ElMonoEstupendo

The Ape.

Order: Waycrafters Spren: Paperspren Ideals: Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before destination. I will improve those around me. I will preserve what is needed and change what is unfit. I will seek the greatest effect from the smallest change. I will strive for perfection. Surges: Adhesion, Transformation Characteristics: Waycrafters have a strong affinity for rules, but unlike the Skybreakers their interest lies in creation and adjustment over strict adherence. Waycrafters seek the optimum solution, the shortest path, by understanding the systems around them and identifying faults and fixes. If a Waycrafter finds injustice or evil, they are more likely to alter the causes of the problem than to confront it directly. Waycrafters believe in an ideal solution, and strive to make it real. At their best, Waycrafters enhance the entire team. They will find and improve what works, and eliminate what does not; they coordinate and encourage, communicate well, and have few personal hang-ups. At their worst, they are overbearing control freaks trampling over individuality in pursuit of optimisation; though they bear few grudges and forgive easily, they also expect the same from others, and can be harsh or insensitive. Waycrafters make excellent lawmakers, logisticians, quartermasters, bureaucrats, engineers, and scholars. Resonance: Waycrafters are capable of Soulcasting with a much finer degree of control than usual, at the expense of raw power and scale. Materials that are difficult for other Soulcasters to create are much more accessible to Waycrafters, and they can exert some small influence over the shape and pattern of the Soulcast object, especially if they have an example to work from. Waycrafters are particularly good at transmuting a material to another within the same Essence - one metal to another, for example.

Or (RoW) I suppose.

Roion.

Ruthar.

We never see the contract text. She may not even be reading a section out, just paraphrasing or summarising. Also, the Shards seem to have a general prohibition against directly interfering with actual people that aren't specifically placed in their power. Odium couldn't act directly against anyone, nevermind Hoid, and none of them can sense the hearts and minds of people (without a spike). Nevertheless, Hoid is convinced he would be destroyed if discovered - so either the contract shields him, or it removed whatever special condition or Connection made him vulnerable. I like the idea that: The agreement doesn't actually protect him. Dalinar and Rayse made no mention of him in their final terms, or indeed showed any intention of doing so. He's "safe" anyway because he's not Connected to the Vessel of Odium anymore. When Rayse died, so did his problem. So Hoid is right in thinking he's protected, but wrong about the mechanism. Or he just knows what's up. Or he was lying to Jasnah.

The last few seconds give me Dawnshard mural vibes. The shape of Roshar (or the supercontinent on it, I suppose) is based on a slice of a Julia set. It seems very plausible indeed that Brando based this symbol and more on interference patterns.

I started off thinking you were nuts, but this ticks off a lot of open questions. Well done! I have some talking points: Bondsmith spren don't need Bondsmiths to make their Light - the Stormfather was doing it himself for centuries. The Sibling needed someone to find the tone of Honor - I think that required a bond due to the unique difficulties of being a child of two Lights. This doesn't rule out the theory, though - BAM could have had similar difficulties with Odium locked away. Dalinar is certain there'll only be nine Brands of Fused, presumably because the Stormfather told him Odium wouldn't countenance Adhesion as a Surge, or wouldn't split off enough power to form a Bondsmith spren. What happened with BAM, then, I wonder? The Change Dawnshard was around at the time... We know the reason for El's punishment (no title, no Rhythms) from the Fused himself, in his Musings addressed to TOdium himself. Both sides know everything about what went down - there's no chance of deception or misrepresenting the matter. It's just occurred to me that for El to have a pattern of replacing carapace, that practice must have been in effect before the Last Desolation. El has special talents that allow him to incorporate the metal inclusions instead of expelling them when he heals. Is that potentially a Bondsmith ability (I dunno, Connecting to the metal or something)? It seems unlikely he could hide that well, considering his rather unique appearance. El used to have the title Vyre (He Who Quiets), and used to have Rhythms - how did he earn these things without using his powers? Canonically (in-world and out-), nine of ten Orders of Knight Radiant took part in the Recreance, meaning Melishi as the only Bondsmith would have had to have survived until then (with his bond, presumably). Though that could just be metaphorically true or a misunderstanding. I asked the question a few days ago: is the Sibling a deadeye? Your idea might explain why not. It might also be an explicit link with what happened with the singers and the planet itself and deadeyeing, rather than just parallel effects.

