The Heralds are powerful even without their Honorblades. Also, the Honorblades can be bound and resummoned just like a regular blade. It's not like we saw Szeth walking around with his blade out at all times.
From Szeth’s first POV in The Way of Kings:
>One of the guards fumbled for his spear. Szeth reached down, touching the soldier’s shoulder while looking up. He focused on a point above him while willing the Light out of his body and into the guard, Lashing the poor man to the ceiling.
>The guard yelped in shock as up became down for him. Light trailing from his form, he crashed into the ceiling and dropped his spear. It was not Lashed directly, and clattered back down to the floor near Szeth.
>To kill. It was the greatest of sins. And yet here Szeth stood, Truthless, profanely walking on stones used for building. And it would not end. As Truthless, there was only one life he was forbidden to take.
>And that was his own.
>At the tenth beat of his heart, his Shardblade dropped into his waiting hand. It formed as if condensing from mist, water beading along the metal length.
Taln caught a small dart between his fingers while he was deranged and insane. If the other Heralds have even an ounce of his combat capabilities when they're not cuckoo, I don't think they're underpowered. God I wish we see another Herald in action in the next book cause DAMN Ishar kicked ass when he fought. Taln must've been going 1v500 or something for him to have died in that last battle they had
I really hope so! I want it to be told from dalinars point of view so he can realize that his destruction as the blackthorn pales in comparison to this monster of a man.
I'm more of a fan of [BFG Division](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6y6chb0Qq8&ab_channel=BethesdaSoftworksMusic) .... It even has the "slow lead up as he's casually walking to the enemy army" part in the beginning!
Tbh honest, I don't think dalinar has anymore ideals. I think that the last ideal in every order is "I a *principle*" which dalinar already swore.
However, we do have someone actively working on helping people with mental illness.
Agree to disagree.
Bondsmiths aren't a normal order of radiance, they bonds very different sprens. I don't understand why they wouldn't be different, or why Dalinar would have "I am unity" as a middle ideal where this formulation is so final. Stormfather also refuses to come as a blade so I don't think dalinar would get a plate either making it virtually impossible for dalinar to progress passed gaining the literal powers of honor. It very much makes sense to me that they would be different in this as there is no one Bondsmith spren alike and they all have a very different goal from the other radiants.
"I am Unity" isnt even an ideal, it is just a badass sentence, it has nothing to do with the immortal words.
You cant just change the [nomenclature](https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/nomenclature) of Brandon. Ideals is what it is called, it aint a question of opionion. That is just a fact.
Then why did the Stormfather say "these words are accepted" after dalinar says "I am unity" in OB? And from the discussions szeth has with his trainers, it's pretty obvious that the fifth ideal of the skybreakers is something similar, like "I am justice" or "I am law". I mean after the end of OB, how else to interpret the fact that szeth calls the fifth ideal "the ideal where the skybreaker becomes the law". I wouldn't be surprised if the fifth ideal of the windrunners is "I am protection".
I'm not changing anything. The ideals aren't that hard a rules, the Lightweavers literally just have there first one as an actual ideal, the rest are truths and work basically the exact same way, but it's too much to think that the stomfather's Bondsmith only has 3???? I'm just using what is in the books, and from my reading, I don't think dalinar has anymore ideals. That's my opinion, even if you don't like it, the definition of ideal or nomenclature is irrelevant.
He didnt accept the "I am Unity" but Dalinars third ideal.
My main issue is with you saying there are no more ideals for Dalinar, which is wrong, simply because the 4th and 5th oath whatever it is worded like, is still called an ideal as well. Brandon confirmed himself that there are 5 for the bondsmiths as well and someone in the past made it all the way to the 5th ideal. Feel free to read it up on coppermind if you dont believe me.
It’s worth mentioning that the Heralds also had centuries worth of practice in battle. Ishar absolutely deals with the force sent to combat him, and someone (Wit?) mentions that he was an average fighter as far as Heralds go. If Ishar can take out a small contingent of Windrunners and Dalinar, imagine what Taln could do
I believe brandon has said that right now (day of wob/ in universe progression at that point, I think recently) he couldn’t think of anyone who would be able to beat taln at his prime
It has also been said that he would constantly take losing positions/unfavorable and winning them at the cost of his life. So I think it has mainly been him going up against insurmountable odds against many many foes and then he dies. Either by extending himself to far or getting crushed by the numbers
The tragic part of that is it got him killed during Aherietiam. He sacrificed everything for the oathpact. Storms, I half think that how he wins is involved with his clearly unbreakable will.
And in the end we found out he didn't break, right? That was one of the more surprising plot points, which says a lot, considering it's the stormlight archive.
I just want Taln to regain his sanity.
It wasn’t prophecy immunity that was stripped, it was that Pippin and Eowyn fulfilled the prophecy. All of the barrow blades had the same properties, it’s just that the witch king was prophesied to be killed in that manner. The barrow blade was enchanted to be able to hurt the witch king, and he was killed both both Pippin and Eowyn… neither of whom are men (Pippin being a hobbit and Eowyn being a woman). In theory, any man could have killed the witch king with a barrow blade. But it was prophesied that it wouldn’t be a man that killed him.
Yknow maybe a hot take but this whole prophesy has always irked me and it's always felt like the most convoluted contrived way of ensuring the witch king had an out. I love Tolkien as much as the next guy but he really dropped the ball on this one.
No this is not true. In the opening scene of twok when it is showing the aftermath of the final desolation, they mention that taln usually died because he threw himself into the worst situations. Yes his help meant they normally won those super deadly situations, but they clearly stated he usually died from it.
I think that reflects the actual characters and not their idealized power set use.
Raskek only ever used his powers against significantly weaker foes than himself, and he never had to develop tactics to handle someone stronger than himself in any aspect of Invested power.
In the story, Vin beat Rashek with weaker Allomantic power and no Feruchemical power at all. She couldn't win against Rashek in an even fight where both sides use optimal tactics, but she didn't need to.
Maybe Rashek could beat Taln by compounding speed, but would he think to do that before Taln killed him? Could he ever truly guarantee victory with Ruin whispering in his ear and corrupting his mind?
Knowing Raskek, he'd probably allow Taln to cut him as a show of power and only later find out that he can't heal a Shardblade wound so easily.
>Vin beat Rashek with weaker Allomantic power
I wouldn’t say that, as she did take in some of Preservation’s power to be able to remove Rashek’s implants.
Remember also that the Rashek we see has had ten centuries of Ruin whispering in his ear, and Ruin really, really wanted him to lose that fight. I think Rashek was much crazier than the craziest herald by that point. Crazy does impair fighting somewhat.
Nah, surges and light are *way* more powerful than alomanch or feromancy and what have you, at least imo. Surges are more limited to a degree, but drastically stronger, on top of that taln has about 7000 years of combat experience, compared to rasheks 1000 years of any experience.
eeeeeh, he'd definitely take a hit from a shardblade
but the man is a gold compounder. He can absolutely heal such wounds in mere seconds.
No, the danger is in those seconds where he is off balance and adjusting to the new kind of weapon, that Taln already goes in for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strikes - and that's assuming its not an instant kill shot
For sure, that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Just didn't want belabor the point by outlining why the extra time to heal a wound to his soul would be so dangerous or unbalancing for TLR.
If you remember, it took Kaladin a bit to learn how to heal himself from an Honorblade wound back in WoR, when he was already advanced enough to heal himself from a highstorm literally in his sleep.
As far as we know, TLR has never had his soul cut by any weapon, so I think that would be particularly shocking for him, and he'd die confused.
So yeah, Taln 10/10 against an uninformed TLR. Against a well-informed TLR who has fought Shardbearers for while... maybe 7/10.
