Oathpact

The Oathpact is an ancient agreement sworn to Honor by the Heralds of The Almighty which grants them Surgebinding and access to Investiture to protect Roshar and trap the Fused on Braize in between Desolations.
== History ==
=== Founding the Oathpact ===
At the time of the First Desolation, while weakened from previous battles with Shards and caged to the Rosharan system by an agreement of accommodation with Honor and Cultivation, Odium moved to increase the strength of his followers on Roshar. Granting immortality and frighteningly destructive power to a number of Singers who had fallen in his service, Odium created the Fused, soldiers that could be reborn when killed and could manipulate the Surges, empowered by his own Voidlight. He inspired the Fused to cause destruction and overtake the planet, in an effort to provoke direct action against him by his captors.
Driven by the suffering of the people of Roshar and fearful of what Odium would do once he had fully conquered, Honor knew he had to intervene, though he refused to endanger the planet in a destructive battle between the two Shards themselves. Failing to secure assistance from other Shards (who were uniformly loath to act against Odium while he was bound on Roshar, and thus prevented from wreaking havoc across the entire cosmere), Honor chose to offer a portion of his power to humans as he had once before, desperate to find a way to prevent Odium's followers from destroying this planet like he had destroyed Ashyn.
Forty-three years into the First Desolation, Honor placed his hopes in the leaders of the humans who had escaped from Ashyn nearly a hundred years before, meeting them in their warcamp east of the Misted Mountains. Ishar, one of these leaders, presented them with a plan. Having already been Surgebinders of Odium on that planet, most of them shared a Connection that could be exploited to bind the Shard's power even further, and prevent his followers from continuing to overrun Roshar. An oath spoken to Honor could be used to grant the Surges again to a number of willing humans. This new force, now directly Connected to Honor, could use his power and the well of souls located on the nearby planet of Braize to bind the souls of the Fused when they were killed, preventing them from being reborn on Roshar.
Alongside Ishar, Honor met with Jezrien, Nale, Chanarach, Vedel, Pralla, Shalash, Battar, Kalak, and, eventually, Talenel, convincing each in turn that, though he was not perfect and certainly shared responsibility for the events that led to the terrible destruction of their home world, together they could use his power to safeguard their new home on Roshar and prevent another cataclysm from occurring.
Five men and five women entered into the Oathpact with Honor, numbered to his design. To each, he gave a piece of himself, a splinter of Light that formed into an Honorblade, bonding them to his power and granting access to the Surges, making them Heralds of the Almighty.
Using Honor's Connection to the Spiritual Realm, the Herald Vedel then sealed their souls at their current ages, granting them immortality.
=== The Desolations ===
:Main article: Desolation
Armed with Honorblades and in command of the Surges, the Heralds led the humans of Roshar in war against Odium's Fused, driving them back and depleting their numbers. Once enough of the Fused were eliminated, or if they themselves fell in battle, each of the Heralds travelled to Braize where, gathering together, they could use the power of the Oathpact to bind the souls of the dead and prevent any further resurrections. With the Fused jailed far away, the rest of humanity could put an end to the conflict.
After a time trapped on that prison planet, however, the Fused discovered that their jailers were also the key to their freedom. If one or more of the Heralds could be captured and put to torture, their resolve could be weakened, just like any human's, until they eventually broke, no longer able to maintain their part of the soul binding. The Fused could then break free of their captivity and return to Roshar, bent on destruction.
Thus the Heralds and the Fused found themselves locked in a cycle of terrible, escalating war, commonly referred to as the Desolations. Each time a Herald would break under torture, the Fused would be reborn into the bodies of willing Singers, gathering armies to destroy the nations and settlements that had been established in their absence. The Heralds would return as well, attempting to quickly rebuild civilization and lead the battle until the Fused could be locked away again, closing the cycle.
In the beginning, the Heralds held strong and hundreds of years passed between Desolations, granting the populations of humans and singers time to recover. Leaning on their hundreds of years of experience, the Heralds would use the brief time after each return to teach the fledgling human populations necessary skills, such as metalworking, medicine, and how to make war. But after millennia of nearly constant battle on Roshar and torture on Braize, the Heralds began to lose their will, breaking faster each time. In the end, there was less than a year between Desolations, leaving no time to rebuild society before the forces of Odium came to destroy again.
=== Aharietiam ===
:Main article: Last Desolation
The weight of these thousands of years of fighting took its toll on the Heralds, who could no longer bear to continue as they were. Though the Knights Radiant had formed and aided humanity in the Desolations, Odium had not been idle. Continuing to escalate the war, he granted more and more terrible forms of power to his subjects and perverted powerful spren to create the Unmade and thunderclasts, who rampaged across Roshar, killing soldier and civilian alike. Meanwhile Honor, their god, had begun to grow distant and unreliable. To meet these new challenges, the Heralds were forced to draw upon even more of his power, eventually Connecting themselves to the Old Magic of Roshar itself.
