Welcome back to the Words of Radiance Reread on Tor.com! For the last three weeks we’ve been plowing through the interludes between Part One and Part Two. This week we come to Interlude Four: Last Legion, in which Eshonai makes a society-ending mistake. I’ve also compiled Navani’s diary entries for your reading pleasure.
This reread will contain spoilers for The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. The index for this reread can be found here, and more Stormlight Archive goodies are indexed here. Read on, and join us in the comments.
Interlude Four: Last Legion
Point of View: Eshonai
Setting: Narak
Symbology: Listener, Taln
IN WHICH Eshonai, Thude, and Bila examine and argue about a trapped stormspren; the old gods are invoked; Eshonai hates her uniform; Eshonai worries about insubordination and progress; dwindling populations refuse to be ignored; three dullforms attempt to avoid the wrath of humanity; Eshonai visits her ailing mother, and is barely recognized; her mother sings the song of how they left the dark home; Eshonai is reunited with her childhood maps; the Five gather, despite Eshonai’s tardiness; Venli pushes for stormform; Eshonai finally agrees, on condition that she be the one to test it.
Quote of the Week:
“Long are the days since we knew the dark home,” Mother sang softly to one of the Rhythms of Remembrance. “The Last Legion, that was our name then. Warriors who had been set to fight in the farthest plains, this place that had once been a nation and was now rubble. Dead was the freedom of most people. The forms, unknown, were forced upon us. Forms of power, yes, but also forms of obedience. The gods commanded, and we did obey, always. Always.”
Oral history can pack a lot of information into a story, can’t it? This song answers some questions, showing where the forms came from originally, and why the Parshendi fear their gods, but it raises more questions still. What army did the Parshendi form a legion in? Are these “gods” the shards? Where’s the dark home, anyway?
Commentary: Alice did a great job explaining the mechanics of the Rhythms and Forms in her reread of Interlude One, so I won’t linger on that for too long. We learn in this chapter that each form is assumed by bonding a different kind of spren during a highstorm, and that attuning to a Rhythm lets each Parshendi hear the same, ongoing rhythm. They even keep time this way, which, wow, useful. Turns out the Parshendi ARE magic music hivemind people. I want to know who set the rhythms to begin with.
Interlude Four is riddled with Parshendi politics. Almost every conversation is a political one. Bila declares to Eshonai that she’ll do anything to kill more humans, up to and including welcoming back the old gods. The dullforms, by occupying a form that dulls their minds and reflects the former slavery of their people, are demonstrating an absolute lack of confidence in the soldiery and general leadership. Eshonai’s mother stays in workform because she “didn’t want to encourage people to see one form as more valuable than another, that such stratification could destroy them.” Her body is an anti-classist statement, one that she’s made continuously for decades.
We see these politics to prepare us for the meeting of the Five. The Parshendi are led by a representative council made up of individuals who have agreed to keep one form for an indeterminate amount of time. In this way they hope to make sure that every form/class is taken into consideration when top-level decisions must be made. This has problems: dullform and mateform are far less suited to governance than nimbleform or soldierform. On the whole, though, it’s a decent solution to the problem of ruling a vastly heterogeneous population. Through all of this, I’m most impressed by Zuln, who tries to speak for the slaveforms as well as the dullforms. Acting for all those who have not yet been liberated must be a terrible burden. I wonder how well he can accomplish this, through the hardship of wearing dullform.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a story about how well the Five faced the challenges that were presented to them. This is the story of how the virulent idea of stormform toppled the Parshendi. The Five decide matters of policy by conversation as much as by vote, and the more mentally agile forms dominate conversation. Venli has a tremendous advantage when it comes time to press her case. And it sure doesn’t help that her sister provides the main source of token resistance. Two is an unacceptable number of siblings to have on a five person ruling body.
Venli and Eshonai also have disproportional sway because they are each the head of the two major organized concerns of the Parshendi, research and warfare. That’s probably why things go wrong so fast when the storm hits the fan.
Eshonai’s mom makes the sadness happen. She, the most knowledgeable keeper of old stories, is suffering from debilitating memory loss, and only recognizes Eshonai as Eshonai for half of their conversation. Everything is crumbling in this chapter: the army’s ranks are diminished, rows and rows of buildings stand empty, Parshendi are degenerating to dullform, and ancestral memory is being lost. These factors push Eshonai towards desperate measures. All will be lost.
Eshonai hates her uniform. She brings that up half a dozen times. The discovery of the maps she drew as a child mark a sharp contrast between her present and her past. Eshonai doesn’t like being a general, or a warrior. She didn’t want to be in charge of a doomed people. In fact, she’d prefer to be out in the wild on her own, discovering and making progress on her own. Her family has guilted her into a far more social role, and she’s really feeling the pressure: “Once, she’d seen the world as something fresh and exciting. New, like a blossoming forest after a storm. She was dying slowly, as surely as her people were.”
