Vasher
also known as Kalad the Usurper, Peacegiver the Blessed
The same off-world swordsman the Alethi have known for years as the surly ardent Zahel — instructor of Adolin and Renarin in the duelling yards. The name *Vasher* is the older one, used by those who knew him before he came to Roshar; Axindweth addresses him by it throughout her interrogation, signalling that she recognises him from far earlier than his time among the Alethi. SA:WaT:I-9
The name Vasher wore at the end of the Manywar when he brought his D'Denir army back to seize Hallandren from himself and stop the fighting. People could not understand the abrupt change in him; history split him into two men. Peacegiver the Blessed and Kalad the Usurper are the same Returned, still alive, still answering to neither name. STD:WB:Ch 58 superseded at SA:WaT:I-9
The name Vasher wore at the beginning of the Manywar when he raised his Lifeless army and seized Hallandren from the old royal house. He has carried that guilt for three centuries, and called himself other things since. STD:WB:Ch 58 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 58
A scarred, scraggly Returned swordsman who lives quietly through three hundred years of careful self-imposed obscurity, carrying the sword Shashara made. History calls him by other names. He was the Kalad who began the Manywar with his Lifeless army; he was the Peacegiver who ended it with the D'Denir he made and then hid in the city for someone better to find. STD:WB:Ch 58 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 58
A Returned who ruled Hallandren after Kalad the Usurper at the close of the Manywar, and from whose succession the present Court of Gods descends three hundred years on. Blushweaver names him as the second link in Hallandren's chain of legitimacy, between the lost royal house and the Court. STD:WB:Ch 7 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 58
The man who began the Manywar some three centuries before the present. He used his knowledge of BioChromatic Breath to raise a vast army of Lifeless and seize Hallandren from the old royal house, driving the survivors into the highlands that became Idris. He defended the kingdom with that army even as he broke it. STD:WB:Ch 7 superseded at STD:WB:Ch 7
A weather-worn man in a frayed brown cloak, picked up off a tavern floor in T'Telir after starting a brawl and striking one of the Iridescent Tones' priests. The bar fight was no accident — he engineered his arrest to land in the God King's dungeons, where he intends to free his sword and murder a fellow prisoner. He carries an aura of someone who has done this before. STD:WB:Prologue superseded at STD:WB:Ch 7
Known facts
- first-heighteningCarries roughly fifty Breaths at the prologue — enough to reach the First Heightening, but a shadow of an unspecified larger total he once held. He gathers Breath the slow way, from willing donors like Vahr, rather than accept whatever cost would buy him the higher Heightenings instantly.STD:WB:Prologue
- kills-vahrMurders Vahr in his cell to deny Hallandren's court the rebel's hoard of Breath, taking the hundreds of Breaths for himself in exchange for a clean death. He has waited two years for the opening.STD:WB:Prologue
- awakens-large-non-human-objectsCarries enough Breath to Awaken objects far larger than a man and far from human in shape — a wool tapestry the size of a wall, Commanded to lower him, twists out of the stone, forms a hand from its fabric, and sets him down without difficulty. Wakened cloth even attempts to mimic musculature it does not need.STD:WB:Ch 5
- aura-noticeable-to-normal-peopleNow carries enough Breath that nearby colours visibly brighten around him — obvious to anyone of the First Heightening and noticeable even to ordinary people, ending the days when he could hide and skulk.STD:WB:Ch 5
- commissioned-the-ddenirLore in T'Telir holds that the first of the D'Denir Celabrin warrior statues, which now stand on streets all over the city, were commissioned by Peacegiver the Blessed at the close of the Manywar. Subsequent Returned have paid for new ones each year, growing the count steadily over three hundred years.STD:WB:Ch 9
- gathered-light-of-peaceGathered the thousands of Breaths that became the Light of Peace during the Manywar and passed them on to the first Hallandren God King; the inheritance has descended father to son ever since.STD:WB:Ch 15
