Honor

Honor is one of the sixteen Shards of Adonalsium, and one of the three, alongside Cultivation and Odium, who settled in the Rosharan system. The original Vessel of Honor was called Tanavast. Following his death at the hands of Odium, Honor's power slowly formed a consciousness. Honor’s Investiture is typically associated with a blue-white coloration.
Honor was eventually conjoined with Odium to create the Shard of Retribution on , within the Vessel of Taravangian.
== Intent ==
Honor seeks to uphold oaths and agreements, and to bind things together. It is most notably about the choice of following laws or a set of ideals, even if one does not have an obligation to follow said rules. Although not centered around it, it supports laws and power, to what some would consider an unhealthy extent. It espouses a morality defined by adherence to oaths. The Intent holds the oath itself as being more important than the meaning behind it.
Honor rejects those that go against their oaths, especially when the breaking of oaths have tragic consequences, such as when Tanavast betrayed Ba-Ado-Mishram, leading to the creation of the slaveform Singers and deadeye spren. Following this betrayal and its consequences, Honor completely rejected Tanavast.
Many, such as the Fused, consider it to extend to a cosmic sense of justice and order, as well as the natural laws of the universe. They see its power as that which makes Surges into natural law. Honor also resonates with and loves the mathematics and equations of nature and the universe, claiming that the mathematics of the universe display intrinsic Honor. 
Its Intent manifests in the oaths of the Knights Radiant, the oath-bound nature of Honorspren society, the bonding nature of Physical and Spiritual Adhesion, and etcetera.
== Associated magic ==
=== Stormlight ===
Stormlight is a gaseous form of Investiture associated with Honor. It was not created by him, as a proto-version of it existed prior to his arrival on Roshar, but in the present day, it has been subsumed into him. The largest Splinter of Honor, the Stormfather, is responsible for creating and maintaining the highstorms that bring stormlight.
Stormlight is crucial to the Rosharan ecosystem. Numerous animals form bonds with lesser spren, which most likely require Stormlight as fuel. Large quantities of Stormlight are necessary for singers to change forms. The Parshendi, and later the humans, use Stormlight to grow crops. In Shadesmar, spren derive sustenance from Stormlight. While humans do not normally utilize Stormlight themselves, its presence makes them significantly healthier.
=== Highstorm ===
Honor is able to manipulate a powerful weather pattern on Roshar, via the Stormfather. While the Stormfather ordinarily sticks to his schedule, he can summon them to a particular location if need be. The highstorms also grant him the ability to summon Stormlight, although he cannot do so outside of a highstorm. 
=== God Metal ===
Honorblades are made out of the God Metal of Honor.
Shardblades and Shardplate are both made out of a mixture of the unnamed God Metals of Honor and Cultivation. The precise proportion of the two differs depending on the type of spren that forms the Blade, or the order to which the Plate belongs; as such, there are at least ten alloys.
=== Surgebinding ===
Surgebinding on Roshar is a magic system derived from both Honor and Cultivation. To utilize it, a person must bond a higher spren, which allows them to inhale Stormlight and use it to control Surges, a set of ten fundamental forces, although a single spren bond allows access to only two of them. Some Surges favor Honor, and others Cultivation, although only Adhesion is 'purely' of Honor.
Apart from spren bonds, Honor can also grant the use of Surgebinding through the Honorblades, weapons made out of his Investiture. Like spren, each Honorblade grants access to only one pair of Surges; in fact, Surgebinding came about as spren attempted to imitate the Honorblades.
According to the Fused, Honor is responsible for making the Surges into natural law.
=== Spren ===
Spren are Splinters holding the Investitures of both Honor and Cultivation, though in different proportions depending on the type of spren. Some spren are of pure Honor or pure Cultivation, though which type gets to call themselves "closest to Honor" is a matter of some debate among their society.
The most notable spren of Honor is the Stormfather. Unlike most other spren, Stormfather was created by Honor intentionally; moreover, he has merged with Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow, granting him greater access to the Spiritual Realm.
