ultimately responsible for the Everstorm, fled from Alethkar coz she was discovered as a traitor to the king. This implies their goals were different and also that Gavilar didn't kow about Ulim, as he would have asked Venli about the gemstone that was given to her. Ofcourse all of this might be cancelled out by the next book, but right now, it seems plausible as others mentioned that Gavilar might have been under influence of something else to have become such an arse, as Navani herself said he used to be a good person. It could also have been just to keep Navani out of whatever was going on with his life for her safety, for he berated Dalinar as well. But upon nearing death, he entrusted Dalinar to find the words. Seems pretty out of character for him to do that if he thought Dalinar to be a brute. He could have just asked Szeth to say that to Amaram, as he was present at the feast.

So, does anyone else thinks that Gavilar wasn't actually looking towards bringing something like Everstorm, but just looking to free all singers from their bondage? As we know Restares is Kelek who, from the epigraphs, knew about the effect of Ba-ado-Mishram's imprisonment on Roshar and perhaps guessed that Radiants gave up their powers for this reason (probably) as they felt guilty for causing such drastic change to Roshar and its native population. So he decided to restore the singers and the only way to do that was to bring back Taln from Braize, thereby freeing fused and suing for peace. He had anti-voidlight already prepared and ready to destroy fused as a backup incase they don't work with him. It's such a marvel that we still can't figure out what Gavilar wanted. While he was an asshole towards his family, may be here he wanted to do something good. What do you people think?

But how? He has no connection to Odium. The dreams he saw were because of Moash's mutual connection, no? Does that give him that power? Regardless, his super speed is something not yet seen in Roshar. Which surge can grant that? I don't think gravitation can make him fast, right?

So any theories on how Kal went super saiyan rage mode even with the radiant blockers in place and not saying the 4th ideal towards the end of his fight with Lezian? What power was he using to move with such speed?