theory The Unmade are Truthwatcher, not Bondsmith, spren

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

Bondsmiths are special, we all know that. To quote the Stormfather:

Quote

No Radiant is capable of more than you. Yours is the power of Connection, of joining men and worlds, minds and souls. Your Surges are the greatest of all, though they will be impotent if you seek to wield them for mere battle.

They get the most unique spren, which, apart from granting Tension and Adhesion, have some unique abilities or phenomena associated with them. Based on that, I always assumed that the Unmade would be the spren for the Voidbinding equivalent of the Bondsmith Order.
What if that is not the case? I'd like to present some arguments why I believe the “privileged” Order of Voidbinding could be the Truthwatchers:

• Truthwatchers are opposite to Bondsmiths on the Surgebinding chart, symbolizing Odium and Honor as opposing forces
• Odium doesn't really care about uniting anyone. Spiritual Adhesion is a special, cherished power in Surgebinding. Amongst the Voidbringers, the Envoyform is granted by a lesser Voidspren and relatively low on the hierarchy
• Odium's signature moves are futuresight (Voidish Illumination) and corrupting Investiture/spren/people (spiritweb modification = Progression). These are also the most Spiritually oriented Voidish powers we know, just as Bondsmiths get the most Spiritually oriented Surges amongst the KR (WoB)
• Voidbinder's futuresight interferes with Odium's own and it would make sense for it to be available only to his very selected servants
• Odium's Champion, likely the most powerful Voidbinder possible, is described as surrounded by multiple shadows, a possible nod to (Mistborn spoilers)
  Spoiler

  Atium users and their futuresight

   

• Futuresight, unlike other Voidish powers, is granted (directly or indirectly) by at least two Unmade: Sja-anat and Moelach. I would also add Ba-Ado-Mishram as a likely candidate for granting the Nightform somehow (we know from Pashendi Songs that the Unmade might provide them). Why? The Nightforms existed for the last time during the False Desolation and they apparently predicted the Everstorm (“A new storm will come, someday to break” line from Song of Secrets). That's seeing hundreds (thousands?) years into the future – a feat I can only ascribe to the influence of an extremely powerful Unmade

• Sja-anat seems to be the Unmade whose additional powers correspond to the Truthwatcher Order and she was the most feared amongst them. We've seen her corrupt two kinds of sentient spren: Truthwatcher and Oathgate spren. Of these, only the former get a new, distinctive Surge variant, which I think might be caused by their direct Connection to Sja-anat herself (she definitely has a Connection to her lesser spren “children” as she can communicate with people through them)
• Voidbinding is very mysterious, but (based on chart similarity with Surgebinding) I would assume that it requires a permanent bond with sapient Voidspren. We also know that Voidbinding typically originates with the Unmade and is somehow similar to the Old Magic.  How could all of this fit together? Unmade being Truthwatcher spren offers a solution, I think: once you bond an Unmade permanently, your spiritweb and body gets seriously and visibly corrupted (think of Amaram and Aesudan) and you get a Spritual Progression ability to corrupt others in a similar way, allowing them to bond Voidspren permanently

[+Bzhydack he/him]

15 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Voidbinding is very mysterious, but (based on chart similarity with Surgebinding) I would assume that it requires a permanent bond with sapient Voidspren. We also know that Voidbinding typically originates with the Unmade and is somehow similar to the Old Magic.  How could all of this fit together? Unmade being Truthwatcher spren offers a solution, I think: once you bond an Unmade permanently, your spiritweb and body gets seriously and visibly corrupted (think of Amaram and Aesudan) and you get a Spritual Progression ability to corrupt others in a similar way, allowing them to bond Voidspren permanently
 

It is very interesting theory, but we know that Yelig-Nar was the only Unmade able to bond with mortal. In fact, he need mortal Host. Other Unmade never bond with anyone. They can corrupt, possess and/or control people, but never bond.

[Storyspren]

Just now, Bzhydack said:

It is very interesting theory, but we know that Yelig-Nar was the only Unmade able to bond with mortal. In fact, he need mortal Host. Other Unmade never bond with anyone. They can corrupt, possess and/or control people, but never bond.

Then how was/is Dalinar supposed to get his 9 shadows? Use Bondsmith powers to bond them to himself on purpose? 