That’s rough, buddy.
Sprenspotting: We see a trapped stormspren, in a gemstone, just waiting to ruin everyone’s day. It’s described as small and smoky, not full of red lightning, but this isn’t even its final form. Eshonai also attracts a few fearspren, which she describes as long purple worms. Her language regarding spren continues to characterize them more like animals than materials, compared to how the human characters describe them.
Heraldic Symbolism: Taln, the Herald of War, watches over this chapter, being all
Dependable and Resourceful. He’s clearly the best personality match for Eshonai in her current form, and is also probably pretty used to everything crumbling and being destroyed, what with how he’s been stuck in Damnation forever.
The Diary: As promised, here is Navani’s diary, collected for your convenience.
Jeseses 1174
To be perfectly frank, what has happened these last two months is upon my head. The death, destruction, loss, and pain are my burden. I should have seen it coming. And I should have stopped it.
Our first clue was the Parshendi. Even weeks before they abandoned their pursuit of the gemhearts, their pattern of fighting changed. They lingered on the plateaus after battles, as if waiting for something.
Soldiers reported being watched from afar by an unnerving number of Parshendi scouts. Then we noticed a new pattern of their penetrating close to the camps in the night and then quickly retreating. I can only surmise that our enemiesw ere ven then preparing their stratagem to end this war.
The next clue came on the walls. I did not ignore this sign, but neither did I grasp its full implications.
The sign on the wall proposed a greater danger, even, than its deadline. To foresee the future is of the Voidbringers.
Jesesan 1174
We had never considered that there might be Parshendi spies hiding among our slaves. This is something else I should have seen.
Jesesach 1174
I was unprepared for the grief my loss brought—like an unexpected rain—breaking from a clear sky and crashing down upon me. Gavilar’s death years ago was overwhelming, but this . . . this nearly crushed me.
I seek not to use my grief as an excuse, but it is an explanation. People act strangely soon after encountering an unexpected loss. Though Jasnah had been away for some time, her loss was unexpected. I, like many, assumed her to be immortal.
I wish to think that had I not been under sorrow’s thumb, I would have seen earlier the approaching dangers. Yet in all honesty, I’m not certain anything could have been done.
But, understandably, we were focused on Sadeas. His betrayal was still fresh, and I saw its signs each day as I passed empty barracks and grieving widows. We knew that Sadeas would not simply rest upon his slaughters in pride. More was coming.
Unfortunately, we fixated upon Sadeas’s plotting so much that we did not take note of the changed pattern of our enemies, the murderers of my husband, the true danger. I would like to know what wind brought about their sudden, inexplicable transformation.
I hope you enjoy Navani’s hindsight and bitter self-recrimination. Alice will return next week to lead us into Part Two: Winds’ Approach.
Carl Engle-Laird is an editorial assistant at Tor.com, where he acquires and edits original fiction. You can follow him on Twitter here.
I don’t wanna contemplate Eshonai’s change until we have to. Stop bringing me down, Carl…. and BWS.
Venli just comes across as so evil, even in her own sister’s thoughts. I don’t know if it’s because she’s already under the influence of Odium from her experimentation with new forms (as Eshonai seems to suspect sometimes).
Eshonai’s mother seems like a true sage, even with her failing memory. I wonder if she’ll end up saving Eshonai in the end.
Navani’s diary didn’t seem as enlightening or tantalizing as some other headings in other sectionss have been. Not much to say about it, really.
I was very surprised that stormspren were not red. I’m not sure what to make of that, as it seems that Odium-associated spren are pretty consistently red (I assume, based on Dalinar’s vision at what might have been the Purelake, where he learned they were looking for an “odd” spren and ended up finding a red one that then formed a ?Thunderclast? ) Of course, then the Stormform Parshendi have red eyes, even though the spren wasn’t red, and I’m pretty sure that’s a sign of being controlled by Odium, so I’m not really sure why the stormspren aren’t red. I’m confused.
Carl, in your commentary are you claiming that Venli is on the council during Interlude 4? If you are, I beleive you are mistaken. At this point, she is agruing before the council.
I apologize if I misread your commentary.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
(aka the musespren)
I think Navani is being too hard on herself. I am not sure anybody could have predicted that the Everstorm would have come during the Weeping because the Parshendi changed their military tactics. Likewise, one cannot blame the Japanese leaders for not surrendering sooner to prevent the US from dropping the first atomic bomb. The atomic bomb was such a game changer that the Japan could not have anticipated such a weapon.
