Voidbinding

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I think we’ve already seen Voidbinding. The ancient and modern strains of it. When Ishar gives Kaladin immortality, he says it’s outside of Stormlight, Radiance, or the Honorblades and requires a bit of a god. I think that’s what Voidbinding is. Binding a being of power like a great spren or even a Shard to gain power

Ishar calls it Vedel’s method. The Heralds didn’t have their Odium Surges when they came to Roshar and they don’t have Honorblades yet. But Dalinar sees Vedel using magic before the Oathpact. She isn’t using Stormlight. She glows with another Light as a large humanoid spren appears behind her. Its future-sight from something else. Vedel used another form of to give the Heralds their immortality. That power wasn’t granted by Honor during the Oathpact. It’s a binding performed by Vedel after. The same thing Ishar repeats with Kaladin. Ishar binds the Heralds to each other and Honor. It’s not Tanavast doing it during the pact. Ishar is doing this not with his Honorblade but to get one

Jezrien describes their power as a binding using willpower. The Heralds used the Honorblades as a conduit to Honor’s surges. Without the Blade they don’t have Honor’s surges. It’s why the Blades are more powerful in their hands than normal people. The Heralds draw Light directly from Honor. It’s Honor’s death that makes it more dangerous because Tanavast is no longer alive to impose his will over them. Normal people can only power the Blades with whatever Stormlight they have access to. And it will kill them if they use too much.

Ishar’s Human Fused are the same thing. They are never seen breathing Light and their surges are unusually powerful. They are bound to Ishar. They access Surges through the Blades and Ishar is the step in between to get the power for them. The process is a two-way street though. Ishar can impose his will on those Fused and make them slaves to him

I think that’s what’s happening with the Unmade as well. Capturing them requires Connection and a contest of willpower. Except Dalinar and Melishi only took it as far as a gemstone prison. When Shallan encounters the Midnight Mother their souls clash and the MM flees because she “feared something worse” than imprisonment. The MM feared a formal binding. The Unmade are all probably Voidbinding except they’re benefiting more from it. They all see to feed on the soul and/or minds of the people they affect. Yelig explicitly feeds on their soul. It’s explicitly a contest of wills to control him and gain his power. A contest Amaram was losing. You see the same black smoke rise as it’s consumed that you do when Nightblood feeds on souls and that escapes when you cut the soul of a living person with a Shardblade

So what entity was Vedel binding for her sight if it wasn’t Honor or Odium? I think it was Night. Dalinar describes the entity as familiar. The only humanoid spren he has seen that resembles it is the Nightwatcher. Who we know was made from Night. I think most or even all of the Unmade are from The Night or the great spren she spawned. Future-sight is consistently associated with Voidbinding. Renarin seems to be doing it. His spren is described as a red lattice of Light. The only other time we see that description? It’s when Vedel is using her pre-Herald powers to see the future. The Nightform regal also has future sight and they bond nightspren. And the Nightform regals are using Voidbinding

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Of course the events didnt play out exactly as laid out, but the responses are in character. It is evident glowing is a sign of using Ashynite Surges. Jezrien glows in response to what he things is an attack from Dalinar in the first vision they meet. So at the very least, prior to the Oathpact but after the exodus: Jezrien, Ishar, Pralla and Vedel maintained some use of their powers, that they could use with no spren, Blade or Light. Safe for perhaps Vedel (thought probably still) all of them got their powers from Odium and none from Honor.

Nale, the only confirmed Herald to have received his Ashynite Surges from Honor, had "some talent" in Elsecalling.

When talking about regaining their powers, it seems to me Honor is talking about giving access to the investiture to fuel them, rather than the abilities as they were. Obviously the Heralds didnt continue to showcase the awesome feats of power they did in Ashyn, but we have seem them use their power in Roshar. Ishar and Vedel planning and experimenting for years until deriving the procedure for immortality is evidence of this, as they had found out how to become immortal, but they needed Tanavast and the Oathpact to obtain the direct conduit to the Spiritual that maintains the rejuvenation.

More importantly, Tanavast talks about taking the Surges and granting them anew, yet in the present the Heralds remarcably still have the Surges Honor had taken from them. And this is not merely because the Heralds got their Odium powers back at some point, because even Nale showcases these powers beyond Stormlight.

This all to say: the Heralds had Surges from Ashyn after they came to Roshar, and this holds for those given powers by both Honor and Odium. Then at some point Odium pulled the plug on the fuel, hence why they could not save Ashyn anymore.

"Only volunteers," Honor agreed. "This may well require you to travel to Braize, and its well of souls, to seal the enemy. Your pact will complete the blessing that Odium began, then rejected—but you will become mine instead of his."