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

1 minute ago, Bzhydack said:

It is very interesting theory, but we know that Yelig-Nar was the only Unmade able to bond with mortal. In fact, he need mortal Host. Other Unmade never bond with anyone. They can corrupt, possess and/or control people, but never bond.

We have a confirmation that the Unmade could be theoretically bonded:

Quote

Questioner

Can the Unmade be bonded?

Brandon Sanderson

Wow, plausible... Yes, or possible, I should say.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

 

[+Bzhydack he/him]

11 hours ago, Storyspren said:

Then how was/is Dalinar supposed to get his 9 shadows? Use Bondsmith powers to bond them to himself on purpose? 

Because he would be Odium Champion, he would have direct Connection to the Odium powers

Spoiler

(like Marsh to Ruin and Elend to Preservation during end of Hero of Ages)

and to the Odium Splinters, as follows. Anyway, he would be just Odium puppet.

@KandraAllomancer, so this is theorethicly possible, but we dont see anything to prove that. Unmade always were mention as separete entities. And seing what Yelig-nar was able to do (and he needs host) i dont think it is on Roshar person strong enough to bond, for example, Nergaoul.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Bzhydack

[Watchcry he/him]

4 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

Because he would be Odium Champion, he would have direct Connection to the Odium powers (like Marsh to Ruin and Elend to Preservation during end of Hero of Ages) and to the Odium Splinters, as follows. Anyway, he would be just Odium puppet.

@KandraAllomancer, so this is theorethicly possible, but we dont see anything to prove that. Unmade always were mention as separete entities. And seing what Yelig-nar was able to do (and he needs host) i dont think it is on Roshar person strong enough to bond, for example, Nergaoul.

Wow,  I hope nobody is reading this that's never read Mistborn. 

[Karger he/him]

So you think the Truthwatcher equivalent fused are the big deal in Odium's "society?"  Very plausible.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

13 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

@KandraAllomancer, so this is theorethicly possible, but we dont see anything to prove that. Unmade always were mention as separete entities. And seing what Yelig-nar was able to do (and he needs host) i dont think it is on Roshar person strong enough to bond, for example, Nergaoul.

A. I don't think Yelig-nar needs a host per se; he's still quite deadly on his own

B. We don't know if the danger of bonding an Unmade is correlated in any way with their powers. Let's look at Surgebinding/fabrials, for example: the Stormfather is extremely powerful and dangerous on his own, but bonding him doesn't pose a danger; on the other hand you can be horribly changed and finally die from Soulcasting Savantism

C. People used to bond Yelig-nar in the past - otherwise there would be no lore about granting all ten Surges. Also, Odium clearly counted on Amaram bonding him. Why waste a perfectly good servant if he didn't? Maybe Amaram not being able to handle his guilt was a factor here - I wonder how Moash would work instead

9 hours ago, Karger said:

So you think the Truthwatcher equivalent fused are the big deal in Odium's "society?"  Very plausible.

Note necessarily. I mean, there are no Truthwatcher Fused - only Illumination Fused (confirmed) and (potentially, assuming they are not the missing "Order") Progression Fused. The former use regular Illumination, not futuresight

[Karger he/him]

5 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Note necessarily. I mean, there are no Truthwatcher Fused - only Illumination Fused (confirmed) and (potentially, assuming they are not the missing "Order") Progression Fused. The former use regular Illumination, not futuresight

Don't we have confirmation that there are nine orders of voidbinding with bondsmiths left out?

[Gears]

10 minutes ago, Karger said:

Don't we have confirmation that there are nine orders of voidbinding with bondsmiths left out?

Quote

XS-Terrain

Also, does each of the Unmade have a corresponding order of the Knights Radiant?

Brandon Sanderson

Eh... Kind of.

XS-Terrain

Ok. So there are nine Unmade right, so which one is left out?

Brandon Sanderson

Bondsmith. But it's not as one to one, there's some fuzziness in there.

 

[Lightspine]

6 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Note necessarily. I mean, there are no Truthwatcher Fused - only Illumination Fused (confirmed) and (potentially, assuming they are not the missing "Order") Progression Fused. The former use regular Illumination, not futuresight

I think we've also seen the Progression Fused as well: they're the big, bulky ones which grow their carapace. Kaladin fights several of them during his battle with Amaram.
I just checked, and they aren't listed on Coppermind, but I'm pretty confident in my identification.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

1 hour ago, Lightspine said:

I think we've also seen the Progression Fused as well: they're the big, bulky ones which grow their carapace. Kaladin fights several of them during his battle with Amaram.
I just checked, and they aren't listed on Coppermind, but I'm pretty confident in my identification.