That some of the Parshedi would act as spies is another matter. Unfortunately, even had Navani had considered the possibility that Parshedi would spy, most of the Alethi Highlords would have laughed off such a suggestion. Alethians appear to have such a high regard for their race and culture and an equally disregard for all other races and cultures. These unenlightened men and women would have thought that an unsophisticated people like the Parshendi could be capable of spying on the Alethians.
Given the destruction the Everstorm caused, I wonder if most of the Highlords and their advisors truly understood how far they underestimated the Parshendi as a culture. A culture equal to that of Alethians in a number of ways. I tend to think not. Certainly Sadeas (had he lived long enough) and his wife would/did not.
Thanks for reading my musings,
AndrewB
(aka the musespren)
Hi Stormlight fans! I’ve been steering clear of this re-read so that I don’t get bogged down writing WAY TOO MUCH on this site, but while we are on the topic of the Parshendi in general, I do think that we have to start asking some serious questions about what their role is in the ecosystem of Roshar.
1. Roshar is a poorly terraformed planet that has been inhabited for so long that its human inhabitants have forgotten they are not native. I’ve raised this once or twice and haven’t gotten very far, but (to jump ahead), Hoid’s linguistic argument with Shallan about the derivation of the word “axehound” seems like definitive, if indirectly presented evidence. And just in general, you have the picture of a world where the overwhelmingly dominant animal life pattern is basically crustaceous and has a polygonal inner structure instead of a spine, plus the introduction of humans (in numbers so large that magical means are required to provide adequate food) and a small number of luxury domestic mammals.
2. So this raises questions about the Parshendi. On the one hand, they are crustaceous, and better adapted to the environment of Roshar than humans or other definite mammals. (Are we certain whether or not they are mammalian? They have sexual dimorphism, but do they breastfeed? Just live birth isn’t proof.) However, they also seem to be vertebrates. They have only four limbs in approximately the same positions as humans. (Have we ever seen a Parshendi skeleton down with the general debris?) So, are they a) The native inhabitants of Roshar who have used methods similar to their current form-changes to end up at a midpoint between native and mammalian body type? And if so, why? Or b) They are also colonists who were willing to undergo substantial physical modification by some unknown process to better match the terrain, and no longer remember they are not native.
Either could be supported by the general idea expressed in the podcast of “society built on hopelessly faulty knowledge of its own history”. Thoughts? And apologies if this has been done to death earlier and I wasn’t there. I really don’t have time to read the whole Way of Kings archive!
@@.-@ Mutantalbinocrocodile – Welcome! We’ve discussed the Parshendi vs. Humans natives vs. intruders question before, multiple times, but I’m not sure I could point you to any one particular post to read what’s been discussed. I tend to believe the Parshendi stories of being native to Roshar, and the humans as intruders who forced them off their land.
We don’t know much about Parshendi, but I assume they are a native Mammalian species, or close enough, anyway. We know that they have cross-bred with humans at some point (both Horneaters and some other segments of the population have some amount of Parshendi blood- confirmed by BWS I believe, but don’t remember exactly where.) That seems to imply that they are likely mammals and probably primates, even if they are a different species.
@carl – I’m not typically one to point out typos (at least when they don’t obscure meaning), but when it’s a quote from the actual text, I feel somewhat obligated. In Navani’s diary entry, under Jeseses, there’s a segment that reads ”
enemiesw ere ven” This should be “enemies were even”.
Other thoughts on the diary entry: Not thrilled about the whole “to foresee the future is of the Voidbringers” thing. It’s a case of the reader knowing more than the characters in-world – we know that Cultivation is better at future sight than Honor, but that seeing the future isn’t inherently evil in and of itself. This is an understandable thought process for Navani to have, given her cultural assumptions and prejudices, but it’s still worrying, especially in light of her nephew’s status as a Truthwatcher. I’m hoping she’ll be able to overcome her prejudices for the sake of her family.
One of the things that I found fascinating about the Eshonai Interludes is her descriptions of spren, specifically how those descriptions differ from humans’ descriptions. I would guess that this is due to the Parshendi existing partially in the Cognitive Realm, but since we didn’t know that when we first read the Interludes, I spent a good deal of time wondering what was going on there.
I love that Eshonai wants to protect her people by being the first one in stormform, but I shudder to think of how badly that turned out for her.
Also, not a huge fan of Bila’s attitude. Anytime anyone says anything even remotely close to “by any means necessary”, I immediately start coming up with all the ways that can go horribly wrong.
And some listeners deliberately choosing to go into dullform is simply tragic. Despair and hopelessness on a level that makes you physically change your nature so you can’t care any more would be unbearable.
Oh, I want to hang out here ALL DAY to talk about this chapter… but life won’t let me. So I’ll just make a couple of comments.