- killed-arsteelKilled Arsteel — the fourth member of Denth's band — in Yarn Dred a couple of months before the present, by Jewels's and Tonk Fah's account using the black sword he carries, though the corpse showed no telltale blackening around the wound. Denth now intends to put a sword through his gut.STD:WB:Ch 19
- took-vahrs-breathsIs reported by Jewels to be carrying Breath enough for at least the Fourth — perhaps the Fifth — Heightening, probably taken from Vahr; bodies attributed to him are turning up in T'Telir alleys with the wounds corrupt and black.STD:WB:Ch 19
- at-second-heighteningHis remaining hoard of Breath is barely enough to reach the Second Heightening — the same count Vivenna now carries, and a fraction of what he once held. The infiltration of Mercystar's palace expends most of it.STD:WB:Ch 21
- awakened-clothingGoes about T'Telir in Awakened clothing — trousers and shirt seeded with Breath he can call up with a thought. Stiffening Commands turn the cloth into a second skeleton that absorbs falls and amplifies his legs; a more difficult Command lets the tassels at his cuffs move as a second set of fingers on his arm. The finger-tassels cost much of his hoard to install and he is loath to work without them.STD:WB:Ch 21
- life-senseEven at this thin level of Breath his life sense reaches outdoors at night through stone: kneeling on the palace roof he can faintly feel the grass growing far below and gauge its distance.STD:WB:Ch 21
- court-informantHas an informant inside the Court of Gods — not himself a priest — who steered him to Mercystar as a target politically peripheral enough to risk, and who knew of a concealed trapdoor under her palace and the splintered board that marks it.STD:WB:Ch 21
- killed-shasharaHe killed Shashara, the woman who made Nightblood, long ago — and he killed Arsteel more recently, and intends to kill Denth in time. Nightblood refuses to acknowledge that Shashara is dead and keeps asking when they can go see her.STD:WB:Ch 29
- holds-more-breath-than-vivennaHeld captive in his slum room, Vivenna senses that Vasher carries even more Breath than she does — yet she felt no aura at all when he ambushed her in her own room. He can suppress his BioChromatic presence at will.STD:WB:Ch 35
- bequeathed-fifty-thousand-breaths-not-to-useOn his death Peacegiver left the Hallandren priesthood a hoard of over fifty thousand BioChromatic Breaths — the God King's present treasure — with instructions to keep the hoard safe and not to use it. The god-emperor priesthood that descends from him reads this bequest as a religious charge that overrides even the will of the God King who carries it; this is Treledees's justification for everything the priests have done to Susebron.STD:WB:Ch 40
- baits-thugs-with-nightblood-to-save-vivennaVasher keeps Vivenna out of Denth's hands by ramming the black sword sheath-down in the street and waiting on a rooftop while the thugs escorting her annihilate each other on it. Only after every one is dead does he descend on twisting Awakened ropes, re-sheathe the sword, and carry the unresisting Vivenna off over his shoulder.STD:WB:Ch 41
- refuses-to-discuss-type-four-biochromatic-entitiesWhen Vivenna extrapolates from Vasher's own scheme — Type Three being an Awakened object without sentience — and asks whether a fourth category exists, an Awakened object *with* sentience, he stands, ends the lesson, and warns her never to ask again. The change in his voice frightens her.STD:WB:Ch 45
- poor-duelist-due-to-angerWalking back from the rescue, Vasher apologises to Vivenna for his rage in the thieves' cellar. A warrior, he tells her, ought to fight calm; he never has, and that is why he has never been a good duelist. The killing in the lair had brought him to the edge of drawing Nightblood outright.STD:WB:Ch 48
- can-give-multi-command-awakeningsClimbing the wall of the God King's palace, Vasher Awakens his rope with a three-part Command — *climb things, then grab things, then pull me up* — that runs as a sequence. Chaining multiple Commands into a single Awakening is a feat most Awakeners find very difficult; for him it is reflex.STD:WB:Ch 50
- animates-clothing-as-duelistsDrains a fallen soldier's undershirt and Commands the empty shirt-and-trousers — *fight for me, as if you were me* — to fight beside him as an invisible duelist, then makes a second one. He, an Awakened shirt, and an Awakened pair of trousers fight as a trio against the palace guards.STD:WB:Ch 56
