Raboniel
also known as Lady of Wishes, Lady of Pains
A tall femalen Fused of the fannahn-im brand, willowy with a tall topknot of hair and helmet-like carapace. Once one of the Nine for centuries before leaving the council, she was supposed to remain asleep after the last Return; her sudden reawakening terrifies Leshwi. A formidable scholar with a record of catastrophic experiments. SA:RoW:Ch 14
Known facts
- extinction-diseaseDuring the last Return Raboniel designed a disease meant to kill every human on Roshar. Warned it would also kill many singers, she released it anyway; in the event it killed roughly one human in ten and one singer in a hundred. Once known as the Lady of Pains, she now prefers Lady of Wishes.SA:RoW:Ch 14
- fused-doctrine-of-surgesTeaches that there are nine true Surges — not ten — and that Adhesion is a lie wrongly claimed by Honor alone. The true Surges draw from both Honor and Cultivation: Cultivation supplies life, Honor makes the Surge into natural law. Each of the nine brands of Fused is paired with one.SA:RoW:Ch 31
- discerns-venli-as-leshwis-spyOn the mountain hike she casually reveals to Venli that she has discerned Leshwi uses her as a spy, praising the choice. Whether she has grasped the rest of Venli's secrets remains unclear.SA:RoW:Ch 31
- title-lady-of-wishesThe other Fused in the tunnel call her *Raboniel, Lady of Wishes*, a formal title that — to the Rhythm of Craving — carries respect; one Deepest One credits her wisdom over that of the Nine for forcing the timing of this strike.SA:RoW:Ch 37
- corrupts-the-crystal-pillarWith Voidlight running visibly down her arms, Raboniel partially corrupts the crystal pillar at the heart of Urithiru — infusing a small embedded grouping of garnets — and inverts the tower's ancient defences against its own Radiants instead of against the Fused.SA:RoW:Ch 38
- hums-rhythms-of-her-ownBelow the basement murals, Raboniel hums in front of the Pursuer a rhythm Venli has never heard before — dark, predatory, deadly — and Venli reads it as Odium having granted this femalen her own rhythms, distinct from the ancient ones singers and Fused share.SA:RoW:Ch 41
- invasion-is-cover-for-studying-human-fabrialsExamining a captured human fabrial in the basement library rooms, Raboniel tells Venli she is not here for the conquest at all but for the fabrials humans have begun to build, and that she means to end the eternal war through a partnership that brings together Fused longevity and the audacious novelty of human invention.SA:RoW:Ch 41
- offers-to-hire-navani-as-a-fabrial-engineerReading Navani's sealed airship sketches in the library after the surrender, Raboniel switches into heavily-accented Alethi and offers to hire her — *you are no longer a queen, but you are obviously a talented engineer* — arguing that being close to her will let Navani spy and learn more about Stormlight and Voidlight than she gives up.SA:RoW:Ch 42
- states-no-mortal-elevated-to-fused-since-the-firstRaboniel tells Venli that after the initial elevation of the first mortals into the Fused, Odium never again granted that gift to another mortal — a pointed warning, in Venli's reading, framed as praise.SA:RoW:Ch 51
- standing-order-on-hidden-radiants-in-occupied-urithiruDuring the occupation of Urithiru, Raboniel standing-orders that any unconscious Radiant surrendered willingly is to be spared; any Radiant discovered being hidden is to be executed along with one member of the sheltering family. She wants the survivors kept together for her own purposes.SA:RoW:Ch 53
- studies-modern-windrunner-as-naturally-recurring-patternRaboniel takes a face-to-face audience with Kaladin after he has destroyed the node — stabbing him once with a knife she insists is unpoisoned, simply to inspect how slowly his healing now runs — and remarks that without continuity of spren or tradition the modern Windrunners still arrive at the same attitudes and structures as the ancient orders, *like the lattice of a growing crystal.*SA:RoW:Ch 59
- rebirth-threat-as-deterrent-against-being-killedRaboniel tells Kaladin that if he kills her she will simply be reborn into the most innocent singer she can find — a mother, perhaps, with a child precisely old enough to feel the loss but not to understand it — and uses that prospect to keep him from striking.SA:RoW:Ch 59
- came-to-urithiru-for-the-mixed-lightRaboniel tells Navani that proving Towerlight exists — that two Lights can be combined into something new — is the reason she came to the tower in the first place. She believes mastering how to mix and change forms of Light is the key to understanding the Surges themselves, and she is hunting an answer to whether Stormlight and Voidlight are true opposites or can also be joined.SA:RoW:Ch 61