One: this chapter was where I first realized that humans had learned to trap spren in gemstones, and I was shocked. (Turns out that it was revealed in TWoK, in Navani’s notebook on fabrials… but I hadn’t even realized anyone had translated her script. Oy.) I’m still not sure I feel… right about that. It’s one thing for a spren to form an intentional bond with a human, but to be trapped in a stone for human use just doesn’t seem right. It may be that I’m simply antropomorphizing too much; some of the spren do seem to be simple, physical effects, after all. But the more I see the difference between spren in the physical world and spren in the Cognitive realm, the more this bothers me. Even though I know most of the fabrials are wonderful feats of engineering that make life better for humans, it still bothers me.
The other thing I’ve been waiting to say is that Navani was completely wrong in some of her assumptions. She thinks that she should have seen the change of strategy coming from the changed patterns in the Parshendi behavior… but at the time this was first noticable (lingering after battles, being watched) Eshonai was trying to figure out a way to surrender without having her entire people killed. There have been notes in previous chapters about observing these behaviors, and here, we learn that even at the end of this Interlude, Eshonai is still trying to find Dalinar so that she can sue for peace. It will be at least ten days, perhaps more, before she makes the deadly transformation.
It’s heartbreaking, really. Both sides had done things that made it nearly impossible to communicate straightforwardly, of course. (Sadeas kill-’em-all GRRRRRR!) By the time Eshonai figured out that Dalinar was the one she could perhaps talk to, Sadeas set up the Tower betrayal and Kaladin rushed in to save Dalinar, incapacitating Eshonai in the process. Then Dalinar gave up his Blade and Plate and quit all active involvement in the battles. Through a series of spying and observation, and the courage of a few Parshendi who risked death to communicate, Eshonai managed to set up a meeting between herself and Dalinar… just too late. Just after she had to give in to the pressure and bond this stormspren. Just after she relinquished her will and her desire for peace to “the old gods” who wanted war and Desolation. It makes me cry.
Thanks Carl,
I do find the title “The Last Legion” to likely be hinting at something that the reader will find incredibly important and relevant a couple of books down the road. I think we’ll probably realize the significance of Eshonai’s mother’s song, as well. I think we are eventually given the impression that the “gods” referenced here are the Unmade, not the Shard(s), but I can’t recall where in the text I got that impression.
“That’s rough, buddy.”
Reminded me of Zuko!
The gods of the Parshendi are most definitely the Unmade.
Later, in stormform:
Epigraphs:
And finally Rlain:
The Unmade appear to be listeners who gave themselves up to Odium, who basically destroyed them in order to make super-powerful things. People often call them spren – including Taravangian and the listeners themselves – but it’s clear they’re not quite the same thing, as they originally came from living beings (whereas other spren did not). I suppose calling them spren is reasonable enough for them. They’re probably somewhat similar.
Given how Nergaoul can project the Thrill across a quarter of the continent, the Unmade speaking in every listener’s mind seems to fit well. They’ve got the power.
@wetlander
I have no issues with spren being trapped in gemstones, as it’s clear the vast majority of them are on the level of fish or animals and aren’t conscious so much as are perceived as having one exaggerated human trait (windspren are seen as mischevious, but they can’t talk and they don’t understand anything). They’re probably actually below the intelligence we’d ascribe to animals, more forces of nature than anything.
It’s an interesting discussion to have, though – I’d have issues with Syl being stuck in a gemstone. Perhaps we’ll see some sort of people who refuse to use fabrials, though for some reason I don’t think so – it’d be hard to write them in without either making them seem silly or making everyone seem like horrible slavers for using the fabrials. I can’t recall Brandon writing a vegetarian before.
It is particularly sad, of course, that this horrible outcome happened because Eshonai was being extra careful and conscientious and insisted on testing the new spren herself.
Had Venli and her helpers been the first to “test” the new form, Eshonai would have noticed the danger signs from the outside, and she had enough clout to oppose mass adoption of the Storm form fairly effectively. But as she was the first to be taken over, it only made the transformation of Parshendi into the voidbringers much quicker and easier.
A truly tragic, heartbreaking chapter. I do expect Eshonai to ditch the stormform somehow – after all, the Lost Legion had managed to get rid of their Odium-forms. But Parshendi as a people are pretty much gone, alas.
That is, unless the thousand survivors somehow manage to convert the parshmen into wholesome forms and acculturate them into new Parshendi.
To use the MCU analogy, Venli is Hydra to Eshonai’s SHIELD. She and her compatriots really felt to me like they were quite deliberate in their actions, including manipulating Eshonai into volunteering to be the Stormform test subject (since they knew that she was their primary opposition, and that Stormform would thoroughly subvert her).
If I had to make a guess about the Last Legion bit, I’d say that the Parshendi had a vast realm with far-flung outposts, of which the one in what would become the Shattered Plains was the furthest outpost from the heart of their civilization. They became the Last Legion by default, being the last remaining force after humanity swept over their other holdings.