Though they had had little time to prepare for it, by chance a Desolation came to a close with victory over Odium's forces leaving all but one of the Heralds still standing on Roshar. Unwilling to let this opportunity slip away, the remaining Heralds quickly came to a decision, petitioning Honor himself to release them from the Oathpact. They pointed out the worst of its effects, begging for him to modify their responsibilities or at least find a way to lessen their nearly constant torment. Recoiling at their explicit desire to break their oaths, Honor begrudgingly admitted the possibility that the Oathpact could be bent to continue holding the Fused on Braize if at least one Herald would be willing to stand in place of them all. Turning his back on their weakness, Honor declared that he would no longer intervene. They could do as they pleased.
To their shame, nine Heralds abandoned their Honorblades, rammed through stone into a ring of swords. Taln, the single Herald who had fallen in the battle, was left on Braize to uphold the Oathpact, alone.
=== The True Desolation ===
:Main article: True Desolation
For over four thousand years, the worst of Odium's forces were confined to Braize by Taln's singular refusal to break, seemingly ending the Desolations and allowing humanity to rebuild and conquer over the Singers. As the years passed, the Heralds eventually fell into legend, deified in the eyes of the burgeoning Vorin religion and venerated by their apparent victory over the so-called Voidbringers so long ago.
Still immortal, the Heralds stayed out of public view, falling deeper into madness and suffering in obscurity. Though they could fall in battle, the years had not aged their bodies. Only their minds betrayed the passing of time, becoming more and more fragile.
After the Herald Chana eventually settled in the Valam princedom of Jah Keved, her particular insanity led to tragedy, when she was killed in self-defense by her eleven-year-old daughter, Shallan Davar. Returning to Braize for the first time in millennia, Chana attempted to evade capture by the Fused, but was caught and broken, allowing the beginning of the True Desolation.
During the Alethi's War of Reckoning, Taln was also released from his torture, appearing suddenly outside the city gates of Kholinar. Though he came with word of an imminent Desolation and calls to prepare, his warnings fell on deaf ears and he was taken for a madman. At the same time, Voidspren that had escaped Braize were able to convince modern listeners to summon the Everstorm, granting themselves a permanent, reliable method of returning to Roshar and greatly weakening the Oathpact's effectiveness. Another Desolation had come, and with it armies of Fused bent on conquering once again.
When Kholinar itself was besieged, the traitor Vyre assassinated the Herald Jezrien using a raysium knife fitted with a large sapphire in the hilt, a weapon that had been designed specifically to kill a Herald. This death, the first time one of them had been truly killed, was felt by each of the remaining Heralds as though a part of their own soul had been ripped away. The Oathpact was broken.
=== Reforging the Oathpact ===
As the war against Odium's forces pressed on, Bondsmith Dalinar Kholin worked from the newly recovered city of Urithiru to unite the kingdoms of humanity in an alliance led by the re-emergent Knights Radiant, and defend Roshar. Soon, Dalinar discovered that the mad, god-priest Tezim, ruler of Tukar, was in truth the Herald Ishar, now back in possession of his Honorblade and demanding delivery of the ancient city of Radiants into his control. Traveling to Tukar to face him personally, Dalinar was humbled by the sheer power wielded by the Herald, nearly losing his Nahel bond to the Stormfather in the confrontation. Witnessing Ishar's insanity break long enough to learn that the Oathpact could be restored, Dalinar enlisted the Radiants Kaladin Stormblessed and Szeth-son-son-Vallano to travel to Shinovar and see it done.
As the two made their way through the land of Szeth's past, it became clear that they had both been long expected. Per Ishar's design, Szeth had been prepared for this moment all his life, freed of his personal connections and ready to be forced to take up Jezrien's former position in the Oathpact. Kaladin, meanwhile, was called there by the Wind itself, one of the ancient powers of Roshar that dated back to the time of Adonalsium.
Confronting Ishar together, Szeth used Nightblood to defeat the Shin Honorbearers Ishar had corrupted while Kaladin, having been Connected to Ishar during the fray, spoke the Windrunners' Fifth Ideal, dispelling the dark power the ancient Herald had long ago absorbed into himself from the Well of Control. Removing this darkness finally began the healing of the Heralds, who had all been tainted by it, through their Connection to the Oathpact.
After the death of the Stormfather and the merging of the Shards of Honor and Odium into Retribution, all of Honor's expressed power on the planet began to be reclaimed by the new, more powerful deity. To save themselves and all of the spren of Roshar from being consumed or fashioned into Unmade, Ishar and Nale followed the Wind's urging to draw on their deep Connection to Honor to attempt to bind Retribution from doing so, just as they had been able to bind Odium in the past. His mind finally clear and seeing no other choice available, Ishar reforged the Oathpact with this new purpose, joined by all of the remaining, living Heralds and Kaladin, who stepped before the wounded and comatose Szeth, volunteering as a new Herald and taking the place of Jezrien.