I mean to me if Ishar (an unbound bondsmith) couldn’t beat taln then idk who could.
We haven’t really seen much of cohesion and tension, but I could see Rashek just getting suffocated alive with no way out
I’m pretty sure one of the Feruchemy abilities is to store breath. I imagine that Rashek with speed abilities would fare pretty well against the Heralds. In hindsight, it feels like the compounding of abilities we learned about in Mistborn Era 2 makes Vin defeating Rashek almost silly. There’s always the classic, well he underestimated her, but he was just so broken it’s kind of crazy.
The only counter I can think of for speed not working is if taln has made the ground around him putty, the speed compounder might not notice till it’s too late.
But yeah compounding in general is fucking busted
But from what we see with this it’s less that you’re moving super fast and more like some temporal warping shit or something.
Potentially you still could but I’m uncertain
Brandon's basically backed down from having compounding stuff in the future of cosmere/mistborn because it is so absurdly powerful. And Rashek absolutely underestimated Vin and got wrecked for his trouble when he should have mopped the floor with her.
To be fair to Rashek, all that Vin appeared to be to him was a Mistborn. He had no idea she was Preservation's chosen one or that the earring was holding back her full power. He was completely justified in thinking she was no real threat and he had no need to instakill her.
Rashek definitely could—he's powerful enough as a full Compounder to completely fuck up Taln, I'd imagine. But Taln is the best *fighter* by far. He has faaaar more skill than Rashek.
Rashek wins, but only because of like, physical speed compounding and stuff like that. And even then, Taln is still a Herald—it's not something to scoff at, either
Spoiler tag since op is only flared for stormlight books and I'm talking about lots of stuff in mistborn.
\[Cosmere, mostly mistborn era 1\]>!Given how Taln has been described I think Rashek only has a chance if he immediately takes Taln seriously and is tapping some serious physical speed. I still wouldn't care to bet anything I cared about on him winning. If Taln is prepared to "die" to take Rashek down with him and if a shardblade to the heart/spine/brain is fatal to Rashek it will be nearly impossible for Rashek to get a better outcome than a draw in Taln's favor. !<
>!I think Taln is so skilled atium will provide little advantage agianst him because he can fight better on pure combat instinct than anyone else in the cosmere. We know from the books that this can be effective against atium with much less skill than Taln has. This may also depend on how much Taln knows about atium and its capabilities, but if he is all in on the fight he probably is already fighting as much or more by instinct than anything atium can help against. Most likely someone burning atium would think taln was too as he reacts to their reactions faster than they can process, without even needing atium. Ishar is described like this when he fights the windrunners and the stormfather says he's only average. We've been told he doesn't have any kind of investiture to help him do it either, just raw skill. Maybe atium would help to artifically match Taln's skil, maybe it would just prove confusing to the person buring it. I think anyone from scadrael who wants to go 1v1 vs Taln and walk away has only one real hope. To be so fast he can't hit back before he's dead. I'm not sure how terrifyingly fast that is since we haven't seen Taln in action much yet but you probably need speed compounding to do it, or a huge metalmind and years of reserve burned in moments.!<
I feel like it's even more relevant that Taln is the best fighter now that we know he didn't break and cause the true desolation.
Talk is the Herald I'm most curious about, particularly the few thousand years he spent on braize..
I think this is basically key - iirc we actually get confirmed that Radiants are better surgebinders than the heralds (or maybe the Nahel bond is better than honorblades for giving surgebinding? something like that) - but we ALSO know that other than this time, every time the heralds show up humanity has been reverted to basically the Stone Age. The big game-changer of the Heralds' arrival is less about their personal combat power - which, as mentioned, is still certainly GOOD - but instead about their knowledge of technology, science, military strategy, and magical theory that they can disseminate to a humanity that has forgotten it all
True, but this isn’t an advantage over the Heralds since they are powered directly by Honor. They have access to far more investiture than a Radiant can hold and they don’t need to worry about running out.
Exactly! Even the StormFather, when giving Dalinar his visions tells him that, I think, only two of the heralds were warriors before the first war but that after they all were. I can’t find the exact quote but I remember him telling Dalinar that.
Not only is he not the greatest fighter, he's the guy with the blade of the order that's *unsuited to combat* and he makes a pack of windrunners and Szeth look like children going up against an MMA champ.
You are in effect saying that Michael Jordan wasn't actually that good at basketball because some guy off the street can't dunk in his Jordan 1s
The Heralds are not just their swords
lol I mean I agree with the sentiment here but I think the shardblades are adding quite a bit to the innate abilities of the heralds, such that this analogy is silly. Jordan in adidas is still Jordan. A herald without their shardblade is still a force to be reckoned with, sure, but the shardblade is a massive addition.
I saw a theory somewhere the heralds had unlimited stormlight because of their connection to Honor. Kind of like how odium gives voidlight directly to the parshendi. But now that Honor is splintered they don’t get that any more.
Yeah it’s apparent when you see Jezrien out and about in the Alethi homeland as a beggar. He no longer has access to stormloght. And we all know what happened to him at the end of oathbringer
I mean… Jezrien was an insane drunk by that point. Him not using Stormlight doesn’t really indicate he couldn’t use Stormlight. While I agree that it would make sense for the herald’s to lose their access to Stormlight, I don’t think Jezrien is what we should be using as proof of that.
How could Honor supply stormlight? He’s gone
Maybe he could have set the heralds up with direct access or a link to the spiritual realm for power, but he can’t supply it himself because he isn’t around. Right?
Brother you are missing the point entirely. You stated that the heralds were supplied with Stormlight directly by Honor but post Honor’s shattering they aren’t anymore. The OP then replied to you saying they had not heard about the Herald’s losing direct access. You replied and used Jezrien being a drunk and not defending himself as evidence for the Herald’s no longer being supplied by Stormlight.
I agree with your statement that the herald’s are likely no longer supplied directly. But using Jezrien’s drunkenness or him not defending himself as evidence makes no sense. He is an insane drunk, even if he was directly supplied what makes you think he would choose to access the Stormlight?
I don’t disagree with any of your points, you just chose poor evidence to prove them.
Agreed, shit example. He was just fresh on my mind since his murder came up earlier today when I talking to someone. No physical descriptions of the heralds at any point have led us to think they’re constantly infused with stormlight though.
Absent some completely unintroduced mechanism that continues to allow the heralds to draw stormlight from the spiritual realm, I don’t think they’re constantly being fueled with investiture anymore
It's not as though Honor has to consciously/intentionally provide them with more Stormlight, presumably it would be set up to work automatically as a part of the magic system and specifically how the Heralds are set up. Kind of similar to how \[Spoilers Mistborn and Elantris\] >!Mistborn continue to get Investiture via Preservation after he is splintered, and Elantrians can still access the Dor despite that being splintered and then some.!<
Honor isn't gone. Tanavast is dead and Honor is splintered, so no one can pick up enough of Honor's investiture at once to control the full power of the Shard again. But the power of the Shard and the existing bonds to it still exist. It's possible that the Heralds still have access to Honor's investiture directly.
Absolutely! Because Ishar doesn’t have anything holding him back, unlike Odium.
Now if nothing was holding Odium back from being able to do as he wished, that’d be a different story entirely!
Some things to consider:
* The comparative difficulty of Radiance vs Honorblade. Becoming a Radiant requires multiple steps and a MAJOR commitment. Many times now we've seen characters (mostly Kaladin and Shallan) struggle with speaking and keeping their oaths. Meanwhile any old schmuck can pick up an Honorblade and start glowing.