I'd like to train with Vasher, chat with Navani, and hang out with Syl.

Nightblood isn't Anti-Investiture. He (it? she?) steals it from those he contacts. He eats it, accumulates it. By WoB: If he was made of Anti-Investiture, trying to consume all of Odium would have destroyed him. Instead, he was glutted. The tearing apart of souls is, I think, due to the consumption of their Investiture. Anti-Voidlight destroys it, Nightblood steals it; either way, the soul doesn't have it anymore.

I agree that the pattern is for Kaladin to have increasing trouble with the Oaths, but I disagree that this leads to "kill to protect" or an analogue thereof. I mean... he's been doing that the whole time. My theory is that the Windrunner Fifth Ideal will be protecting oneself. This seems to me to extend from the 4th Ideal. The man is self-sacrificing to a fault. In RoW we had a sniff of him realising that he needs to take care of himself if he's to be of any use to anyone, but in the end he threw down as we knew he would. Glorious victory! And it had to happen. But at what cost to himself?

I love it as a story in itself, as a story in its relation to Kaladin, and as a meta-narrative about the power of stories overall. Pretty much every Hoid story feels like that. Brando has a lot of struggling with inner demons in his work and this chapter feels like not just a moral story at the level of the Dog and the Dragon, which Kaladin eventually gets, but also a reminder that to the reader that you can take strength and lessons from stories, that the logic and obvious solutions you apply to those characters can also apply to yourself. Also that Hoid has a huge storytelling cheatsheet because of all the various visual magics and Brando wants to make a movie.

Woah woah, you mean The Lopen's Cognitive image had two arms all along? As for El's metal plates, there's a few possibilities that come to mind, some of which require him using other Shard's magic system. Perhaps that's why he's been denied the Rhythms? Odium wants to keep him at arm's length. They're Hemalurgic spikes. The trouble with this is: who is he spiking? He replaces his carapace soon after being reborn. Surely it would be a prominent thought of Lezian's if this guy required multiple sacrifices of Invested peeps after each rebirth. Spikes also wouldn't look like carapace replacements. They're Feruchemical metalminds. Notice the quote doesn't specify a particular metal. Now, he'd probably lose them after each death, but if he's a Ferring he can just create new ones. They're manifested spren. We see lesser spren become Radiant Shardplate, right? This may be the Fused version of that. They're some other godmetal. Potentially very powerful, but hard to see how he'd repeatedly get enough, or why. They're ralkalest, to protect against Radiant powers and Shardblades. The trouble is that aluminium is terrible as actual armour. They're steel! He's adopting the human habit of encasing oneself in manufactured armour instead of growing it oneself. Note that steel was immune to Ruin's interference, too, so it might be more practical. They're ornamental. He's just as nuts as other Fused. Perhaps they used to be one of the things above but now he's just stuck doing what he did 5,000 years ago. It's a punishment he's compelled (or wants?) to suffer. Similar to being denied the Rhythms. Most of these have some problems with them. It seems very unlikely that Odium would let him use other Shard's magic.