If the “gods” are the Unmade, then it’s possible that they came into being as a consequence of an ongoing war with mankind (maybe a sort of “deal with the devil” in an attempt to turn the tide). The Parshendi as a whole probably turned to them afterward for the new spren and new forms because they were losing that war, not realizing that by doing so they were subverting and betraying their entire people.
Taking the above as correct, that would mean that the Desolations might have been originally military campaigns (perhaps comparable in kind, if not in degree, to a Battle of the Bulge kind of situation), but given the nature of the Void forms they probably very quickly took on a far more genocidal nature, rather than being strictly military.
Another possibility is that, after an initial period of attempted terra-formation and colonization, humanity and the Parshendi were actually co-existing. Then Odium shattered Honor and started the Desolation cycle by subverting the Parshendi via Void spren through his Unmade servants.
I love the HYDRA/SHEILD analogy, 12. Porphyrogenitus
One thing to keep in mind, the Word of Brandon, is that the Parshendi are of Cultivation and Odium, but not Honor.
Take that for what you will.
Reading Navani’s entry on Jesesach made me wonder about something:
Sadeas, I’m pretty sure, is being controlled by Odium or one of the Unmade. Probably not in a way that is overt, but he’s basically let the Thrill rule over his life; like a junkie looking for his next fix. This makes him a very easy pawn to move around for them.
So this has brought me to the thought that maybe Odium/the Unmade ment for Sadeas to be a deiverison for the Alethi. They nudged his behaivor enough that all eyes are on Sadeas and other Alethi “allies” that no one is playing attendtion the end game of Parshendi.
I’m not sure if Venli was also being infulenced by Odium but I wouldn’t be surpised if that was the case as well.
Hey, since the discussion has turned (partly) toward the Unmade, I’m going to share a very loose and tentative theory I came up with recently. Warning: I’m just copying from what I scratched out several weeks ago. I haven’t done ANY research to see if it holds up, and I don’t even know if it’s grammatically solvent. I’m supposed to be busy packing… Anyway, here it is. Y’all see what you think. Poke it full of holes, shore it up, expand it, whatever. If I have a chance to check in over the weekend, I will; if not, I’ll see if you’ve done anything to it on Sunday night.
THEORY: The Recreance was caused by the KR discovering that some of the spren had turned Unmade; believing themselves to have been betrayed (and humanity severely endangered) by the spren, they broke their own bonds, leaving the spren “dead” in their sword form. This would explain why they would do such harm to these “soul mates” and still believe it was the right thing to do; the spren who were not associated with the Unmade (which would be most of them) would feel that they/theirs had been betrayed by the KR who walked away from them. In addition, the damage done by those whose spren really had turned, and possibly the refusal of the rest to apparently do anything about it, would be the grounds for “the KR betrayed us” which was greatly amplified by the Vorin church during the Heirocracy.
(execution of “one of their own” who had “fraternized with the unwholesome elements” WOR C32 P17)
Does anyone else think that maybe not everything Eshonai’s mother says is crazy? Maybe she is being pulled more into the cognitive realm as she ages and that’s why she has poor memory (like the spren coming into the physical realm.)Maybe there really are spren or something that claim to live in her house and maybe she’s not as affected by the storms. Just a theory.
Also, Rhythm of the winds sounds really useful. No Stormwardens needed.
Carl on Sprenspotting:
The difference in appearance of the stormspren may be due to the perceiver. We know the Parshendi see spren differently from humans. So what Eshonai may see as small and smoky could appear to humans as red lightning.
@7 the spren being trapped in gems makes me think about the spirit communication thingie-dos in Elantris (sorry been a long time since I read it so can’t remember what they are called.) Some of them appear to just sit there in a box for days and weeks on end until their master needs them, which is why I thought of them. Apparently they don’t mind it tho especially since they can still communicate with each other while like that.
@17: Was just thinking that myself. I suspect that this is in fact the case-the spren Eshonai uses might well appear as trapped red lightning to a human.
Porphyrogenitus @12
Desolations were in play before Honor was splintered. I have more thoughts on your primary theory, but no time to explore them now because I’m supposed to be packing also.
JoeH42 @19
Seons, which are splinters of Devotion. I dunno, maybe common (lower functioning?) spren don’t mind being trapped in a gemstone. But I think surgebinder spren would strenuously object even if they are kinda dead (I hear screams from that Shardblade).
I expounded in many words on the first interlude thread about my theory about Venli. Comments #’s 38, 77, KiManiak’s alternate take 79, and 81.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/words-of-radiance-reread-interlude-1
The short version minus the quotes as evidence is that I think Venli discovered the ambitious scholarform previous to Interlude 1. This has two theoretic scenarios: 1. The recently discovered “nimbleform” was really the scholarform all along, but Venli and her team misled the populace. 2. Scholarform is outwardly virtually indistinguishable from nimbleform similar to dullform and slaveform, and Venli and her closer associates discovered the form, transformed, and have been working covertly for Odium for some time now.