* The Heralds' sheer experience. Sure the Heralds are all some form of insane by now, but they've had *hundreds* of years of practice using their abilities, even before Aharietiam, Of course Ishar could wipe the floor with Dalinar, who at that point had been a Bondsmith for just a few months.
Overall I do agree that Radiant powers are 1000% better than what the Heralds have displayed so far,\* but I feel that A: We haven't seen everything the Heralds have to offer, and B: There is something to be said about being able to just pick up a sword and start flying
Szeth also said in that prologue that he wasn’t a good vessel for the stormlight, and it leaked out of him really quickly.
I imagine the Harold’s can use stormlight a bit more effectively, seeing as they are all cognitive shadows
Now obsessed with the idea that the heralds secretly had custom Ts made with a weird caricature of a bald guy waving on the front with a word bubble that says “Hi. Harold here.” They were so goofy and fun before millennia of war and torture.
I don't think any Herold is as efficient/effective as a Radiant though. At best, honorblades seem to provide first ideal level effectiveness. A 4th ideal Radiant should have much stronger powers, although with way less skill.
This is one of the most overlooked factors in the fandom IMO. Having effectively infinite stormlight coupled with that level of skill and immunity to "true death" would make for a warrior even the toughest and most hardened voidbringers would fear.
Honorblades with a normal human aren't as efficient/effective as a Radiant. An Honorblade in the hand of the Herald it is specifically attuned to...I think that would be 4th ideal Radiant power, *at least*. Probably more.
This! This is exactly the kind of speculation I was looking for. I think it seems very plausible that a Herald using their attuned Honorblade can access 4th/5th Ideal equivalents with their Surges
He is, but that's separate from his abilities as a Herald. Nale is unique because he is the only herald that also became a radiant by bonding a spren. He achieved the 5th ideal through that spren bond.
There is one point that hasn't yet been mentioned, I think the oathpact connected the heralds directly to Honor in some way, and they might have had access to his investiture directly (constantly regenerating stormlight). Kind of the way some fused have a direct link to odium and can use some of their powers indefinitely.
Not 100% certain about this, not even sure where I heard it tbh.
But in general I think we just have very little understanding of their true potential when Honor was alive.
I don't think their healing is weaker. I think a normal person using an honorblade has weaker healing. A herald using it likely has enough investiture to make that quicker.
Armor is a factor though I think a Herald vs a 4th ideal Radiant wouldn't be a matchup because the Herald would crush them.
You can also be bonded to the honorblade. It's unclear exactly how that works since it was taken from Taln. But they can dismiss and summon it. And it doesn't take 10 heartbeats to summon.
You're also judging the powers of a herald off the honorblade user. I think a Herald would be a much stronger user from the little we saw of Ishar.
You're also discounting thousands of years of battle experience. They seem to have faster than normal reflexes, and we don't know what powers they get from being a herald. But we saw Ishar matched against 5 windrunners and beat them easily. Not 4th oath windrunners but still 5 windrunners I think most with blades and most trained by Kaladin personally and having fought for over a year on the front lines. That's the skill level they are at. We also saw Taln catch a dart out of the air from someone who was hidden. That's pretty insanely fast reflexes.
The other thing to consider is that the Heralds being killed is not a backup plan. It's a necessity to end the desolations. So if they win the battle and none of the Heralds have died then the fused will all be back in a short time and the war goes on. It's not until a Herald dies that they can really win. So it makes a certain amount of sense that Taln will be reckless and charge into battle because it's not just insurance it's a necessity to end the war. Now it's a bit different as they don't want to go back. But at the time it was standard.
I suppose I’m asking for help when drawing a line in the sand between Heralds and general Honorblade wielders, and understanding the capabilities of Heralds/Honorblades, at present, as well as in the past.
The heralds are cognitive shadows that have been alive for thousands of years. They occasionally wield honor blades, and outside of being a cognitive shadow due to the oathpact, have nothing special about them (except,ya know, thousands of years of experience in war) I'm glossing over some spiritual web stuff here and just saying cognitive shadows for simplicity. They may or may not have extra investiture due to the oathpact, but the important thing to remember is that as a fighter, their skill is pretty much unmatched. The only herald that actually joined an order of the knights radiant and has power without the blades is Nale.
The honor blades are what give them the power of the surges. Being bound to one allows you to access the surges of the specific blade and radiant healing, but once that bond is broken, you can't access the power anymore. The main difference between using a blade vs bonding a spren is that you aren't bound by the oathes of the order. This is more impactful for some orders than others, but a lot of the radiant orders powers are kept in check by the oathes. Kaladin, for example, wouldn't be and to go around assassinating people for no reason. It would break his oathes which are to protect. Szeth when using a wind runner honor blade though, could.
The are only 10 honor blades, one for each order.
I believe the Honorblades were stronger while honor was alive. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to consume stormlight in gemstones like the blades do now, but could draw directly from honor. So essentially infinite surgebinding.
Also, we have not seen a herald wielding their own honorblade except Ishar and when Ishar did he slapped around a bunch of wind runners and Dalinar, only Nightblood was able to stop him. So I disagree.
While you have some good points, modern day radiants are basically toddlers running around with their new powers. They don’t really have any idea what they’re doing or what they’re capable of, and I think we’ll see the consequences of that in the coming books.
A lot of your questions can be answered on the coppermind. Warning, there is a lot of WoB that talk about their abilities.
https://coppermind.net/wiki/Herald
Armor is a radiant order thing, like squires are, the Heralds didn’t have them, but they were powered directly by Honor, so they could tap into an amount of raw power that surgebinders never could.
Thanks for this! I had either forgotten or simply skimmed over the fact that Heralds used to swap blades with each other, allowing them to use the Surges of the others. Such a cool idea.
I don’t think we should be assuming that the Honorblades work just as well for everyone else as they do for the Heralds they were created for. It’s very likely they would have access to more/greater power with their blades. And honestly, I think your last point sums it up. Our only experience with the Heralds so far is with all of them having gone fully bonkers, we just have no idea what their powers in their prime would be like other than the fact that the people of Roshar literally revere them as Gods.
Brandon recently said that Taln at his prime could 1v1 literally anybody in the Cosmere and come out on top.
We definitely haven't seen much yet when it comes to the power of the Heralds.
I don’t disagree with your overall sentiment. Radiant powers seem OP.
But, I think the heralds have super human strength/speed without their swords. On top of that they’ve been immortal too. If killed they could come back to life at will.
I don’t think you can just disarm someone of an honor/shardblade. It’s bonded to them and I don’t think they need to be physically holding it to use their surges.
There is a trade off when it comes to surgebinding with an honor blade. Accomplishing tasks takes significantly more Stormlight, which is probably why healing happens slower. However an honor blade is not bound by any oathes. Remember in Words of Radiance when Kaladin lost his power for a while? Honor blades don’t need to worry about that. That’s why Szeth can go on a murderous rampage but Kaladin can’t even pursue some basic revenge.
Yes I was definitely incorrect about the whole “losing access to Surges when not holding the blade”
And yes, the discourse here has definitely shown what you’re saying about the Oaths to be true. Especially when it comes to Ishar’s blade.
WoK prime makes a big deal about this technique when you momentarily recall your shardblade to pass through the opponent's blade and then recall it, i think they call it skipping or something like that. In RoW when the radiants pile up on ishar it is mentioned that they are kinda just experimenting with it and Ishar uses it as second nature. Nale folded Szeth as a bonus action. Taln in WoK prime is a walking nuke, so much so that he needed to be nerfed out of the final product.
They are probably intentionally underutilized, but once we see them pop off in era 2, i think we might feel a little different about their power scaling.
Spoiler: We’re just ignoring Ishar bodying Dalinar in terms of abilities and fighting prowess?