- confirms-anti-light-theory-and-instantaneous-annihilationAsked about spheres that warp the air around them as though intensely hot, Raboniel tells Navani that Fused scholars have a theory: matter has its opposite — negative axi that destroy positive axi when combined, a fact confirmed by Odium and Honor themselves — and by analogy there might be an anti-light whose combination with its positive would cause instantaneous annihilation. She had abandoned the idea, assuming Voidlight must already be that opposite of Stormlight.SA:RoW:Ch 65
- offers-to-abandon-the-tower-for-mixed-light-knowledgeRaboniel tells Navani she will take her troops and walk away from the tower if Navani can demonstrate that Stormlight and Voidlight can be combined without destroying one another — proof, by her reasoning, that the two Lights are not true opposites. She insists the knowledge would be worth more to her than any strategic position.SA:RoW:Ch 65
- has-an-unhinged-daughter-among-the-fusedThe blank-stared Fused Raboniel keeps near is her own daughter — a hypothesis of her own youth, that mother and daughter serving together might help one another retain their sanity across the long ages of being reborn, that she long ago accepted as disproven. Navani catches what may be a wince of pain on Raboniel's face as she steers her daughter, still asking for her mother, out the door.SA:RoW:Ch 65
- listened-to-navani-and-sibling-from-the-startRaboniel reveals to Navani that she had been listening to every conversation between Navani and the Sibling from the moment she touched the corruption pillar and felt the Sibling awake-but-feigning-death — when not personally, then through another Fused. The Sibling's warning that they could not outthink her was nearly mistaken by Raboniel for Navani having spotted the surveillance.SA:RoW:Ch 72
- broke-promise-to-leaveAfter Navani helps her produce a hybrid Stormlight-Voidlight Light, Raboniel casually reneges on her promise to withdraw from the tower in exchange, then offers Navani only thanks and a personal debt.SA:RoW:Ch 76
- lived-through-shadowdaysRaboniel is old enough to have lived during the shadowdays before Rosharan history; her grandmother witnessed the first humans arriving with the smoke of a destroyed world on their faces.SA:RoW:Ch 76
- bound-to-braize-cannot-travel-offworldRaboniel's soul is bound to Braize — the planet farther out in the system, called Damnation by humans — and so she cannot travel offworld, though the black sand she works with comes from one. She has only been able to send Heavenly Ones to attempt the space between planets in the Physical Realm; the airless dark killed them within hours even when carrying Voidlight to heal.SA:RoW:Ch 89
- unmaking-the-sibling-not-killingRaboniel tells Navani that her work on the Sibling is not, strictly, killing — she is *unmaking* the Sibling, which she calls worse — and that she will not step off the path while Odium still lives, because she would never have been allowed to contemplate alternatives if she were not also willing to do everything that has been asked of her.SA:RoW:Ch 89
- time-in-tower-runs-shortTells Venli her time in the tower runs short: she means to finish unmaking the Sibling and move on to other tasks. She formally dismisses Venli from her service in the same breath.SA:RoW:Ch 92
- respects-leshwi-as-future-rulerDespite Leshwi's open dislike of her, Raboniel considers Leshwi one of the very few Fused who still remembers — and feels — why they fight, and the kind of Fused who might rule effectively once the war is won.SA:RoW:Ch 92
- true-motive-was-mercy-for-daughterRaboniel's capture of the tower and her partnership with Navani were aimed not at a weapon against Odium but at finding anti-Voidlight so she could grant her daughter Essu — whose mind had been gone for centuries while her body kept Returning — a final, permanent death.SA:RoW:Ch 97
- killed-daughter-final-deathUsing a raysium dagger re-pointed to push Light outward, Raboniel stabs her own daughter through the chest with anti-Voidlight; the body blisters, the eyes go marble-white as if the insides have burned out, and the daughter dies a final death — no more Returns. Raboniel weeps over the body and orders the ashes sent home with honors.SA:RoW:Ch 97
- intends-anti-stormlight-on-captive-radiantsImmediately after grieving, Raboniel takes Navani's notebook, vacuum tube and tuned plates and announces she will build an anti-Stormlight from the same method, using the captive Radiants in the tower infirmary as test subjects to permanently destroy Radiant spren and break the eternal cycle of Radiant succession.SA:RoW:Ch 97