That sounds pretty reasonable. Alternatively it could be Tension or Cohesion used to manipulate the shape of the carapace, and the spren-bond provides a Form with loads of carapace to manipulate in the first place.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

3 hours ago, Karger said:

Don't we have confirmation that there are nine orders of voidbinding with bondsmiths left out?

Odium's magic is a hodge-podge of corrupted stuff he accumulated over the years, but the overall list looks like this:

• nine orders of the Fused, with one Surge missing - we've seen Gravitation, Illumination, Abrasion and, as @Lightspine pointed out, likely Progression
• nine Unmade, kind of corresponding to different KR Orders, save for Bondsmiths
• ten levels of Voidbinding, as described by Ars Arcanum and Voidbinding chart. The Unmade are also somehow connected to it

I think that the Unmade might be the spren for one of the Voidbinding levels/"orders" - Truthwatchers, specifically, rather than Bodsmiths like in several other theories (e.g. possible Sja-anat Bondsmith is discussed here, here and here).

This is rather speculative, but I think the story behind this was something like this:

• Voidbinding was created on Ashyn, hence the 10 levels (Roshar could be an option, but the Fused don't know much about Voidbinding)
• The Unmade were also some corrupted spren from Ashyn, except Odium didn't get the Bondsmith one, which became the Sibling on Roshar
• The Fused have nine orders because at this point Odium was forcibly bound to Braize

 

[Karger he/him]

I really want a good description of what is going on with Voidbinding because right now it is just too confusing.  We clearly don't have all of the pieces.

[SirNoSell]

13 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

nine orders of the Fused, with one Surge missing - we've seen Gravitation, Illumination, Abrasion and, as @Lightspine pointed out, likely Progression

I'm going to take a stab and say adhesion.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

On 15.07.2020 at 2:33 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

A. I don't think Yelig-nar needs a host per se; he's still quite deadly on his own

B. We don't know if the danger of bonding an Unmade is correlated in any way with their powers. Let's look at Surgebinding/fabrials, for example: the Stormfather is extremely powerful and dangerous on his own, but bonding him doesn't pose a danger; on the other hand you can be horribly changed and finally die from Soulcasting Savantism

C. People used to bond Yelig-nar in the past - otherwise there would be no lore about granting all ten Surges. Also, Odium clearly counted on Amaram bonding him. Why waste a perfectly good servant if he didn't? Maybe Amaram not being able to handle his guilt was a factor here - I wonder how Moash would work instead

A. All we know about Him is that Yelig-nar aleways manifest in host in active way. He did nothing on Thaylen Fields unless Amaram didnt bond with him.

B. I was talking not about strengh of manifestation or influence into Physical Realm, I was talking more about... friendlines? Unmade are clearly hostile to all living things, so they had to be FORCED to bond, by strong mind. And when mind will be not strong enough to sustain bond, Unmade will break free and consume bonded individual. They are Splinters of Hate, after all. Stormfather is stronger, but hes much more recpect for Oaths, and isnt hostile. Like Storm isnt hostile.

C.Why waste perfectly good servant? Odium dont think in this categories. One Fused said, to Venli: You cannot be weak serving Him. Odium dont care about his servants. If someone isnt strong enough, will be replaced. Like Aesudan.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

On 16.07.2020 at 0:57 PM, BrightLordSwageas said:

I'm going to take a stab and say adhesion.

I agree, that works well on symbolical level and explains why we see so many Adhesion-related forms of power (definitely Envoyform, likely Stormform)

20 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

A. All we know about Him is that Yelig-nar aleways manifest in host in active way. He did nothing on Thaylen Fields unless Amaram didnt bond with him.

We have historical evidence about Yelig-nat acting on his own (or at least any host isn't mentioned), like breaking into Nohadon's chancery and killing all the scribes or burning book

20 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

B. I was talking not about strengh of manifestation or influence into Physical Realm, I was talking more about... friendlines? Unmade are clearly hostile to all living things, so they had to be FORCED to bond, by strong mind. And when mind will be not strong enough to sustain bond, Unmade will break free and consume bonded individual. They are Splinters of Hate, after all. Stormfather is stronger, but hes much more recpect for Oaths, and isnt hostile. Like Storm isnt hostile.