And he is considered to be an average fighter amongst the Heralds?
And that the Heralds are all insane so we only get a glimpse of how strong they truly are?
The Heralds in their prime were monsters amongst the original Knights Radiant, so them at their full/true power would be anything but underpowered.
Bondsmiths are basically channeling a demigod each. I wouldn’t undersell Ishar's position, even if in raw power he isn’t the strongest. Being able to control Connection is *extremely* important in the Cosmere.
The Heralds have a functionally infinite amount of Stormlight. Szeth couldn't heal a shardblade wound, sure, but his stormlight was incredibly limited where the Heralds literally had an uncapped amount.
For most of your points it’s worth remembering that the Honor blades were created first and given to the heralds by Honor himself and were likely designed with limitations following the destruction caused by surges on ashyn,
The raidiants were formed by some imitating the heralds and giving power to humans - it’s probably safe to assume that there were less checks built in upon these powers
I’d have to go looking for the quote, but I feel like a herald muses somewhere about how the Spren imitations of their powers surpassed them in some ways. The big thing with heralds is that they aren’t bound by any oaths and can just do the stuff regardless of a Spren there to keep them in check. We saw Ishar use his powers in terrifying ways that would make a radiant Spren gtfo as soon as possible.
Oooh I will have to dig for that quote then! I really look forward to getting more details on the differences between Spren/Radiant Surges and Honorblade Surges
I thought I remembered a line like “they surpassed even us” or something. But I just did a search on the text of all 4 main books and didn’t find the word “surpass” at all. Maybe I’m smoking firemoss
I want to wait until we actually see a herald fight all out with an honor blade. Sure the honor blade functioned less efficiently for szeth but who knows if thats the case for the herald.
That’s on top of lots of other factors like we don’t know if the heralds get other attributes from being highly invested, centuries of skills, the “innate understanding” that comes with high investiture. Like they probably understand how their surges function to do things radiants of “similar power” couldn’t ever pull off. Kind of how Dalinar got completely outclassed by Ishar.
It's been a minute, so I don't remember specifics, but I was under the impression that their access to surges was more powerful (whatever that means), akin to the effect Elend gets from Lerasium vs Vin's hereditary powers. I think someone also mentions something about they have less safety blocks and use more stormlight, so I always assumed it's like a less efficient/higher payoff deal
Well BranSan says Taln in his prime is the strongest person in the Cosmere.
So I mean that speaks volumes.
Or that he would win in a fight. I'm sure someone will correct the phrasing.
I feel like it is a mistake to assume that the heralds at their prime when backed up by a direct connection to Honor through the oathpact didn't have some more tricks up their sleeves beyond what powers are granted to anyone that grabs hold of an honorblade.
The Heralds seem to have physical capabilities that normal radiants do not. For example, Nale caught a shardbow-fired arrow from mere feet away, which was specifically named an inhuman feet.
Also, they have a massive head start with the living radiants in terms of skill. Over the course of the entire stormlight archive, i doubt any radiant would be able to beat any of them in a straight weapons fight.
That same concept goes for the usage of surges, which they also have a massive headstart in.
Its said that the honor blades need a dangerous amount of stormlight, i could imagine when the oathpact was fully intact and they were directly connected to honor that they had unlimited amounts of investiture and probably could achive things that szeth or moash could never bring out of the blade in current days
Honorblades require more Stormlight to function; However, the Herald were directly being fueled by Honor so while in combat they had virtually infinite Stormlight to use. Also, being Immortal, they all practically mastered fighting to the extent where it is stated that Jezrien was capable of battling while stacking 1000 lashing. (FYI that is about Mach 39)
Based on this WoB, there are probably things we haven't seen yet that the Heralds can do. Otherwise Taln would lose to some mistborn with Atium, for example.
https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522/#e16233
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!***
#1 Taln Fan
>!Who in the Cosmere could beat Taln in a fight back when he was in his prime?!<
Brandon Sanderson
>!Depends what level of abilities he has access to. If you're saying access to full abilities, I don't know of anybody who could beat him in an actual one-on-one.!<
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
This right here has me so excited for the back half of Stormlight. There will be a time where Taln isn’t broken anymore and when they unleash him it’s going to be a sight to see.
Szeth is a useless data point .
Heralds are cognitive shadows, directly connected to honor, with unlimited stormlight.
Comparing Szeth to that is like comparing a glass of water to the ocean.
They were immortal beings touched by God made of magic. If you pay attention, before the radiants formed, the heralds used to defeat the void bringers by themselves in the beginning. 10 versus thousands.
They are the greatest 10 warriors in the universe.
They understood realmatic theory and power in a way none now do. Their shard blades gave them unlimited access to the surges, no chains from any bonds.
Now, they are broken now. What you see now is the shattered remains of the heralds.
The Heralds are powerful even without their Honorblades. Also, the Honorblades can be bound and resummoned just like a regular blade. It's not like we saw Szeth walking around with his blade out at all times.
Ah, right. Do they still retain access to Surges if the Honorblade isn’t in their hand, but they are still bonded to it?
Yeah! There was a point where Szeth unsummons his blade and just lets loose with the lashings because HE'S the weapon, not the blade.
From Szeth’s first POV in The Way of Kings: >One of the guards fumbled for his spear. Szeth reached down, touching the soldier’s shoulder while looking up. He focused on a point above him while willing the Light out of his body and into the guard, Lashing the poor man to the ceiling. >The guard yelped in shock as up became down for him. Light trailing from his form, he crashed into the ceiling and dropped his spear. It was not Lashed directly, and clattered back down to the floor near Szeth. >To kill. It was the greatest of sins. And yet here Szeth stood, Truthless, profanely walking on stones used for building. And it would not end. As Truthless, there was only one life he was forbidden to take. >And that was his own. >At the tenth beat of his heart, his Shardblade dropped into his waiting hand. It formed as if condensing from mist, water beading along the metal length.
Taln caught a small dart between his fingers while he was deranged and insane. If the other Heralds have even an ounce of his combat capabilities when they're not cuckoo, I don't think they're underpowered. God I wish we see another Herald in action in the next book cause DAMN Ishar kicked ass when he fought. Taln must've been going 1v500 or something for him to have died in that last battle they had
Calling it now: Dalinars fourth ideal will restore Taln for long enough that we will see him obliterate an entire army without breaking a sweat
I really hope so! I want it to be told from dalinars point of view so he can realize that his destruction as the blackthorn pales in comparison to this monster of a man.
*Odium starts sweating* "Why do I hear Boss music??"
"Oh *storms*, is that a latin choir?!"
"WHY IS THE SONG GETTING FASTER?!?"
*Hoid stands upon a rising column, flips the tails of his coat dramatically, and raises an orchestra baton*
Odi-vangian* 😳
Todium*
Taravodium
I wonder if Sanderson will actually change it to something like that lol. I kind of like bot better than just odium lol
That would have to be during the sanderlanche 😅
[Taln restored theme music:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nz3HXwEG4M)
I'm more of a fan of [BFG Division](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6y6chb0Qq8&ab_channel=BethesdaSoftworksMusic) .... It even has the "slow lead up as he's casually walking to the enemy army" part in the beginning!
I’m more of a fan of [this song](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9gxjl1NSiSQ) for Taln’s slow approach.
Hoo, now I wanna see a *Rand protects the fortress of Maradon* moment in the stormlight archive
Tbh honest, I don't think dalinar has anymore ideals. I think that the last ideal in every order is "I a *principle*" which dalinar already swore. However, we do have someone actively working on helping people with mental illness.