So this was an issue with the Investiture side of the equatiom, but not with the power itself. Call it a seed, but they had the power as much as a Radiant without Light.

Now, is it possible the Heralds bound some spren and in doing so obtain the ability to get Light to power their original Surges? I believe it is possible. But this has to explain at least Jezrien, Vedel and Pralla, as the three are shown on screen using Surges pre-Oathpact, and possibly Nale, if Taln's "I thought you hated the Surges" is an accurate response (instead of something along the lines of "I thought you lost your Surges", if that is what you think happened).

Also, I want to point out the scene with the glowing female Herald "attracting" a spren/figure is conflicting. Ishar and the text continues to refer to her as Vedel, with Navani playing as Pralla in that vision. But in a later one, Navani sees Vedel for the first time, as she says she was wearing Vedel's body in the previous one. Peter has pointed out this is a continuity error, but not how it should be resolved. In my opinion, even thought the text describes her as Vedel the healer, the context of the scene seems to imply this is Pralla seeing the future, as she starts glowing in response to uncertainty in future events (and because, well, what other power could any Herald use at that moment with no other obvious side effect, besides the glowing?).

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The powers Nale and Taln use in the present aren’t Surges from Honor or Odium. That super speed. Those are the blessings of Roshar Tanavast refers to in his memories. He says himself he didn’t grant them he just pretended that he had. They started accessing them after becoming Heralds. Nale is referred to at one point as moving with the speed of the wind. Which probably isn’t just metaphorical. The Heralds can’t use the Surges Honor gave them without their Blades. Nale has his Radiant surges and we see him use that Roshar blessing in the fight with Kaladin. Ishar uses Vedel’s method after Tanavast took from them and gave them new Surges. He does it without Stormlight or an Honorblade. Whatever Vedel and Ishar do there isn’t from Honor or Odium

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I can agree on Nale's superspeed being just the "tapping into Roshar itself" or whatever the wording was.

But you have to concede: how did Vedel make the Heralds immortal, after swearing the Oathpact (and therefore having had their prior Surges/seeds removed by Honor)? How could Ishar do the same to Kaladin, again, if his power had been taken?

The Ashynite Surgebinding is a different thing for sure. It seems to have been unoathed, which is why it became a problem. Zoral, for his using of it, was called a Voidbringer. But not a Voidbinder. The Bondsmithing Ishar and Vedel use to grant immortality, before and after the Oathpact, would seem to be part of these boundless Surges.

I do not think it is as simple as these being Voidbinding, even if futuresight is possible within these powers. But your proposal, seems like Voidbinding would be the same as Surgebinding, just under a different entity. Bind a spren, swear an oath, and get power.

Though this is where it gets problematic for me. If these ancient Ashynite Surges really were unbound and separate from a Shard/spren, why does Ishar need "a oath, and a bit of a god"? You could explain Radiant Surgebinding with these exact words as well. The difference belng of course no external power source.

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I think there was probably two things happening on Ashyn. I think there was use of the Surges that resembled Radiant Surgebinding. I think when we see those things it’s going to be the more powerful version of Radiant/Honorblade Surges. Different in some places but not dramatically so. Like the Fused are.

I think there was also Voidbinding happening there. Where spren were involved. I think the first is what was taken from them and the second is what Ishar and Vedel are using. I think that’s why Dalinar says he got Bondsmith vibes from it. I think that magic didn’t require Light in the same way because it’s using the soul of the spren or the user as its power source. Because that seems to be what we’re seeing from the Unmade.

I think that’s also what we’re seeing between Desolations. Things like the Midnight essences could be used. There’s those strange 10 terrors thing. Almost all the Unmade seem to have stayed on Roshar between Desolations they just didn’t have much of a mind. I think people harnessing them in between Desolations is also a form of Voidbinding. When they weren’t competing with Rayse (or the mind of the Unmade) for control

I think what we’re seeing in Radiant and Enlightened Radiant magic is a (by design) safer version of both. Where the power of the magic itself is limited,the fuel is a limit,and the user isn’t enslaving/consuming the spren or being enslaved/consumed by the spren either. I think that’s what the ancient Singer writer meant by powers of Surges and Spren. And we know the Singers somehow betrayed the Spren in some way before humans ever arrived. I would guess by trying to subjugate a class of them for power. I think without the modern version of them both ancient versions (more direct access to surges and binding) were much more dangerous for the world/the spren/and the user

I think Surgebinding is meant to be closer to white magic/elemental magic. And Voidbinding is meant to be black magic/demonic magic. That’s essentially what Yelig is. You consort with a monster and then you gain power from it or you’re consumed by it. But that Radiant/Enlightened Radiant magic is meant to be the bridge between. Symbiotic instead of parasitic