That's debatable, I think. Sja-anat, for example, doesn't seem hostile and, per Dalinar's word, Nergaoul isn't intelligent enough to be malevolent. Consuming bonded individuals has always been attributed to Yelig-nar specifically

20 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

C.Why waste perfectly good servant? Odium dont think in this categories. One Fused said, to Venli: You cannot be weak serving Him. Odium dont care about his servants. If someone isnt strong enough, will be replaced. Like Aesudan.

Odium doesn't care, but he's economical. With Aesudan, he got chaos and riots in Kholinar which eventually helped him capture the city. With Amaram though? He didn't need him to win the battle, at this point Odium was still sure that Dalinar would be his champion. And if he simply wanted to feed Yelig-nar, any soldier would do

[+Bzhydack he/him]

8 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

We have historical evidence about Yelig-nat acting on his own (or at least any host isn't mentioned), like breaking into Nohadon's chancery and killing all the scribes or burning book

I always thout that Yelig-Nar was hosted during ths event, and this was host massacred scribes. I could be wrong.

8 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

That's debatable, I think. Sja-anat, for example, doesn't seem hostile and, per Dalinar's word, Nergaoul isn't intelligent enough to be malevolent. Consuming bonded individuals has always been attributed to Yelig-nar specifically

Yes, they are not-inteligent Unmade, but this can be also the problem. Bond with mind is easier, I think, that bond with mindless intuitive force. And yes, Sia-Anat seems to be not-hostile, maybe most inteligent Spren are able to evolve a little, influenced by events? Sia-Anat seems to be exception.

 

8 hours ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Odium doesn't care, but he's economical. With Aesudan, he got chaos and riots in Kholinar which eventually helped him capture the city. With Amaram though? He didn't need him to win the battle, at this point Odium was still sure that Dalinar would be his champion. And if he simply wanted to feed Yelig-nar, any soldier would do

I see this more like additional benefit. Odium probably promised Amaram power, and we know how words are important on Roshar. So he granted Amaram with Yelig-Nar bond, but if he will be able to bond Unmade, Odium has good loyal servant. If not, Yelig-Nar will not suffer, and also campain. As you notice, Amaram wasnt needet in this battle, so risking that Yelig-Nar will consume him will not have negative impact on battle, and can be positive.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

@Bzhydack After giving it some thought I think you might be right on this. Yesterday I came across some new interesting evidence when reading on the Near East mythology (I'll post a new theory within a few days) and I believe it implicates rather strongly (amongst other things) that the Unmade are Odium's equivalent of Heralds/Honorblades rather than Bondsmith or Trutwacther spren. If so, they are unlikely to be permanently bonded.

As for the other part of this theory (that the Trutwatchers will be the special Voidbinding Order, rather than Bondsmith), I think it still stands - the Unmade simply need to replaced with some sapient (probably rare) Voidspren

Edited July 18, 2020 by KandraAllomancer

[Azarias]

On 18/07/2020 at 5:30 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

@Bzhydack After giving it some thought I think you might be right on this. Yesterday I came across some new interesting evidence when reading on the Near East mythology (I'll post a new theory within a few days) and I believe it implicates rather strongly (amongst other things) that the Unmade are Odium's equivalent of Heralds/Honorblades rather than Bondsmith or Trutwacther spren. If so, they are unlikely to be permanently bonded.

As for the other part of this theory (that the Trutwatchers will be the special Voidbinding Order, rather than Bondsmith), I think it still stands - the Unmade simply need to replaced with some sapient (probably rare) Voidspren

Do we even know that voidspren are a thing? We know that there are corrupted spren, and the unmade, but I believe that a separate class of voidspren is yet to be introduced- correct me if I'm wrong.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

1 minute ago, Azarias said:

Do we even know that voidspren are a thing? We know that there are corrupted spren, and the unmade, but I believe that a separate class of voidspren is yet to be introduced- correct me if I'm wrong.

Besides the Unmade and the corrupted spren (e.g. Glys) we have at the very least:

• lesser Voidspren who grant the Forms of Power
• sapient Voidspren, like Ulim

The latter might be connected to Voidbinding

[Azarias]

1 minute ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Besides the Unmade and the corrupted spren (e.g. Glys) we have at the very least:

• lesser Voidspren who grant the Forms of Power
• sapient Voidspren, like Ulim

The latter might be connected to Voidbinding

Of course- I can't believe I forgot that. But that would make voidspren very different from highspren. Highspren such as Syl are not sentient in the physical realm until they have fully formed a bond, and are close to their radient, instead appearing and acting like their lesser spren counterparts. Ulim is not bonded with Venli, and yet seems perfectly capable and distinguishable from lesser voidspren. 