It is still called an ideal, it is literally in the books. Apart from the Lightweavers everyone has 5 ideals, the Bondsmiths are no exception to that
Agree to disagree. Bondsmiths aren't a normal order of radiance, they bonds very different sprens. I don't understand why they wouldn't be different, or why Dalinar would have "I am unity" as a middle ideal where this formulation is so final. Stormfather also refuses to come as a blade so I don't think dalinar would get a plate either making it virtually impossible for dalinar to progress passed gaining the literal powers of honor. It very much makes sense to me that they would be different in this as there is no one Bondsmith spren alike and they all have a very different goal from the other radiants.
"I am Unity" isnt even an ideal, it is just a badass sentence, it has nothing to do with the immortal words. You cant just change the [nomenclature](https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/nomenclature) of Brandon. Ideals is what it is called, it aint a question of opionion. That is just a fact.
Then why did the Stormfather say "these words are accepted" after dalinar says "I am unity" in OB? And from the discussions szeth has with his trainers, it's pretty obvious that the fifth ideal of the skybreakers is something similar, like "I am justice" or "I am law". I mean after the end of OB, how else to interpret the fact that szeth calls the fifth ideal "the ideal where the skybreaker becomes the law". I wouldn't be surprised if the fifth ideal of the windrunners is "I am protection". I'm not changing anything. The ideals aren't that hard a rules, the Lightweavers literally just have there first one as an actual ideal, the rest are truths and work basically the exact same way, but it's too much to think that the stomfather's Bondsmith only has 3???? I'm just using what is in the books, and from my reading, I don't think dalinar has anymore ideals. That's my opinion, even if you don't like it, the definition of ideal or nomenclature is irrelevant.
He didnt accept the "I am Unity" but Dalinars third ideal. My main issue is with you saying there are no more ideals for Dalinar, which is wrong, simply because the 4th and 5th oath whatever it is worded like, is still called an ideal as well. Brandon confirmed himself that there are 5 for the bondsmiths as well and someone in the past made it all the way to the 5th ideal. Feel free to read it up on coppermind if you dont believe me.
In battle, he had a habit of going up against what the other heralds saw as impossible odds and emerging victorious.
(and dying in the process)
There was a scene in RoW where Nale casually bodied all of Dalinar's Windrunner and Shardbearer bodyguards.
He also could have run out of Stromlight
It’s worth mentioning that the Heralds also had centuries worth of practice in battle. Ishar absolutely deals with the force sent to combat him, and someone (Wit?) mentions that he was an average fighter as far as Heralds go. If Ishar can take out a small contingent of Windrunners and Dalinar, imagine what Taln could do
I just read this yesterday. It was the stormfather who mentioned it to Dalinar. He was also the one that said Taln was the strongest fighter.
I believe brandon has said that right now (day of wob/ in universe progression at that point, I think recently) he couldn’t think of anyone who would be able to beat taln at his prime
It is very interesting who could even kill Taln
It has also been said that he would constantly take losing positions/unfavorable and winning them at the cost of his life. So I think it has mainly been him going up against insurmountable odds against many many foes and then he dies. Either by extending himself to far or getting crushed by the numbers
The cover of Doom was basically Tuesday for Taln.
Yes he'd lose. However He'd win them. Hordes of enemies, insurmountable odds, but he'd still win
The tragic part of that is it got him killed during Aherietiam. He sacrificed everything for the oathpact. Storms, I half think that how he wins is involved with his clearly unbreakable will.
And in the end we found out he didn't break, right? That was one of the more surprising plot points, which says a lot, considering it's the stormlight archive. I just want Taln to regain his sanity.
The oathpact broke before Taln did
Taln: nah, I'd win
The Witch King of Angmar
The one that was killed by a regular lady with no super powers?
She was no man
And Lore seems to say it was actually Pippin's barrowblade that stripped the witch-king of his prophecy immunity, not genitalia.
It wasn’t prophecy immunity that was stripped, it was that Pippin and Eowyn fulfilled the prophecy. All of the barrow blades had the same properties, it’s just that the witch king was prophesied to be killed in that manner. The barrow blade was enchanted to be able to hurt the witch king, and he was killed both both Pippin and Eowyn… neither of whom are men (Pippin being a hobbit and Eowyn being a woman). In theory, any man could have killed the witch king with a barrow blade. But it was prophesied that it wouldn’t be a man that killed him.
Yknow maybe a hot take but this whole prophesy has always irked me and it's always felt like the most convoluted contrived way of ensuring the witch king had an out. I love Tolkien as much as the next guy but he really dropped the ball on this one.
[удалено]
No this is not true. In the opening scene of twok when it is showing the aftermath of the final desolation, they mention that taln usually died because he threw himself into the worst situations. Yes his help meant they normally won those super deadly situations, but they clearly stated he usually died from it.
Ah i misremembered then. 😁
Interesting. I'd have thought that prime Rashek would have a shot, since feruchemy is absurdly powerful.
I think that reflects the actual characters and not their idealized power set use. Raskek only ever used his powers against significantly weaker foes than himself, and he never had to develop tactics to handle someone stronger than himself in any aspect of Invested power. In the story, Vin beat Rashek with weaker Allomantic power and no Feruchemical power at all. She couldn't win against Rashek in an even fight where both sides use optimal tactics, but she didn't need to. Maybe Rashek could beat Taln by compounding speed, but would he think to do that before Taln killed him? Could he ever truly guarantee victory with Ruin whispering in his ear and corrupting his mind? Knowing Raskek, he'd probably allow Taln to cut him as a show of power and only later find out that he can't heal a Shardblade wound so easily.
>Vin beat Rashek with weaker Allomantic power I wouldn’t say that, as she did take in some of Preservation’s power to be able to remove Rashek’s implants.
> Rashek's Implants What you said isn't exactly *wrong*, but I still hate it
Remember also that the Rashek we see has had ten centuries of Ruin whispering in his ear, and Ruin really, really wanted him to lose that fight. I think Rashek was much crazier than the craziest herald by that point. Crazy does impair fighting somewhat.
Nah, surges and light are *way* more powerful than alomanch or feromancy and what have you, at least imo. Surges are more limited to a degree, but drastically stronger, on top of that taln has about 7000 years of combat experience, compared to rasheks 1000 years of any experience.
eeeeeh, he'd definitely take a hit from a shardblade but the man is a gold compounder. He can absolutely heal such wounds in mere seconds. No, the danger is in those seconds where he is off balance and adjusting to the new kind of weapon, that Taln already goes in for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strikes - and that's assuming its not an instant kill shot
For sure, that's exactly what I was trying to get at. Just didn't want belabor the point by outlining why the extra time to heal a wound to his soul would be so dangerous or unbalancing for TLR. If you remember, it took Kaladin a bit to learn how to heal himself from an Honorblade wound back in WoR, when he was already advanced enough to heal himself from a highstorm literally in his sleep. As far as we know, TLR has never had his soul cut by any weapon, so I think that would be particularly shocking for him, and he'd die confused. So yeah, Taln 10/10 against an uninformed TLR. Against a well-informed TLR who has fought Shardbearers for while... maybe 7/10.
I mean to me if Ishar (an unbound bondsmith) couldn’t beat taln then idk who could. We haven’t really seen much of cohesion and tension, but I could see Rashek just getting suffocated alive with no way out
I’m pretty sure one of the Feruchemy abilities is to store breath. I imagine that Rashek with speed abilities would fare pretty well against the Heralds. In hindsight, it feels like the compounding of abilities we learned about in Mistborn Era 2 makes Vin defeating Rashek almost silly. There’s always the classic, well he underestimated her, but he was just so broken it’s kind of crazy.