=== Direct intervention ===
Honor's particular Intent lends itself well to binding and forming bonds. Among others, he bound Heralds to himself and tied them to the cycle of Desolations, creating the Oathpact to protect Roshar. He also tied Odium to the greater Rosharan system through some other means, making it impossible for Rayse to depart unless either the planet is destroyed or whoever holds the largest remnant of Honor's power willingly releases him.
== Vessels ==
Vessels of Honor	Vessels of Honor 	Vessels of Honor
Name 	Length of Godhood 	Citations
Tanavast 	c.-10,000 - c.-825	
No Vessel 	c.-825 - 	
Dalinar Kholin 	 	
Taravangian 	- Incumbent 	
Honor has changed Vessels multiple times through its history, and, for a period of around two-thousand years between the Recreance and the Ascension of Dalinar Kholin, possessed no Vessel. As of , Honor is held by Taravangian in tandem with Odium, forming the Shard of Retribution. 
Following the actions of Tanavast around the time of the Recreance, Honor became frightened of any sapient being becoming its Vessel, as it lost faith in the ability of sapient beings to be able to truly align themselves with its Intent. This was until Dalinar Kholin, on , was able to convince it to accept him as Vessel. However, he almost immediately renounced his (and Honor's) Oaths following his Ascension, casting away Honor and allowing it to be absorbed by Taravangian.
Therefore, Taravangian became the new Vessel of Honor and merged it with Odium, becoming Retribution.
== History ==
=== Creation ===
The Shard of Honor was created, like all others, at the Shattering of Adonalsium, and picked up by Tanavast around ten thousand years before the Night of Sorrows. Though the Shards had an agreement to go their own separate ways, he and Cultivation both traveled to the Rosharan system. However, whatever the actual text of the agreement, Honor did not consider his actions to be breaking it, or exploiting a loophole in it. The reason for that could be that Tanavast and Koravellium Avast were romantically involved.
=== God of Roshar ===
On Roshar, Honor and Cultivation became the gods of the singers, a native Rosharan species. They also created intelligent spren around ten-thousand years before the True Desolation. He granted the Singers the power of Stoneshaping, based on the Yolish art of Microkinesis, albeit with various limits placed upon it, to prevent disastrous events that occurred on Yolen.
Not all Singers immediately came to worship Honor and Cultivation, with various Singers continuing to worship Adonalsium.
=== War on Alaswha ===
Honor noticed the presence of Rayse, Odium, on Alaswha and observed that he was backing an individual political entity in order to allow it to conquer all other city-states on the planet to create an empire containing all Alaswhan society. Furthermore, he noticed that Odium was granting humans the powers of the Surges, without proper bindings on its power.
Honor supported an opposing side of the conflict against Odium's empire.
=== Human Arrival on Roshar and the Desolations ===
Around seven-thousand years before the True Desolation, human refugees arrived from Ashyn, seeking help after accidentally destroying their own world, and the two gods permitted them to settle on the planet, in the region now called Shinovar. Unfortunately, along with them came Odium, who by that point had murdered three other Shards -- Dominion, Devotion and Ambition -- and was now seeking to attack either Honor, Cultivation, or both. When the relations between humans and singers of Roshar broke down, singers turned to Odium to help them, leading to the creation of the Fused, Cognitive Shadows of singers who could be reborn into the bodies of their kinsmen every time they died.
To help the people of Roshar, Honor created the Heralds, binding ten people to himself and giving them similar resurrective ability, although one that did not require taking the bodies of humans. Moreover, he bound Odium to the Rosharan system, making it impossible for him to leave. 
At some point, he and Cultivation combined their Lights in order to create the Sibling, who is considered their child. They were created in order to oppose Odium. and became a central figure in mankind's resistance against the Fused, acting as the control center of Urithiru and as a Bondsmith spren.