Although, one must ask if voidspren even bond with people/ parshmen in the same way that highspren do. The oaths and bonds seem much more of honor than they do of odium, and it seems strange that odium would use them. Moreover, this topic is founded on the principle that truthwatchers are the bondsmith equivalent for voidbinding, and yet within surgebinding, it is the bondsmith who first created/ discovered the Nahel bond. 

Assuming that truthwatchers are the voidbinding equivalent of bondsmiths, are they responsible for the creation of voidbinding? And would voidbinding use something other than oaths and bonds- something more akin perhaps to the truthwatchers surges, or things associated with odium.

[Rainier]

On 7/14/2020 at 3:22 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

Truthwatchers are opposite to Bondsmiths on the Surgebinding chart, symbolizing Odium and Honor as opposing forces

It would be symbolizing Cultivation, not Odium. This is my main problem with this theory. The Surgebinding chart shows the interaction between Honor and Cultivation. We've got an entire Voidbinding chat largely unexplained. If the Unmade are going to pair off with humans (or singers), I think it will be because of something in that chart, not something shoehorned into the already crowded Surgebinding chart.

Plus, we already know this isn't the case. We have exactly one Truthwatcher to go off of, but he's bonded a spren very much like the other Radiant spren, but with a twist. The twist might be that this particular spren is sacrificing some surgebinding for some voidbinding (it remains to be seen), but the twist isn't Unmade in disguise the whole time.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

1 hour ago, Rainier said:

It would be symbolizing Cultivation, not Odium. This is my main problem with this theory. The Surgebinding chart shows the interaction between Honor and Cultivation. We've got an entire Voidbinding chat largely unexplained. If the Unmade are going to pair off with humans (or singers), I think it will be because of something in that chart, not something shoehorned into the already crowded Surgebinding chart.

The chart does symbolize that, but the Orders that seem to of most pure Honor and Cultivation (Windrunners and Edgedancers, respectively) are not at the center of it. Bondsmits and Truthwatchers being the opposites in that regard would simply add another layer of symbolism

1 hour ago, Rainier said:

Plus, we already know this isn't the case. We have exactly one Truthwatcher to go off of, but he's bonded a spren very much like the other Radiant spren, but with a twist. The twist might be that this particular spren is sacrificing some surgebinding for some voidbinding (it remains to be seen), but the twist isn't Unmade in disguise the whole time.

Yes, but Glys is a corrupted spren, not a 'full' Voidbinding spren (which should grant two Voidish Surges, as suggested by the Voidbinding chart). Based on the discussion and some new evidence I agree that the Unmade are not Voidbiding-Truthwatcher spren, but I think such sapient Voidspren would exist

3 hours ago, Azarias said:

Although, one must ask if voidspren even bond with people/ parshmen in the same way that highspren do. The oaths and bonds seem much more of honor than they do of odium, and it seems strange that odium would use them. Moreover, this topic is founded on the principle that truthwatchers are the bondsmith equivalent for voidbinding, and yet within surgebinding, it is the bondsmith who first created/ discovered the Nahel bond. 

Assuming that truthwatchers are the voidbinding equivalent of bondsmiths, are they responsible for the creation of voidbinding? And would voidbinding use something other than oaths and bonds- something more akin perhaps to the truthwatchers surges, or things associated with odium.

Yeah, these are excellent questions. It all comes down, I believe, to how the Voidbinding Initiation looks like. The best things I could come up with so far are: the corrupted Progression mentioned in the first post (possibly gemstones growing in Voidbinder's body?) and the idea that Voidbinding might be like fabrials (requiring a gemstone for bonding, like with Yelig-nar). I think the gemstones will be the key, but it's all rather speculative at this point

[+Bzhydack he/him]

24 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Voidbinding might be like fabrials (requiring a gemstone for bonding, like with Yelig-nar). I think the gemstones will be the key, but it's all rather speculative at this point

Maybe less speculative than many can think - we know that earlier Odium wasnt able to bond his Spren with Humans, he did this during OB for the first time. But was able to bond Voidspren with Singers. What Singers have, and Humans dont? - Gemhearts.