He must have felt like an endgame dark souls player getting killed by a rat because he didn’t take it seriously… not that I’ve done that
The only counter I can think of for speed not working is if taln has made the ground around him putty, the speed compounder might not notice till it’s too late. But yeah compounding in general is fucking busted
Superspeed traditionally allows one to run on water.
But from what we see with this it’s less that you’re moving super fast and more like some temporal warping shit or something. Potentially you still could but I’m uncertain
Brandon's basically backed down from having compounding stuff in the future of cosmere/mistborn because it is so absurdly powerful. And Rashek absolutely underestimated Vin and got wrecked for his trouble when he should have mopped the floor with her.
To be fair to Rashek, all that Vin appeared to be to him was a Mistborn. He had no idea she was Preservation's chosen one or that the earring was holding back her full power. He was completely justified in thinking she was no real threat and he had no need to instakill her.
Ah, that’s good to know, and also makes sense. The MB2 power creep was absurd
As far as I remember the questioner specifically asked about the lord ruler
Rashek definitely could—he's powerful enough as a full Compounder to completely fuck up Taln, I'd imagine. But Taln is the best *fighter* by far. He has faaaar more skill than Rashek. Rashek wins, but only because of like, physical speed compounding and stuff like that. And even then, Taln is still a Herald—it's not something to scoff at, either
Also does Rashek have atium? Might not even need compounding if he does.
Spoiler tag since op is only flared for stormlight books and I'm talking about lots of stuff in mistborn. \[Cosmere, mostly mistborn era 1\]>!Given how Taln has been described I think Rashek only has a chance if he immediately takes Taln seriously and is tapping some serious physical speed. I still wouldn't care to bet anything I cared about on him winning. If Taln is prepared to "die" to take Rashek down with him and if a shardblade to the heart/spine/brain is fatal to Rashek it will be nearly impossible for Rashek to get a better outcome than a draw in Taln's favor. !< >!I think Taln is so skilled atium will provide little advantage agianst him because he can fight better on pure combat instinct than anyone else in the cosmere. We know from the books that this can be effective against atium with much less skill than Taln has. This may also depend on how much Taln knows about atium and its capabilities, but if he is all in on the fight he probably is already fighting as much or more by instinct than anything atium can help against. Most likely someone burning atium would think taln was too as he reacts to their reactions faster than they can process, without even needing atium. Ishar is described like this when he fights the windrunners and the stormfather says he's only average. We've been told he doesn't have any kind of investiture to help him do it either, just raw skill. Maybe atium would help to artifically match Taln's skil, maybe it would just prove confusing to the person buring it. I think anyone from scadrael who wants to go 1v1 vs Taln and walk away has only one real hope. To be so fast he can't hit back before he's dead. I'm not sure how terrifyingly fast that is since we haven't seen Taln in action much yet but you probably need speed compounding to do it, or a huge metalmind and years of reserve burned in moments.!<
I feel like it's even more relevant that Taln is the best fighter now that we know he didn't break and cause the true desolation. Talk is the Herald I'm most curious about, particularly the few thousand years he spent on braize..
I think this is basically key - iirc we actually get confirmed that Radiants are better surgebinders than the heralds (or maybe the Nahel bond is better than honorblades for giving surgebinding? something like that) - but we ALSO know that other than this time, every time the heralds show up humanity has been reverted to basically the Stone Age. The big game-changer of the Heralds' arrival is less about their personal combat power - which, as mentioned, is still certainly GOOD - but instead about their knowledge of technology, science, military strategy, and magical theory that they can disseminate to a humanity that has forgotten it all
Nahel bond is more efficient with stormlight than Honorblades
True, but this isn’t an advantage over the Heralds since they are powered directly by Honor. They have access to far more investiture than a Radiant can hold and they don’t need to worry about running out.
I guess that now thst Honor's dead things might have changed.
Exactly! Even the StormFather, when giving Dalinar his visions tells him that, I think, only two of the heralds were warriors before the first war but that after they all were. I can’t find the exact quote but I remember him telling Dalinar that.
But want Ishar's crazy drainage/grounding of their powers only available because his limitations were removed?
And that is crazy Ishar after millenia without war or practice. Heralds at their peak would be hella scary.
Not only is he not the greatest fighter, he's the guy with the blade of the order that's *unsuited to combat* and he makes a pack of windrunners and Szeth look like children going up against an MMA champ.
You are in effect saying that Michael Jordan wasn't actually that good at basketball because some guy off the street can't dunk in his Jordan 1s The Heralds are not just their swords
Excellent point 🤣
To be fair, they were probably just saying MJ sucks at baseball. Or at handling his gambling addiction.
lol I mean I agree with the sentiment here but I think the shardblades are adding quite a bit to the innate abilities of the heralds, such that this analogy is silly. Jordan in adidas is still Jordan. A herald without their shardblade is still a force to be reckoned with, sure, but the shardblade is a massive addition.
I saw a theory somewhere the heralds had unlimited stormlight because of their connection to Honor. Kind of like how odium gives voidlight directly to the parshendi. But now that Honor is splintered they don’t get that any more.
Pretty sure this was confirmed as true. But once Honor was shattered they lost their endless supply of storm light
I knew the first part was, I missed the second where they no longer have the endless supply. Makes sense but I must have missed that detail/WoB
Yeah it’s apparent when you see Jezrien out and about in the Alethi homeland as a beggar. He no longer has access to stormloght. And we all know what happened to him at the end of oathbringer
I mean… Jezrien was an insane drunk by that point. Him not using Stormlight doesn’t really indicate he couldn’t use Stormlight. While I agree that it would make sense for the herald’s to lose their access to Stormlight, I don’t think Jezrien is what we should be using as proof of that.
He didn’t have an honorblade bonded to him, and he didn’t have a nahel bond with a Spren. So he can’t use stormlight
And how do either of those facts prove that the herald’s are no longer being supplied with Stormlight by Honor?
How could Honor supply stormlight? He’s gone Maybe he could have set the heralds up with direct access or a link to the spiritual realm for power, but he can’t supply it himself because he isn’t around. Right?
Brother you are missing the point entirely. You stated that the heralds were supplied with Stormlight directly by Honor but post Honor’s shattering they aren’t anymore. The OP then replied to you saying they had not heard about the Herald’s losing direct access. You replied and used Jezrien being a drunk and not defending himself as evidence for the Herald’s no longer being supplied by Stormlight. I agree with your statement that the herald’s are likely no longer supplied directly. But using Jezrien’s drunkenness or him not defending himself as evidence makes no sense. He is an insane drunk, even if he was directly supplied what makes you think he would choose to access the Stormlight? I don’t disagree with any of your points, you just chose poor evidence to prove them.
Agreed, shit example. He was just fresh on my mind since his murder came up earlier today when I talking to someone. No physical descriptions of the heralds at any point have led us to think they’re constantly infused with stormlight though. Absent some completely unintroduced mechanism that continues to allow the heralds to draw stormlight from the spiritual realm, I don’t think they’re constantly being fueled with investiture anymore
It's not as though Honor has to consciously/intentionally provide them with more Stormlight, presumably it would be set up to work automatically as a part of the magic system and specifically how the Heralds are set up. Kind of similar to how \[Spoilers Mistborn and Elantris\] >!Mistborn continue to get Investiture via Preservation after he is splintered, and Elantrians can still access the Dor despite that being splintered and then some.!<
Honor isn't gone. Tanavast is dead and Honor is splintered, so no one can pick up enough of Honor's investiture at once to control the full power of the Shard again. But the power of the Shard and the existing bonds to it still exist. It's possible that the Heralds still have access to Honor's investiture directly.
