Vasher's Rosharan Inspirations

[Duxredux he/him]

I listened to Warbreaker again recently, and there's a fair chance that other people have already realized this and I'm just slow. We've known for a while that Nightblood is a hacked version of Shardblades, but it occurred to me that those aren't the only things Vasher and some of the other Five Scholars saw on Roshar. He also saw Plate and presumably the dueling stances, and this ends up making his own fighting style of Nightblood with Awakened clothing make a lot more sense. Considering his centuries of fighting with basically magical power armor and Nightblood, it also makes a lot more sense why he's a master at teaching new people how to use Shards.

We see wisdom from the lessons he gives to Kaladin and Renarin in the few battles we see Vasher fighting. His first lesson to Kaladin and Bridge Four is to not get distracted by the Blade, and we've seen what he accomplishes when people just stare at Nightblood. Yes, Nightblood is doing more than just looking flashy or dangerous, but there's a lot to the intimidation factor that Vasher probably uses to his advantage. He has Renarin diving headfirst into the ground using Plate, and we've seen him trusting his life to an Awakened rope strengthening his leg when falling out of a building. Vasher's Awakened clothing combat style probably wasn't solely inspired by Roshar and Plate, but it obviously was influenced by it.

The one that probably should have been obvious to me is that Kalad's Phantoms are a hacked version of Shardplate. Of course Vasher wouldn't have stopped at copying just a Shardblade if he saw Plate. He just made an army of his versions rather than just a handful. It may also put Vasher killing Shashara into a different perspective, since Nightblood or other Shardblades are probably one of the handful of things that would consistently be able to deal with the phantoms. It also makes sense how those two inventions, Nightblood and Awakened statues, came out relatively close together. 

Really though, I've known for a while that Warbreaker was meant as a prequel to SA, and that SA was written before Warbreaker, but it still astounds me how good Brandon is at what he does. Are there any other Rosharan elements that people can spot in Vasher's actions?

Edited April 5, 2022 by Duxredux
clarity

[+honorblades he/him]

On 4/4/2022 at 1:10 PM, Duxredux said:

Are there any other Rosharan elements that people can spot in Vasher's actions?

A small & tongue-in-cheek detail is that Vasher chose 'Zahel' deliberately to indicate his divine heritage as a Returned, with 'Zahel' being linguistically close to 'Nahel'. 

 

Not to take away from the point of your post (which is quite good), I think Vasher is just exceptional at using the tools at his disposal to their fullest extent. He is a master of creative applications. It reminds me of SP4 

Spoiler

how we see Sigzil use Aux in numerous ways as .. well.. an auxiliary tool, and not simply a weapon.

 

[Treamayne]

Since we don't have a good timeline of how long after Vo the five scholars returned, nor how long they were studying Awakening before visiting Roshar, nor how long after visiting Roshar that the manywar blew up; it's difficult to say which innovations were simply discovered Commands and which were inspired by the Rosharan experience (TM - coming to a theme park near you).

"Protect me" could very well have been either. However, I always thought that storing breath with an inactive Command to recover (breathe) it later reminded me of Radiants breathing in Stormlight. . .