- found-spren-killing-toneSpending the night tapping metal plates in the corridor outside Navani's office, Raboniel finally rings the one chilling, wrong-in-all-the-right-ways note that completes the anti-tone able to kill spren — replicating in hours what took Navani days.SA:RoW:Ch 102
- wanted-to-end-the-war-on-either-sideDying in the basement hallway, Raboniel told Navani she had wanted the singers to win — but ending the forever-war on either side's terms was better than continuing it. The notebook in Navani's hands held a copy of their joint anti-Light work; the original was being carried to Kholinar along with the vacuum chamber and the metal plates.SA:RoW:Ch 106
- bought-navani-time-with-reversed-daggerWith her legs dead and her soul dying, Raboniel latched onto Moash's boot as he advanced on Navani and crawled up his body — stabbing him repeatedly with the dagger Navani had left in her chest, its blade now reversed to drain his Stormlight instead.SA:RoW:Ch 107
- permanently-killed-with-anti-voidlightRaboniel died permanently — soul not Odium's to reclaim — when Navani drove the anti-Voidlight dagger into her chest at her own request, ending the Fused's millennia of rebirth.SA:RoW:Ch 113
Events
- SA:RoW:Ch 14 Walks into the conclave chamber that had been told her she would remain asleep, steps inside the circle of the Nine to meet their eyes, and proposes inverting the tower's suppression to seize Urithiru from within. Wins consent in minutes and accepts Leshwi's offered staff — including Venli — for the infiltration.
- SA:RoW:Ch 31 Walks alongside Venli on the mountain trail, probes her interest in the makay-im and lays out Fused doctrine of Surges and Passion.
- SA:RoW:Ch 37 Confirms the chosen point of entry beneath Urithiru and accepts the Deepest Ones' compliment in measured tones — she agrees the Nine are too cautious.
- SA:RoW:Ch 37 Cuts through the patrol almost casually — a thin point-bladed weapon up through one woman's chin, a black breath that drops the last soldier — then chides Venli (to Ridicule) for fighting unarmed.
- SA:RoW:Ch 38 Leads the silent killing of the basement's scholars and priests, then lays her hand on the crystal pillar and tells it to sleep on — *you shall not awake, at least not as yourself.*
- SA:RoW:Ch 38 Stumbles back from the pillar as the Voidlight slides into the embedded garnets; tells the rest to give the signal to the shanay-im and take the city.
- SA:RoW:Ch 41 Strolls the mural corridor unworried by the invasion above, dispatches the Pursuer and a Deepest One, and tells Venli the war is meant to end here, through partnership rather than conquest.
- SA:RoW:Ch 42 Comes out alarmed at how close the assault is, calls stormforms and Deepest Ones up the stairs, then changes her rhythm to one of Relief once the Pursuer breaks the formation.
- SA:RoW:Ch 42 Reads Navani's airship sketches, sets her own terms, then switches into heavily-accented Alethi to remark that her drawings are remarkable and to offer her work as an engineer.
- SA:RoW:Ch 46 Reads through Navani's notes, trades a piece of ancient fabrial lore for the flying-machine secret, and warns Navani to use her title rather than her name.
- SA:RoW:Ch 51 Stands outside the crystal-pillar chamber with Venli, reading the Alethi queen's stalling tactics in the hallway and humming a small warning about Venli's place beneath the Fused.
- SA:RoW:Ch 59 Stands at the node in practical battle gear, her topknot visible in the moonlight, draws Stormlight from the sapphire into a held diamond, declines to fight directly when Kaladin comes for the gem, but knifes him once for the chance to clock his healing rate and discusses his powers with him afterward as if cataloguing a specimen.
- SA:RoW:Ch 60 Sits in the bedroom of the Blackthorn's former chambers cataloguing his books and papers, granting the Thaylen envoy an audience she does not usually grant humans, accepts the pouch and the caged child without protest, sends Lift off to be locked away, and grants Venli's demand for Rlain's release as compensation for her service.
- SA:RoW:Ch 61 Walks Navani past the failed attack on the crystal-pillar shield, then moves her out of the scholars' room and into a private library — and reveals the wired glass globe and the first sample of Towerlight as a hook for cooperation.
- SA:RoW:Ch 65 Visits Navani's library room with her daughter, inspects the prism experiment and the two split rainbows of Towerlight, confirms the existence of a theory of anti-light and the Fused understanding that opposites annihilate on contact, and offers to abandon the tower entirely if Navani can show that Stormlight and Voidlight are not opposites.