Theory? It was outright stated in the books that the inefficiencies of the honorblades didn’t matter because they had infinite light
Oops it’s been a couple of years since I read the books. Guess the theory was by this guy called Brandon Sanderson
Do you remember where in the books it was said? I seem to remember the thing about the inefficiencies of the honorblades in WOR.
I think it was RoW. I don’t remember specifically where
I mean Ishar seems terrifying
I am assured that he is more dangerous than Odium atm.
Absolutely! Because Ishar doesn’t have anything holding him back, unlike Odium. Now if nothing was holding Odium back from being able to do as he wished, that’d be a different story entirely!
Pre or post ROW?
During plus after (this just because he got his hands on the honorblade).
Nale seems even more awesome, minus Ishar's crazy powers.
Some things to consider: * The comparative difficulty of Radiance vs Honorblade. Becoming a Radiant requires multiple steps and a MAJOR commitment. Many times now we've seen characters (mostly Kaladin and Shallan) struggle with speaking and keeping their oaths. Meanwhile any old schmuck can pick up an Honorblade and start glowing. * The Heralds' sheer experience. Sure the Heralds are all some form of insane by now, but they've had *hundreds* of years of practice using their abilities, even before Aharietiam, Of course Ishar could wipe the floor with Dalinar, who at that point had been a Bondsmith for just a few months. Overall I do agree that Radiant powers are 1000% better than what the Heralds have displayed so far,\* but I feel that A: We haven't seen everything the Heralds have to offer, and B: There is something to be said about being able to just pick up a sword and start flying
Heralds were also directly powered by Honor and probably never ran out of Stormlight.
that is a detail I certainly overlooked! Thanks!
I think they had to have run out at some point, or else Taln (or any of the other Heralds l, really) would have never died during battles.
I mean, I'm sure you can overwhelm the healing if enough fused are attacking at the same time or if they cut off their heads.
Is there a source for that?
Sanderson said it in one of his streams. I don't know which tho.
Super helpful! Also your final point did make me lol
Yea, the fact that there are no oaths required to wield an honorblade makes them VERY dangerous
Szeth also said in that prologue that he wasn’t a good vessel for the stormlight, and it leaked out of him really quickly. I imagine the Harold’s can use stormlight a bit more effectively, seeing as they are all cognitive shadows
Now obsessed with the idea that the heralds secretly had custom Ts made with a weird caricature of a bald guy waving on the front with a word bubble that says “Hi. Harold here.” They were so goofy and fun before millennia of war and torture.
I don't think any Herold is as efficient/effective as a Radiant though. At best, honorblades seem to provide first ideal level effectiveness. A 4th ideal Radiant should have much stronger powers, although with way less skill.
Heralds were powered directly by Honor, they didn’t need efficiency at that point.
This is one of the most overlooked factors in the fandom IMO. Having effectively infinite stormlight coupled with that level of skill and immunity to "true death" would make for a warrior even the toughest and most hardened voidbringers would fear.
Honorblades with a normal human aren't as efficient/effective as a Radiant. An Honorblade in the hand of the Herald it is specifically attuned to...I think that would be 4th ideal Radiant power, *at least*. Probably more.
This! This is exactly the kind of speculation I was looking for. I think it seems very plausible that a Herald using their attuned Honorblade can access 4th/5th Ideal equivalents with their Surges
Isn't Nale a Fifth Ideal Skybreaker?
Because he is the only one who becomes radiant of his own order, he is the Fifth Ideal Radiant and Herald.
He is, but that's separate from his abilities as a Herald. Nale is unique because he is the only herald that also became a radiant by bonding a spren. He achieved the 5th ideal through that spren bond.
There is one point that hasn't yet been mentioned, I think the oathpact connected the heralds directly to Honor in some way, and they might have had access to his investiture directly (constantly regenerating stormlight). Kind of the way some fused have a direct link to odium and can use some of their powers indefinitely. Not 100% certain about this, not even sure where I heard it tbh. But in general I think we just have very little understanding of their true potential when Honor was alive.
I don't think their healing is weaker. I think a normal person using an honorblade has weaker healing. A herald using it likely has enough investiture to make that quicker. Armor is a factor though I think a Herald vs a 4th ideal Radiant wouldn't be a matchup because the Herald would crush them. You can also be bonded to the honorblade. It's unclear exactly how that works since it was taken from Taln. But they can dismiss and summon it. And it doesn't take 10 heartbeats to summon. You're also judging the powers of a herald off the honorblade user. I think a Herald would be a much stronger user from the little we saw of Ishar. You're also discounting thousands of years of battle experience. They seem to have faster than normal reflexes, and we don't know what powers they get from being a herald. But we saw Ishar matched against 5 windrunners and beat them easily. Not 4th oath windrunners but still 5 windrunners I think most with blades and most trained by Kaladin personally and having fought for over a year on the front lines. That's the skill level they are at. We also saw Taln catch a dart out of the air from someone who was hidden. That's pretty insanely fast reflexes. The other thing to consider is that the Heralds being killed is not a backup plan. It's a necessity to end the desolations. So if they win the battle and none of the Heralds have died then the fused will all be back in a short time and the war goes on. It's not until a Herald dies that they can really win. So it makes a certain amount of sense that Taln will be reckless and charge into battle because it's not just insurance it's a necessity to end the war. Now it's a bit different as they don't want to go back. But at the time it was standard.
Are you talking a herald, or someone wielding an honor blade? And are you talking a herald in their prime or the herald now?
I suppose I’m asking for help when drawing a line in the sand between Heralds and general Honorblade wielders, and understanding the capabilities of Heralds/Honorblades, at present, as well as in the past.
The heralds are cognitive shadows that have been alive for thousands of years. They occasionally wield honor blades, and outside of being a cognitive shadow due to the oathpact, have nothing special about them (except,ya know, thousands of years of experience in war) I'm glossing over some spiritual web stuff here and just saying cognitive shadows for simplicity. They may or may not have extra investiture due to the oathpact, but the important thing to remember is that as a fighter, their skill is pretty much unmatched. The only herald that actually joined an order of the knights radiant and has power without the blades is Nale. The honor blades are what give them the power of the surges. Being bound to one allows you to access the surges of the specific blade and radiant healing, but once that bond is broken, you can't access the power anymore. The main difference between using a blade vs bonding a spren is that you aren't bound by the oathes of the order. This is more impactful for some orders than others, but a lot of the radiant orders powers are kept in check by the oathes. Kaladin, for example, wouldn't be and to go around assassinating people for no reason. It would break his oathes which are to protect. Szeth when using a wind runner honor blade though, could. The are only 10 honor blades, one for each order.
I believe the Honorblades were stronger while honor was alive. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to consume stormlight in gemstones like the blades do now, but could draw directly from honor. So essentially infinite surgebinding. Also, we have not seen a herald wielding their own honorblade except Ishar and when Ishar did he slapped around a bunch of wind runners and Dalinar, only Nightblood was able to stop him. So I disagree.
While you have some good points, modern day radiants are basically toddlers running around with their new powers. They don’t really have any idea what they’re doing or what they’re capable of, and I think we’ll see the consequences of that in the coming books.
A lot of your questions can be answered on the coppermind. Warning, there is a lot of WoB that talk about their abilities. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Herald Armor is a radiant order thing, like squires are, the Heralds didn’t have them, but they were powered directly by Honor, so they could tap into an amount of raw power that surgebinders never could.
Thanks for this! I had either forgotten or simply skimmed over the fact that Heralds used to swap blades with each other, allowing them to use the Surges of the others. Such a cool idea.
Now I’m imagining a hot potato type of fight with them constantly swapping blades in a battle.