@2 I agree. I think Venli was merely presenting to the council and not the nimbleform representative. However, I went to grab my book to look it up quickly and cannot find it. To misplace a book of that size… I really need to get organized.
@10 Great post and quotes.
@12 Re: First paragraph: Wow. You’re right. Eshonai being transformed first really was the perfect scenario for the Venli crowd except for the fact of who’s in charge. Eshonai would have been the one to lead the resistance along with her troop if she had not been transformed. I don’t think there are any in-text hints that Venli baited Eshonai into going first purposefully. In fact, every reference is Venli saying she wanted the glory of the form and almost hated Eshonai for being the first. But that could just be excellent acting on Venli’s part. I would love to get a Venli POV some time in the future.
I don’t know if Eshonai’s mother will be a sage, but I do see her has someone we are all too guilty of ignoring – the voice of experience. It’s something every generation goes through, asserting its independence. While a certain level of rebellion is neccesary for progress, we often throw out the baby with the bathwater, condemning ourselves to also making the same mistakes in new and progressive ways.
As for the stormspren not being red, not everything that is evil and wrong will call itself out to us. If it were so, we could all identify and avoid it. Those who embraced it would do so knowingly. Instead, evil appears little different from the good, at first glance, leaving us the responsibility to heed our past experiences (see above) if we wish to avoid it. Those who fall to it may have done so intentionally, foolishly, or under the belief that they were embracing something good. Without being able to truly know anothers heart, they should all be pitied and helped, not judged.
Some speculation on Navani’s journal:
“Soldiers reported being watched from afar by an unnerving number of Parshendi scouts. Then we noticed a new pattern of their penetrating close to the camps in the night and then quickly retreating. I can only surmise that our enemies were even then preparing their stratagem to end this war.”
This first part about watching the soldiers may have been them trying to get in touch with Dalinar, but that doesn’t seem to make any sense for sneaking close to the camps at night. Why were they doing this? I’d put money on gathering stormform spren. I bet most, if not all of the listeners couldn’t get into the right frame of mind to attract that kind of spren. Perhaps the humans being influenced by Nergaoul and therefor the thrill created the ideal bait for stormspren/hatespren.
ETA Sorry, I should have said angerspren, not hatespren.
@24
That makes a lot sense. Syl even said that she was seeing red spren when out in the highstorms near the Alethi camps.
The Parshendi know that emotion attracts the spren. So they just go near the camp, hatespren rise up, attracted by human emotions and they they retreat after harvesting them.
@24, maybe you are right about the Parshendi needed to be in the right frame of mind to gather stormspren. Perhaps sneaking around at night near the enemy would put them in the right frame of mind?
@25
I think that may be a bit far-fetched. And there are two big reasons against it. First, hatespren are not the same as stormspren. So the Parshendi getting close to the camp for the purpose of drawing stormspren doesn’nt hold up. Besides, even if their drawing close raises up hatespren among the Alethi, those spren would be close to the hate emotion, among the Alethi, not out of the camps where the Parshendi are, so how are the Parshendi going to trap those hatespren?
Second, as Wetlander pointed out there is a mismatch in time. At the time the Alethi observed these near-incursions by the Parshendi Eshonai hadn’t yet transformed into Stormform. That event is still a week or more away.
I think the more likely reason is that they were looking for an opportunity to contact Dalinar and sue for peace, and were probably checking with their various spies in Dullform to gather as much intelligence as they could.
@27
If they were goingt to be coming near the camps looking for a way to contact Dalinar, why didn’t they just send someone in dull form and them in the next highstorm that Parshendi just goes out into the storm and changes back to workform or something similar?
The dullform spies clearly have a way of getting in and out of the camps with no problem. The Parshendi honor code is that if they are going to attack the enemy should see them coming. (That was told to us in the intro of Way of Kings when Sezth is given his instructions from his Parshendi masters.) They want to seen by the scouts so the question becomes why? There is no way of knowing which Shard bearer will come out of the campes, if one even does. (They have to know that the Alethi have many Shard-bearers and possibly Surgebinders now.) It’s a very desperate gamble for starting a peace negoation. Especially given that they believe that they will be killed if captured.
Also, why doesn’t Eshonai bring them up? The more I think about the stranger it seems that Eshonai doesn’t bring up the fact that she’s trying to get Dalinar’s attention by sending groups of Parshendi nearer and nearer to the camps.