We have, right? The Fused. Similar but different to Knights Radiant: powered by Voidlight; one Surge instead of two; one soul instead of two. Odium doesn't strike me as the type to bind with Oaths the same way Honor did. That was all to control the power of Surgebinding, right? Odium doesn't care about that, probably even wants the opposite. Then there's whatever's going on with Vyre. Rayse gave him an Honorblade rather than granting a Surge or two, despite their deepening Connection. He's also not making any more Fused, since BAM messed it all up for him. One thing I've liked about the Shards is how none of the Intents are absolute good or evil, and the Vessels have a significant influence. I mean, Ruin and Preservation are literally black and white and one is obviously more sympathetic than the other, but it's clear that the best outcome is the balance between the two, and total victory for either is not desirable. I think this applies to all three Rosharan Shards too. Honor's good, right? He's the God of the good guys. He's about obeying rules, keeping your word, protecting. Cultivation's good, right? She's about growth, progression, change. But obeying rules to a fault isn't big-R Right (looking at Nale and Szeth). Unfeeling adherence can be outright evil. Change for the sake of change can be damaging, intrusive, lethal. And the same must apply to Odium - we have seen some redeeming qualities in the Passions and the culture of the Fused. He took away Vyre's anguish - perhaps it's not the best path in terms of therapy, or the most deserving subject, but as a power or an act in and of itself it is benevolent. The aspect of God's hatred is a thing for a reason - it speaks of just retribution, or the quelling of evil. I think there's scope for TOdium to work with that.

Hang on. Spren can end their bonds! That seems like a much cleaner solution to dangerous Surgebinding than the Recreance... A relevant WoB: I wonder if a spren breaking the bond damages the human the way the opposite does. Would that make Melishi a "deadeye"? And if it doesn't, why the hell did all those Radiants simultaneously break their bonds? They knew it would at least be very painful to their spren, if not as-good-as lethal. It was done by the spren's choice, per Maya. If that all adds up, there must be something else entirely going on with the Recreance. A reason for the drama, the timing, more than just not-Surgebinding-for-the-sake-of-the-planet.

That's pretty solid, thank you. It means all those sources and wiki entries saying nine Orders abandoned their oaths in the Recreance are straight-up wrong, though I suppose they could be mistaken in-universe. On the other hand, the current honorspren were definitively not around at the time, and have been shown to not be too in-the-know regarding the whole affair. Maybe the only people who would know for sure are the Heralds, the Sibling themselves, and the newly-revived deadeyes. The two aren't mutually exclusive - people and spren help each other heal. Adolin started connecting with Maya long before there was any communication between them. The process of taking care of his Blade, making use of it, spending time with it, all of these processes could be applied to a thousand people making oneself their home. Ah, if it's from the horse's mouth that's the end of the matter. I think it probably also puts paid to my pet theory that the Recreance was the very same day as the Binding. Oh well!

The question's in the title. Maybe it's obvious, and there's a passage I'm forgetting, so let me know if this is duh. We know the following, either directly from text or WoB: Nine out of ten Orders of Knights Radiant took part in the Recreance. There was only one Bondsmith alive at the time: Melishi, bonded to the Sibling. Melishi was definitely alive for the Binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram. The Binding was very shortly before the Day of Recreance. The Sibling was considered dead for a long time. Many of their functions shut down, and they lost their Light. It seems a slam dunk, to the extent that I'm amazed the connection isn't explicit in the book, or even the question. Did I miss something? It also means that Adolin isn't the only person to rehabilitate a deadeye - Dabbid has too.

I believe in the passage in RoW where Venli first starts to use her Willshaper Surges she vibes hard enough to Roshar's Top Ten that the stone forms figures, an entire scene, apparently in response to her thoughts. That might not be how it works for Stonewards (i.e. it's a Willshaper Resonance) or it might be specific to a listener Stoneshaper.

I really like the idea of Dalinar's path to victory involving giving up power, but I think the mechanism you describe wouldn't work. Death severs Nahel bonds, and the contest is explicitly to the death. Odium wouldn't gain any influence over Honor's remnants that way. He just wanted the Blackthorn. This. Rehabilitation and healing is a major theme especially in RoW. He's not only righting a millennia-long wrong and recruiting new allies, I suspect this will also be instrumental in fixing the problem the Recreance tried to address - something makes Nahel bonds unsafe. There were hints that his bond with Maya is something else entirely, almost the reverse of a Radiant relationship.