- kills-arsteel-by-bestowal-trapReveals to Denth — and the reader — how he killed Arsteel in the duel Denth could never accept: by touching him mid-fight and giving him fifty Breaths, whose unwelcome rush of pleasure dropped him to his knees long enough to slash his throat. *Breath is worth a fortune. To put it into someone, then kill them, is to lose more wealth than most men will ever know. They never expect it.*STD:WB:Ch 57
- is-kalad-and-peacegiverReveals on the palace rooftop that he is the man history calls both Kalad the Usurper and Peacegiver the Blessed — the Returned who began the Manywar and the Returned who ended it. He has been alive the whole three centuries since, *paying for what he did, or trying to*. He stands before Susebron in Returned form to prove the claim.STD:WB:Ch 58
- gives-army-to-susebronGives the D'Denir army to the God King with the charge to *use it to protect, not attack — only use it in an emergency*, and walks away from the responsibility. *They are yours now. Do better with them than I did.*STD:WB:Ch 58
- is-one-of-the-five-scholarsConfirms that the name *Talaxin*, one of the Five Scholars of three hundred years ago, was his — though it is not the name he was born with and not the name he goes by. He cannot remember his life before he Returned.STD:WB:Epilogue
- returned-can-change-formReturned can change their physical form to match how they perceive themselves — the elderly look elderly, the heroic look heroic, the beautiful look as beautiful as they imagine. He keeps himself looking like a scraggly mortal man on purpose. The hair-colour shift in the Idrian royal line is a watered echo of the same Returned inheritance.STD:WB:Epilogue
- was-named-warbreaker-the-peacefulWhen the unnamed new Returned who would become him was found and kept alive with Breaths by the Cult of Returned — which later became the Iridescent Tones — they gave him the name Warbreaker the Peaceful. He did not like it; *it didn't seem to fit me*. What he can't figure out, he tells Vivenna, is whether the name was truly prophetic or if he is just trying to live up to it.STD:WB:Epilogue
Events
- STD:WB:Ch 15 Stands two rows behind Vivenna in ragged brown and bearded scruff, his black-hilted sword exposed, his Fifth-Heightening halo and pointed gaze unmistakable to her.
- STD:WB:Ch 33 Waits on Vivenna's balcony in worn dark clothes and several days of stubble, with the black sword across his arm, tells her she is causing him a great deal of trouble, and Awakens her own drapes to wrap and choke her unconscious before she can scream.
- STD:WB:Ch 35 Holds Vivenna in a slum-room hideout, frees her hands, drops the unsheathed black sword in front of her and forces her to pick it up, then reties her to the doorknob and leaves on errands he says she has forced on him.
- STD:WB:Ch 41 Watches from a rooftop until the thugs have killed themselves on the sword, then descends on twisting Awakened ropes, sheathes the weapon, and carries Vivenna off over his shoulder.
- STD:WB:Ch 43 Sits at the table eating with the black sword leaning beside him, gives Vivenna back the shawl with her invested Breath in it, and teaches her the Command to draw it out.
- STD:WB:Ch 43 Tries the Idrian community men with his own blunt argument, fails to move them, and steps aside to let Vivenna do the talking.
- STD:WB:Ch 45 Arrives at the rented room mid-practice carrying Nightblood and a duffel of provisions; teaches Vivenna the conditional Command *hold when thrown*; sits cross-legged eating dried squid while lecturing her on the four types of BioChromatic entity and the two laws of Awakening; refuses to discuss Type Four; gives her a dueling sword.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Watches Vivenna practise from outside the window on an Awakened rope (he is currently a Drab, with his Breath stored in his shirt); reports Denth's safehouses empty; leaves to chase the Nanrovah carriage lead; returns hours later to dress in his Awakened battle clothes.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Silences the den's outer guards, animates three straw men to find the trapdoor, fights through the cellar in his Awakened cloak and tassels until his rage nearly draws Nightblood outright; Vivenna's call pulls him back. The caged child goes to him without hesitation.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Carries the child to her father's mansion, pausing on the street to whisper a few Commanded words to her alone; the guard dogs of the estate calm and trail him happily; he refuses Nanrovah's thanks beyond a demand that he stop the Lifeless slaughter.