== Mechanics ==
=== Oaths Sworn ===
The Oathpact is a magically binding covenant founded by Ishar and spoken between the Shard Honor and the Heralds, ten Rosharan humans, most of whom were originally refugees of the planet Ashyn. Willingly giving up the unchecked, dangerous Surgebinding abilities previously granted to them on their former homeworld, the Heralds swear to protect the planet of Roshar by holding back the darkness. This oath allows the Heralds direct access to Honor's Connection to the Spiritual Realm and the ability to use a near-infinite supply of his Investiture.
Their special connection to Honor's power allows the Heralds to use a method devised by Vedel to seal their souls to their current age, making them effectively immortal. Though they can fall in battle, their Cognitive Shadows are reborn in bodies made entirely of Investiture.
To seal the Oathpact, each of the Heralds are granted an Honorblade. Formed out of Splinters of Honor's own Light, these blades provide the Heralds new, controlled access to the Surges, now governed by Honor's will to prevent the destruction of Roshar and following a set of rules crafted by the Shard Cultivation.
The Oathpact leverages the Heralds' pre-existing Connection to the Shard Odium — a product of their dealings with him on Ashyn — to enable them to bind the cognitive shadows of his Fused killed in battle to the well of souls on the planet Braize, and prevent their immediate return to Roshar after death.
The Heralds are able to bind the Fused to Braize by a special act of will that they perform, making use of Honor's expressed power to enforce their combined oaths to trap the souls of Odium's most Invested followers. For this to work, it is necessary for the number of these oaths to be closely aligned with the Shard of Honor itself; to be most effective, the participants of the Oathpact must be numbered at sixteen (for the number of Shards of Adonalsium), ten (for Honor's own number), four (for the number of Adonalsium's aspects), or one (for the number of Adonalsium itself).
Each time the Fused trapped on Braize succeed in capturing a Herald and forcing them to break under torture, the soul binding that the Heralds are performing can no longer be maintained, the Fused are freed to begin to be reborn on Roshar once again, and another Desolation begins.
To account for Odium's forces continually gaining strength and escalating their attacks during the Desolations, Honor pushes the Heralds to draw ever-increasing amounts of his own power, eventually leading them to Connect to the ancient Old Magic of Roshar itself, left over from the days of Adonalsium. Driven by an increasing desperation as the wars drag on for millennia, the Heralds begin to develop abilities Honor does not intend or fully understand, though he finds this acceptable as it allows for him to continue taking a hands-off approach to the conflict.
=== Honor Broken ===
When the majority of the Heralds ultimately make a decision to forsake their place in the Oathpact and relinquish a small part of their Honor, the Oathpact is heavily damaged but not fully broken. Leaving their Honorblades behind causes the Heralds to lose command of the Surges, but they still continue to retain their immortality, as well as their Connection to Honor's power and to each other. Though their ability to draw directly from Honor's Investiture no longer functions, following the death of Tanavast.
Living for many thousands of years, the Heralds endure maladies of the mind unique to their ancient life experience, tortured by private pains that affect the way they see reality. Often, they are gripped by periods of particularly strong madness or weakness, causing them to act out irrationally or behave in ways that make them appear simple or insane. Though moments of relative calm and surprising lucidity can also be observed, especially when the Heralds find themselves nearby a Knight Radiant swearing one of the Immortal Words.
The Oathpact is still visible to a Bondsmith, even in its broken state, evidenced by lines of Connection networking the Heralds together. Though the lines are weak and impotent for most of the Heralds, one powerful, vibrant line still Connects Talenel, as seen by Dalinar when he is confronted by Nale during a battle in Azir. This Connection allows the Heralds to both magically aid one another, such as bolstering each other's ability to withstand physical pain and mental anguish, as well as to harm one another, such as when the Heralds find their private insanities greatly increased after Ishar absorbs some of Odium's power from the Well of Control.
Jezrien's death is the event that finally fractures the Oathpact, preventing the Heralds from successfully binding Odium's forces and ensuring that the Fused can leave Braize at will, via the Everstorm.
=== Circle Reforged ===
Kaladin's successfull removal of the influence of Odium's Investiture that has been infecting the Heralds coupled with the Shards of Honor and Odium being temporarily diverted by changing Vessels, finally sets Ishar free to reset the Oathpact and improve upon its original design. Devising a plan with the urging of the Wind, Ishar recruits the assistance of Ash and Pralla to remove the minds of the Heralds into a vision when they return to Braize. Mimicking the process that the Stormfather uses to grant visions, this method allows time for the Heralds to begin healing their madness and avoid the worst of any torture their souls may have to endure.
Retribution's subsequent attempt to absorb all of the spren on Roshar made up of Honor or Odium's Investiture is prevented by the new focus of the Oathpact, sworn by the surviving Heralds mere moments after his Ascension.
This protection of the spren is made possible by the power created through a circle of ten combined oaths, including the newly elevated Kaladin, as Jezrien's replacement in the Oathpact. The Heralds make use of their unbroken, potent Connection to Honor to bind Retribution from acting against the spren, just as they had bound some of Odium's actions with the strength of their prior oaths.
== Notes ==
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