No, I think my phrasing is right. I'm trying to find an explanation for why humanity wasn't absolutely curb-stomping Odium before, given how evenly matched it seems in the present day and the advantages it seems they would have had. One of those advantages is that they had ten magic super-soldiers actually on their side, but this is an explanation for why they might not have made as big a martial difference as they would now, if they helped.

Absolutely. I think this is one of the few confirmed ways we've seen so far of "safely" killing a Vessel, and why Odium seems to have gone after dishardic systems first - the agreements between shards are mortally binding, and a third party affords some leverage. It probably also explains why Tanavast slowly went mad and died shortly after the Recreance - something about those events caused him to break his word, and for him in particular that must have caused incredible tension between him and his Shard's Intent on top of the baseline "hole in [his] soul".

A few more points I haven't seen made: Not all the Fused are back yet. We've only seen, I think, 7 of the 9 types and only just seeing Husked Ones etc. and what they can do. One is reminded of the scene in RoW where the human soldiers are making amazing headway before Lezian rocks up and scatters them. At this point the Heralds have been alive and in the same bodies for several thousand years - it's entirely possible their abilities weren't nearly as prodigious when they were getting new bodies every decade. Honor is dead, and he had been restricting the power of Surgebinders. We're explicitly told about Bondsmiths being unchained now but it may apply to all Knights Radiant. Near the end, the Heralds are terrified of death. That's got to affect their performance on the battlefield. And one final one that deserves its own paragraph - I think it makes sense that in a Desolation Odium's forces would be doing their damnedest not to kill Heralds in battle. It's the sure fire way to prevent your own resurrection and end the Desolation. Any time a Herald rocks up at the front, the best thing they could do is back off, work around them, outmanoeuvre, refuse to engage, and meanwhile do as much damage as possible elsewhere. There's only 10 of them, after all, and only a few of those have some form of rapid transport. When one side has such overwhelmingly powerful units (that you also absolutely want to avoid killing), you just nullify them by never letting them actually fight you. We can presume that the very nature of Odium works somewhat against his forces in pursuing tactics like this.

Dawnshards are the primordial Commands Adonalsium used to create all things. "Unity" isn't a command - Dalinar's line can't be referring to that, although the instructions he gets to UNITE THEM could count. He could be talking about a new Shard's name, though, in a similar way to Harmony, but it's difficult to see where or how that would have happened right then and there. More likely he was talking about being the unison of some or all of these things: The Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual Realms. That unison is what a Perpendicularity is, which he then opened for the first time. The fragmented aspects of Honor - the different, dispersed powers and responsibilities the Almighty once held, which he is now in possession of. The hearts and souls of men - his quest the whole book has been to unify the nations. The conflicting aspects of himself, flung into contrast by the reveal just beforehand. Odium's "We killed you!" line seems far more likely to indicate that he thinks he's seeing Honor reborn. The more interesting part of that is "We"... Vessels might have some degree of sway over what their actual Shard name is - for example, by WoB we know that Harmony could just as easily have been Discord depending on how Sazed handled it. Honor is the Shard associated with bonds and rules and oaths - "Unity" could be Dalinar's interpretation of that, meaning he really is in the process of Ascending.

Ah, good shout! You sent me off on another WoB dive, thanks. Here's an interesting related WoB:

There's another disturbing implication in the very last line: Odium's been bound up on Braize for 4,500 years, since Aharietiam. Did Wit visit him there? Ulim mentions the Everstorm has been building up for centuries. Nale believes a bridge like that would be impossible without some Connection between worlds. Did Rayse pull a similar trick to Taravangian? Is Hoid the thread that allowed the Everstorm to ever-so-slowly build up? Admittedly it's probably just a turn of phrase, but you usually use that phrasing when it's somewhere close to but above the number you say.