Writing Journal

As I read your comments and try to work through these matters on my own, I keep a writing journal.  In lieu of a snippet, this is what came out of the current round of comments regarding Bane.  Here you can see my evolving thoughts:

Perhaps Bane’s shadow-soul has a sort of innocence.  As an entity, it didn’t consent to what it became and it acts by mindless instinct.  Dalis-sar could have sensed this and not destroyed it.  (He could be confused by the conflict) Would he then hunt Bane himself?  If so, by this reckoning, Bane got to his temple and sanctuary before DS found him and there he has stayed ever since.  (And, of course, DS was soon afterward re-templed)
Bane could still feel that he has lost honor by his actions.  The guilt belongs somewhere.  Bane is well aware that he was doing evil by following his appetites.  Giving his soul to Ishtier was a dodge and an excuse.
I dunno, though:  one’s instinct is that the Lower Town Monster is Bane’s corrupted, detached soul.  That’s certainly the way I’ve presented it.  It’s possible, though, that the situation is more complicated than Jame thinks in God Stalk.  She turns out to be wrong about a number of things re: gods and demons.
Then too, the Kencyr concept of honor allows for considerable evil as long as one doesn’t lie about it.  See Caldane.  Bane hasn’t lied.  However, he might at heart be more moral and traditional than Caldane, knowing that evil must be paid for, recognizing it when he sees it.
Is he a psychopath?  Maybe.  If so, he’s adopted a moral code from the Kencyrath.  Even if he doesn’t follow it, he knows when he breaks it not just in the letter of the law but also in its spirit.  He will now be very aware of his compromised nature/honor.  What he really wants is an honorable death.  Ironically, any death will be hard to get while his body and soul remain separated.  When/if they reunite, will he become horrible, like Dorian Gray?  Something dramatic will happen to him, anyway.  That won’t be until near the end.
There’s an on-going question here of honor and justice.  As I said, guilt belongs somewhere.  Bane is aware of that.  He thought, if he preserved his soul in its purity by entrusting it to Ishtier, he could do what he wanted.  His honorable death would result in reclaiming it in the end.  He really believed this.  Then he finds out what Ishtier has done with his soul, i.e. used it to create a demon.  Where is his honorable death now?  Both he and the soul-demon have done terrible things, mostly to children.  There’s a kind of innocence in Bane, though.  He’s tried to play by the rules as he understood them.  He was essentially naïve – a fool, he would say.  Ignorant and innocent?  A broken, wrong thing, anyway, who will give anything to be made right, within the bounds of his dignity and sense of humor.  He will pay, if only he can figure out how, but always with a twist.  Part of his faith is that things come at a cost.  He needs to pay.  His regained honor depends on it.  He’s ironic, never pathetic.  He’s posing a problem, a challenge, to Jame, handing himself over to her as he did at Mt. Alban.  She has to make decisions too.  In a sense he’s using her as a moral compass the way she does Marc, something that she realizes with profound chagrin.
And I mustn’t forget that he’s blood-bound to her, unless he’s a sufficiently strong Shanir himself to have mitigated her blood in his mouth when he bit her lip.  (I don’t think I understood blood binding when I wrote that, but it happened.  Is he Shanir?  I wouldn’t be surprised.)
There has to be a “logic” to these things.  They have to make sense in context.  Said context is at base moral and psychological.  Therein lies the realism of fantasy.
(An interesting note in VE Schwab’s Vicious:  Victor is at least a sociopath since he was reborn, but he recognizes this and tries to compensate by remembering what it is to have a conscience.  Maybe Bane is more like Dexter, though, a psychopath who has been given a moral code.  Either way, what fun!)