silver-the-ridgerunner

Ishar sounds an awful lot like Ishtar. To *wildly* oversimplify, Ishtar is associated with the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve with forbidden knowledge, leading to their expulsion from Paradise. So um. Yeah. 

Ishtar is also associated with primitive celestial navigation - hence the overlaps between Snake, Satan, and the Morning Star. Which definitely runs with the concept of Ishar as being the one who literally brought the people of dying Ashyn to Roshar, as by using his Bondsmith power to create a portal between the two worlds. (Brandon does Cosmic Marvel better than Cosmic Marvel, change my mind.)

Aside aside: the name God-Priest might, in classic Sandersonian fashion, be a descriptor which we naturally assume to be fanciful, but which is actually accurate. The Latin for priest is ,"pontifex," which literally means "bridge builder." A good descriptor for a religious authority... a great one for a Bondsmith... and a literally perfect one for the guy who made super magic space bridge between Shardworlds.

... Google "Bridge of the Gods." Yeah.

[MY PET THEORY: The "bridge" between Ashyn and Roshar is still open. It's at the Origin. Roshar's crem is the dessicated surface of dustbowl'd Ashyn carried through the portal, and distributed over Roshar by the Highstorms.]

[ALSO PET THEORY: Underneath all that crem - buried to touch, buried in memory, buried in people's hearts - Roshar is the planet once called Yolen.]

I enjoyed the throry that Ishar nuked Ashyn to prevent it - or its knowledge - from falling into Odium's hands. 

However: Ashyn was already Odium's; it's people were Odium's; and it was Odium who tempted Ishar to use the powers of the Bondsmith to manipulate the surges... or the ability of people to bind the surges, i.e. creating Surgebinding as we know it on Roshar. 

Occam's Shardblade might suggest an easier explanation. (Odium's Razor?)

What happened? Ashyn was destroyed, or at least substantially rendered uninhabitable; its people came as refugees to Roshar; Odium was imprisoned on Braize, a planet in the Rosharan system. This led directly to the Oathpact, and the shattering of Honor.

Maybe this course of action was *exactly what Odium wanted*. He created a situation of planetary destruction, so that Honor (and Mrs. Avast) could be lured into opening their planet to refugees - and in doing so, to Him. 

Perhaps the Oathpact was a part of this. I think more likely it came later, or at least grew out of original agreements between the Shards. More likely, I think, that Odium's presence in the Rosharan System occurred at this time. "We will accept your people," said Tanavast, "but you shall be consigned to watch them from a distance -confined to Braize, worshiped from afar,  communicating with your people only by intermediaries."

(Heck, maybe Braize was created for this purpose - or maybe it even was brought to the Rosharan system whole.)

Tanavast thought he was saving a people, and imprisoning a Shard to boot. Instead he had brought the wolf to his very door, and soon enough,  it would kill him. 

In short: maybe Odium causes Ashyn to be ruined, so that he and his influence could sneak onto Roshar.