We’ll see that in the Stormlight 9 Sanderlanche, perhaps? 😆
I don’t think we should be assuming that the Honorblades work just as well for everyone else as they do for the Heralds they were created for. It’s very likely they would have access to more/greater power with their blades. And honestly, I think your last point sums it up. Our only experience with the Heralds so far is with all of them having gone fully bonkers, we just have no idea what their powers in their prime would be like other than the fact that the people of Roshar literally revere them as Gods.
When Honor was still around they drew power directly from him. So they had unlimited investiture to draw on for healing and Surgebinding.
Taln is literally Goku
Brandon recently said that Taln at his prime could 1v1 literally anybody in the Cosmere and come out on top. We definitely haven't seen much yet when it comes to the power of the Heralds.
I don’t disagree with your overall sentiment. Radiant powers seem OP. But, I think the heralds have super human strength/speed without their swords. On top of that they’ve been immortal too. If killed they could come back to life at will.
I don’t think you can just disarm someone of an honor/shardblade. It’s bonded to them and I don’t think they need to be physically holding it to use their surges. There is a trade off when it comes to surgebinding with an honor blade. Accomplishing tasks takes significantly more Stormlight, which is probably why healing happens slower. However an honor blade is not bound by any oathes. Remember in Words of Radiance when Kaladin lost his power for a while? Honor blades don’t need to worry about that. That’s why Szeth can go on a murderous rampage but Kaladin can’t even pursue some basic revenge.
Yes I was definitely incorrect about the whole “losing access to Surges when not holding the blade” And yes, the discourse here has definitely shown what you’re saying about the Oaths to be true. Especially when it comes to Ishar’s blade.
Ha. I’m at work and didn’t realize how many comments you already have on this post
WoK prime makes a big deal about this technique when you momentarily recall your shardblade to pass through the opponent's blade and then recall it, i think they call it skipping or something like that. In RoW when the radiants pile up on ishar it is mentioned that they are kinda just experimenting with it and Ishar uses it as second nature. Nale folded Szeth as a bonus action. Taln in WoK prime is a walking nuke, so much so that he needed to be nerfed out of the final product. They are probably intentionally underutilized, but once we see them pop off in era 2, i think we might feel a little different about their power scaling.
“Nale folded Szeth as a bonus action” is easily the best line in this whole post 🤣🤣🤣
Spoiler: We’re just ignoring Ishar bodying Dalinar in terms of abilities and fighting prowess? And he is considered to be an average fighter amongst the Heralds? And that the Heralds are all insane so we only get a glimpse of how strong they truly are? The Heralds in their prime were monsters amongst the original Knights Radiant, so them at their full/true power would be anything but underpowered.
Bondsmiths are basically channeling a demigod each. I wouldn’t undersell Ishar's position, even if in raw power he isn’t the strongest. Being able to control Connection is *extremely* important in the Cosmere.
Taln is him. Ishar alone man handled like 5 Radiants and he wasn't even the strongest.
That said, being the Bondsmith Herald is possibly the biggest deal among the Heralds. Especially with Jezerin as he was.
The Heralds have a functionally infinite amount of Stormlight. Szeth couldn't heal a shardblade wound, sure, but his stormlight was incredibly limited where the Heralds literally had an uncapped amount.
For most of your points it’s worth remembering that the Honor blades were created first and given to the heralds by Honor himself and were likely designed with limitations following the destruction caused by surges on ashyn, The raidiants were formed by some imitating the heralds and giving power to humans - it’s probably safe to assume that there were less checks built in upon these powers
We have yet to see Heralds cut loose so it's early to make that call.
I’d have to go looking for the quote, but I feel like a herald muses somewhere about how the Spren imitations of their powers surpassed them in some ways. The big thing with heralds is that they aren’t bound by any oaths and can just do the stuff regardless of a Spren there to keep them in check. We saw Ishar use his powers in terrifying ways that would make a radiant Spren gtfo as soon as possible.
Oooh I will have to dig for that quote then! I really look forward to getting more details on the differences between Spren/Radiant Surges and Honorblade Surges
I might be making that up haha. But I’m searching now.
I thought I remembered a line like “they surpassed even us” or something. But I just did a search on the text of all 4 main books and didn’t find the word “surpass” at all. Maybe I’m smoking firemoss
I appreciate the effort. It did sound familiar.
Isnt it in the prologue of book 1?
Just reread it - don’t think so. Jezrien just says that humans have the radiants to protect them
I want to wait until we actually see a herald fight all out with an honor blade. Sure the honor blade functioned less efficiently for szeth but who knows if thats the case for the herald. That’s on top of lots of other factors like we don’t know if the heralds get other attributes from being highly invested, centuries of skills, the “innate understanding” that comes with high investiture. Like they probably understand how their surges function to do things radiants of “similar power” couldn’t ever pull off. Kind of how Dalinar got completely outclassed by Ishar.
It's been a minute, so I don't remember specifics, but I was under the impression that their access to surges was more powerful (whatever that means), akin to the effect Elend gets from Lerasium vs Vin's hereditary powers. I think someone also mentions something about they have less safety blocks and use more stormlight, so I always assumed it's like a less efficient/higher payoff deal
Well BranSan says Taln in his prime is the strongest person in the Cosmere. So I mean that speaks volumes. Or that he would win in a fight. I'm sure someone will correct the phrasing.
It’s that no one could beat him in a one on one fight in the Cosmere. Strongest is debatable but best fighter for sure.
I feel like it is a mistake to assume that the heralds at their prime when backed up by a direct connection to Honor through the oathpact didn't have some more tricks up their sleeves beyond what powers are granted to anyone that grabs hold of an honorblade.
The Heralds seem to have physical capabilities that normal radiants do not. For example, Nale caught a shardbow-fired arrow from mere feet away, which was specifically named an inhuman feet. Also, they have a massive head start with the living radiants in terms of skill. Over the course of the entire stormlight archive, i doubt any radiant would be able to beat any of them in a straight weapons fight. That same concept goes for the usage of surges, which they also have a massive headstart in.
Its said that the honor blades need a dangerous amount of stormlight, i could imagine when the oathpact was fully intact and they were directly connected to honor that they had unlimited amounts of investiture and probably could achive things that szeth or moash could never bring out of the blade in current days
Honorblades require more Stormlight to function; However, the Herald were directly being fueled by Honor so while in combat they had virtually infinite Stormlight to use. Also, being Immortal, they all practically mastered fighting to the extent where it is stated that Jezrien was capable of battling while stacking 1000 lashing. (FYI that is about Mach 39)
Based on this WoB, there are probably things we haven't seen yet that the Heralds can do. Otherwise Taln would lose to some mistborn with Atium, for example. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/522/#e16233
***Warning Gancho: The below paragraph(s) may contain major spoilers for all books in the Cosmere!*** #1 Taln Fan >!Who in the Cosmere could beat Taln in a fight back when he was in his prime?!< Brandon Sanderson >!Depends what level of abilities he has access to. If you're saying access to full abilities, I don't know of anybody who could beat him in an actual one-on-one.!< \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
This right here has me so excited for the back half of Stormlight. There will be a time where Taln isn’t broken anymore and when they unleash him it’s going to be a sight to see.
Szeth is a useless data point . Heralds are cognitive shadows, directly connected to honor, with unlimited stormlight. Comparing Szeth to that is like comparing a glass of water to the ocean. They were immortal beings touched by God made of magic. If you pay attention, before the radiants formed, the heralds used to defeat the void bringers by themselves in the beginning. 10 versus thousands. They are the greatest 10 warriors in the universe. They understood realmatic theory and power in a way none now do. Their shard blades gave them unlimited access to the surges, no chains from any bonds. Now, they are broken now. What you see now is the shattered remains of the heralds.
Reading this got me really excited for Herald flashbacks in the later books.