Eshonai is a bit too straightforward in her belief that she person has to speak to Dalinar. She’d rather just talke to Dalinar herself, and until it’s clear she wont be seeing him any time soon she goes to talk the one other Shardbearer she knows works with him to send a message. She wants to be sure that who ever she sends to give a message to Dalinar will be given messenger status and not shot when they get near; that’s why she waits until she can get a face to face with Adolin first before sending anyone. She wouldn’t risk what few fighters she has left sending them to do night recon on the camps that could easily turn into attacks that stop negoations before they being.
Venli would though. If it could possibly trap a powerful spren she’d do it between one beat and the next. And they are going to need a lot of trapped spren if all of the Listerns are going to be changed into Stormform.
Also in response to your first point. It is possible to trap spren in gems. We know that male Parshendi, at least wear gemstones in there beards. Or maybe one person’s job is to find the spren and trap it in a gem stone that could be transported back. I’m also using the names stormspren and hatespren interchangeably which maybe I shouldn’t. Angerspren are described as looking like lighting that turns the area around them red (pg 166 in my book). So maybe the stormspren and angerspren similar to each like windspren and honorspren. Parshendi being closer to Cognative realm might be able to tell the difference.
Actually Parshendi being able to tell the difference between different spren makes a lot of sense since they would need to know who they are bonding to in order to know what form they are getting.
*blinks while looking at the wall of text I just posted*
I’ve thought about this too much since witsquared posted the orginal idea.
I don’t have my laptop, so no access to the actual timeline, but one thing I forgot to mention was that these Interludes with Eshonai actually take place a ways downstream from the surrounding chapters. Something like 10-12 days after the last chapter of Part I, though I’ll have to look it up on
Sunday to get the timing right.
I don’t have the wherewithal to look it up tonight, but I had the very strong impression that Eshonai had some of her trusted people trying to get in close to the warcamps to find someone that could get a message to Dalinar. I can’t see the idea of “get close to the Alethi in order to manufacture the emotions to draw the spren” as being all that strong; if it works, it wouldn’t be a matter of getting the Alethi to react to them as much as getting a good look at them so the listeners themselves would have a strong reaction. Maybe.
@wetlander
Good point about using the Alethi as a source of spren. It wouldn’t be that great of a method because then the spren would be around the Aelthi. Making it much harder to capture the without at least a minor battle. At least before the spren leave to find freasher sources of emotion.
I guess it makes more sense to be a a way for the Parshendi to see the face of the enemy and get themselves angery. Thereby attracting the spren to themselves. Enough Parshendi who feel like Bila could probably get it done.
I’m not saying that Eshonai didn’t try to find otherways to contact Dalinar. Just that she’s a very straightfoward thinker. She wouldn’t just go about by sending midnight incursions towards the camps in hopes that they’ll talk.
I actually think that she might have tried to get Rlain or one of the other Dullform spies to try to get close to Dalinar to get him message. Rlain might have had the harder time of it actually trying to do that because as a member of Bridge Four he’s noticable, for a Parshmen. His affectness as spy must have gone down from the point he joined Bridge Four, unless he has another Dullform parshendi acting as handler he can report to, because I supect that he couldn’t easily get away from Bridge Four for long enough periods of time. Then afterwards being the only freed Parshmen in camp, he’s going to get noticed.
Unfortuatly, while it’s proabaly easy to get the parshendi spies in the camps, I don’t suppect that they had that many, because even it “merely fortune” to find an extra parshmen for use int he camps, the parshmen are accounted carefully. So too many unexpalined parshmen would have been suspicious.
I’m sure that Wetlandernw could provide an accurate timeline and precise citations for the negotiations between Eshonai and the Kholins. In the meantime, this is the timeline that I recall. First Eshonai revealed herself to Adolin on a plateau and offered to meet with Dalinar, with the time to be specified by a messenger that she would send – if Adolin could assure her that he will not be harmed. After prolonged discussions, the Parshendi Elders agree and Eshonai sends her most trusted subordinate and friend, Thude to relay the information. The time is to be 10 days hence (as I recall). In the meantime, Eshonai had become convinced to offer herself as the supposedly first Parshendi to assume the Stormform. That physical transformation in the highstorm also transformed her character. She was now no longer interested in negotiation and so informed Adolin who, dressed in Dalinar’s former shardplate, pretended to be his father. That development set up the confrontation between the transformed Parshendi and Dalinar’s forces around the central plateau (Narak).
STBLST – The timeline I have isn’t precise in this regard (lots of “sometime before day 22”), and I’d have to do the research to provide the citations and sequences… but as I recall, you’re spot on in the sequence. Will have to dig into it more as we go through, perhaps!
I’m late to this party yet again, but does anyone notice that in general Eshonai seems to stick to the Codes (presumably without even knowing them)? Much in the way Kaladin did in WoK.
Interesting observation, 34. Geordielass
I think you have something there.