- SA:RoW:Ch 72 Arrives at last in Thaylen vest, trousers, and blouse; shoos the guards from Navani's door; tells Navani not to be too hard on herself; confirms full and continuous surveillance of her conversations with the Sibling; refuses to explain how it was done; commands Navani to study Light and help end the war; reports that the Windrunner survived the node but fled into the storm with an unhealed wound and is unlikely to have lived.
- SA:RoW:Ch 76 Wearing a tailored Alethi havah, sits at eye level with Navani over a Shin wine and the failed Light-mixing apparatus.
- SA:RoW:Ch 84 Arrives at Navani's door in place of the requested magnets, hands her a raysium-tipped dagger, watches the conjoined-spren accident unfold beside her, and tells her to write everything down.
- SA:RoW:Ch 89 Works alongside Navani in the laboratory, declines her offer of a separate treaty, returns with two singers and metal plates to play harmonised tones, and formally bestows the title Voice of Lights.
- SA:RoW:Ch 92 Receives the day's Regal reports, then dismisses Venli with a writ of authority and the human scout report about the listener rebels.
- SA:RoW:Ch 97 Curious, then reverent, then horrified — and finally, after the explosion and her daughter's mercy-killing, hard-eyed and resolute as she seizes Navani's anti-Voidlight apparatus to weaponise an anti-Stormlight.
- SA:RoW:Ch 102 Works at her station beside the Sibling's shield through the night until she rings the spren-killing tone, then meets Moash in the corridor, refuses his blanket refusal to kill Stormblessed, and trades him a spren-killing dagger, a sack of spren-detecting sand, and a diagram of the final node for his promise to ruin Kaladin and deliver Navani.
- SA:RoW:Ch 105 Steps alone into the pillar chamber to finish the corruption with her hand on the stone; sends Navani's guard away so any defaulted covenant with Vyre will not bind her, calls them all *children of our Passions*, accepts the dagger hilt-first and Navani's compromise — and is led directly into Navani's hallway trap.
- SA:RoW:Ch 106 Crawls upright after the painrial dose ends, pulls the anti-Voidlight dagger from her chest, and tells Navani she was tricked well — confessing she wanted the war to end on either side's terms.
- SA:RoW:Ch 107 With her legs dead and her soul dying, latches onto Moash's boot, crawls up his body and stabs him repeatedly with the reversed anti-Voidlight dagger to buy Navani time.
- SA:RoW:Ch 109 Claws at Moash with her remaining arm until he hacks it limp; the dagger drops from her useless hand.
- SA:RoW:Ch 110 Kicked away by Moash and hits the wall limp as a doll while Navani argues for the Sibling's bond.
- SA:RoW:Ch 113 Dying on the hallway floor — Moash's cut spared her eyes; one arm and both legs dead. Tells Navani about the anti-Voidlight diamond on her desk, hums Odium's tone with her, and asks for the dagger.
Backreferences
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 14
- factFused
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- factJeshishin
- factUriam the Defiant
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 31
- factVenli
- factVenli
- factAdhesion
- factRothan
- factThe Pursuer
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 37
- factVenli
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- factRhythm of Agony
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 38
- factRaboniel
- factRhythm of the Terrors
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 40
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Lady of Pains
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 41
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factThe Pursuer
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 42
- factRaboniel
- factthe Sibling's Shield
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 46
- factralkalest
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 49
- factthe Sibling
- factthe Sibling's Shield
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 51
- factRaboniel
- factScholarform
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 53
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 56
- factVenli
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 59
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factWired Glass Globe
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 60
- factLift
- factVenli
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- factthe Sibling's Shield
- factTowerlight
- factThe Silent Fused
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factThe Silent Fused
- factAnti-Light
- factPure Tones of Roshar
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 72
- factthe Sibling
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 74
- factVenli
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 76
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factthe Rhythm of War
- factRaboniel's Daughter
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 79
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 83
- factLeshwi
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 84
- factFused
- factWarlight
- factWarlight
- factraysium
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 89
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factVoice of Lights
- factMizthla
- factblack sand
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 92
- factVenli
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 96
- factVenli
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 97
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factRaboniel
- factaxi
- factHerald-killing dagger
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 102
- factVenli
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 104
- factPhendorana
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 105
- factthe Word of Deeds
- factthe Night Known
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 106
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 107
- factRaboniel
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 109
- summarySA:RoW:Ch 110
- factRaboniel
- factthe Rhythm of War
- summarySA:WaT:I-3
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 105