- STD:WB:Ch 48 Walks Vivenna home through the dark streets, tells her she has redeemed herself by spotting the Nanrovah carriage clue, apologises for losing his temper in the cellar, and confides that he has never been a good duelist because of it.
- STD:WB:Ch 49 Stands at the rail above the arena benches with Vivenna; Nightblood left at home at her insistence. Cannot find Denth; leaves and returns with word of Siri's announced pregnancy; agrees to help her rescue her sister.
- STD:WB:Ch 56 Bloodied and held no Breath, hanging from a ceiling hook in the torture room. Vivenna cuts him down and gasps her Breath across into him; he takes up her sword and meets Denth, only to be knocked out the third-storey window.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Opens the closet and frees her, dragging Nightblood in its sheath; tells her Denth is dead, that they have lost, and that the Lifeless left the city an hour ago for the highlands.
- STD:WB:Ch 58 Strip-searched of every scrap of cloth, brought before the God King in a wrap and nothing else, and Returns to his full divine form on the spot — chest filled, hair gold, scars bright but inconsequential — to convince them.
- STD:WB:Epilogue Walks out of T'Telir beside Vivenna in his mortal scraggly form, Nightblood in hand, and tells her where they are going and who is waiting at the other end.
- SA:WaT:I-9 Axindweth addresses him by his Nalthian name *Vasher* throughout the interrogation; same person as the ardent Adolin and Renarin know.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:WB:Prologue
- factNightblood
- factNightblood
- factAwakening
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 5
- factNightblood
- factBebid
- factKalad's Phantoms
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 7
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 7
- factHallandren
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 9
- factVasher
- factD'Denir Celabrin
- factTears of Edgli
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 15
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 15
- factLight of Peace
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 19
- factArsteel
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 21
- factThe Iridescent Tones
- factMercystar's Palace
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 25
- factDenth
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 28
- factD'Denir Garden
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 29
- factNightblood
- factShashara
- factShashara
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 32
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 32
- factHallandren
- factStrifelover
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 35
- factVasher
- factVivenna
- factJewels
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 37
- factBioChromatic Breath
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 39
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 40
- factVasher
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 41
- factVasher
- factNightblood
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 43
- factAwakening
- factLifeless
- factVivenna
- factVivenna
- factDenth
- factDenth
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 44
- factThe God King
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 45
- factVasher
- factAwakening
- factVivenna
- factAustrinism
- factType One BioChromatic Entity
- factType Two BioChromatic Entity
- factType Three BioChromatic Entity
- factType Four BioChromatic Entity
- factLaw of BioChromatic Parallelism
- factLaw of Comparability
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 47
- factSusebron
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 48
- factVasher
- factBioChromatic Breath
- factAwakening
- factVivenna
- factNanrovah
- factNanrovah
- factMisel
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 49
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 50
- factVasher
- factNightblood
- factNightblood
- factAwakening
- factDenth
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 51
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 52
- factTonk Fah
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 53
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 54
- factThe God King
- factTreledees
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 55
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 56
- factNightblood
- factNightblood
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 57
- factSusebron
- factDenth
- factDenth
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58
- summarySTD:WB:Ch 58
- factVasher
- factVasher
- factAwakening
- factKalad's Phantoms
- factD'Denir Celabrin
- factD'Denir Celabrin
- factD'Denir Celabrin
- summarySTD:WB:Epilogue
- summarySTD:WB:Epilogue
- summarySTD:WB:Epilogue
- factVasher
- factVasher
- factVivenna
- factKalad's Phantoms
- factYesteel
- factKuth and Huth
- factWarbreaker the Peaceful
- summarySA:WaT:Ch 35
- summarySA:WaT:I-9