During the re-read, I compared this scene to Dalinar’s dream sequence when he sees the Knights Radiant leave their swords and armor on the ground. It seems very plausible that “The Last Legion” was actually the Knights Radiant. They realized they were becoming corrupted and manipulated by the evil forces of the world, so they removed themselves from the equation before they could do real damage. It was their way of protecting mankind. Then they separated themselves from the rest of mankind and ultimately became the Parshendi.
@15 Wetlandernw – Your Theory of the Recreance.
First, as a newbie to all of this, I’d like some idea if I have the vocabulary mostly correct:
“The Recreance” is a term that has confused me from the beginning. I look it up in the dictionary and get everything from Sedition/Revolt to Cowardness to Traitorousness, to the blessedly non-judgemental Sundering. Is there an canonical definition yet? I assume (I know ass u me ;-) all the negativity comes from the re-writing of history by the Hierocracy, and a feeling of entitlement by the Rosharian people in general. If we assume just the facts, that the KR sundered themselves from the tools of their “trade” and walked away, then I think it makes it easier to discuss what might have happened. Or am I missing the point of the title totally? WHO named it the Recreance? (well, besides BWS of course)….
“Unmade” : Here’s my interpretation, am I correct?
Shardic power consists of a human intelligence+Intent from one of the Shards of Andolesium. Therefore, on Roshar, we have 3 Shardic Powers: Tanavast/Honor, ?/Cultivation, and Rayse/Odium. Sometime in the past Rayse/Odium killed Tanavast/splintering Honor http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=755#27, and ?/Cultivation is alive http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=985#5.
Shardic powers take spren and ‘influence’ them with their intent/essences: Honor and Cultivation and Odium. That ‘creates’ HonorSpren’ and ‘CultivationSpren’. Unmade are Odium-essence spren, http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/-/cpcr9f0?context=3 Why not just call them Odiumspren?!
We also know that spren can have essence on a spectrum of Shardic Powers (i.e., 15%Honor,85%Cultivation) http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kw=Cultivation #11 and that they often contain intent/essences of their own. http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=618#53
Am I right so far? I found it totally worthwhile writing all this out, I hope it isn’t a waste of time for you to read….
Given that I’m on the right page with the canon, on to your theory. ;-)
<THEORY: The Recreance was caused by the KR discovering that some of the spren had turned Unmade;>
How would that work? Can the essences infused into a spren (plus it’s own essence/intent) be modified by another Shardic Power? Turning Unmade would be vastly different from breaking the bond with your Shardbearer. Take an honorspren like Sylphrena. I’m pretty sure she’s 100% Honor-essence. We don’t know how spren become infused, but I’m sure it takes agreement from the spren and the SP (Shardic Power), similar to how it took Dalinar and Stormfather to create that Bondsmith. It seems to me that it would take a LOT of change to get Sylphrena to give up any HonorEssence, let alone take on OdiumEssence. What would make her change that way? I cannot justify why, but I am guessing that all honorspren would find it equally almost impossible.
Yet, the first Recreant KNs were Stormwards and Windrunners. “They are the first,” a voice said. WoK Ch52, p733 HC. “The Order of Stormwards … And a large number of Windrunners.” p729 “They were the first, and they were also the last.” p733 So they were the first to give up (in large numbers) and they were the last to hold out, too.
THEORY, continued
I can see this happening, IF I thought the first part could happen.
THEORY, continued
Do you mean feel betrayed and thus sever their bonds with their Shardbearers? Leaving the rest of the KsR without their Shards and <whatever tool>. Thus appearing to be part of the Recreance even though they weren’t, intentionally? Is that what you are theorizing?
What do we know about how Honor/Cultivation spren feel about Unmade spren? Is there any evidence of how “Good” spren feel about “Evil” spren? I know we’ve had some foreshadowing – when Sylphrena sees the stormspren. I don’t have a way to quickly check because all I have is a HC and audio version of the books….
My feeling is that if Sylphrena found out that KRx had sundered his Shards and Sword because his spren had turned evil, and assuming that turning evil is anathema to her, she would be very sad about the death of the spren, but I doubt that she’d turn on Kaladin and sever their bond. What do you think?
I think it wasn’t just the Vorin church, but all the religions throughout Roshar that conspired during the Heirocracy to create the “KR betrayed us” history. Jasnah’s attempts at finding unaltered historical sources all over the world supports this. Or, at least the same parts of the world where the “KR betrayed us” message was promulgated. Is it prevelant in far western Roshar?
Why “KR betrayed us”? Think about what happened in WoK when the 300 KsR Sundered their Shards and walked away. The mayham that occurred with everyone fighting over the abandoned shards. Picture that worldwide. Society needed something to pull themselves together with. But the Desolation was over – they had Won. So the KsR became the common enemy.
At least, that’s one possibility. I really have no idea :-)