After around three-thousand years, the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact after numerous Desolations in the event known as the Aharietiam. Sometime afterwards, Odium killed Tanavast.
After his death, he created a spren, the Stormfather, that would contain a portion of Honor's power and Tanavast's memories, preventing the shard of Honor from being completely splintered. The Stormfather's purpose is to find a champion that can eventually ascend and become the new vessel of Honor.
=== Death ===
Honor's death, however, was a protracted event. Before passing away fully, Honor took some measures to help Rosharans in the future. Chief among them was leaving behind a series of visions to warn of the possibility of the True Desolation, and to leave behind some information that might be helpful. He prepared the Stormfather to be his inheritor, and gave him the task of choosing the possible recipients of the visions. At the very end of his existence, Tanavast was still capable of communicating with humans, but by then he was raving and no longer supported the Knights Radiant.
He died and his Shard was Splintered shortly after the Recreance, around two-thousand years before the True Desolation. Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow merged with the Stormfather, along with the largest portion of Honor's remaining power. That remaining power is sufficient to keep Odium bound to Roshar, and the Oathpact ongoing.
After it lost its Vessel, the Shard began to slowly develop a rudimentary consciousnesses. Though remained hidden and did not seek out a Vessel, seeing sapient beings as incapable of living up to its Intent.
=== Ascension of Dalinar Kholin and the Birth of Retribution ===
On , Dalinar Kholin ascended to the Vessel of Honor. However, shortly after taking up the Shard, he renounced all of his Oaths, and the oaths that bound Honor and Odium. This ejected the Shard from himself, and allowed it to be absorbed by Taravangian and conjoined with Odium as the Shard of Retribution. This was contemporaneous with the cessation of the Highstorm, and the start of the Night of Sorrows. Following the start of the Night of Sorrows and the birth of Retribution, Stormlight, Honor's Investiture, became inaccessible on Roshar.
The events that occurred during Dalinar's Ascension and the subsequent formation of Retribution caused time in the region around Roshar to become immensely dilated. This left Roshar essentially inaccessible to external entities, and thus cut it off from interplanterary trade networks.
== Influence ==
Honor is well known among the Rosharan people, and worshiped as a god. Vorinism calls him the Almighty and claims that he's the only deity, considering worship of Cultivation to be pagan. He's believed to be the creator of both Roshar and mankind. In the Vorin tradition, he has ten names, the last of which, Elithanathile, is only used by ardents, the Vorin priests. It's said he resides in the hearts of all people. As it's commonly believed that perceiving him directly would cause one to burst into flames from his sheer glory, he's typically represented by a divine prism with ten facets. 
Vorins believe that the Almighty is also responsible for sorting out the dead and deciding on their afterlife. The best possible outcome is to be sent to battle in Tranquiline Halls, the lost paradise, and reclaim it from the Voidbringers. To achieve this, one has to pick a Calling - a purpose in life - and a Glory, an aspect of the Almighty that one strives to emulate.
After Honor's connection to the Almighty, and his death, were discovered, some Ardents tried to reconceptualize their faith after learning of Honor's death. To do so, they interpreted Honor as a mere aspect of the Almighty through which he revealed himself to the world. This position, however, is heterodox and heretical, with Honor's death and the idea of Honor being a mere aspect of the Almighty being rejected by Vorin orthodoxy.
Honor is also worshiped in Azir and the surrounding countries, though there he's known simply as God. The singers worshiped him and Cultivation once, before the arrival of Odium.
== Trivia ==
* According to Brandon Sanderson, in Magic: The Gathering colors, Honor would be mono-white.
* The forbiddance on speaking the Tenth Name of the Almighty might be based around practices concerning the Tetragrammaton. This is held to be the most holy name of God in Judaism. Historically it is not allowed to be spoken except by priests within the temple, but currently it is not allowed to be spoken by anyone. It is taught that, when read in scripture, the name itself is not to be pronounced, but instead replaced with another name of God. 
== Notes ==
es:Honor