Hello out there, all you fans of The Stormlight Archive! Welcome to a new series of articles here on Tor! As we eagerly anticipate the release of the fourth book, Rhythm of War, it seems a good time for a brief summary of what we know about various aspects of this epic series. This week, we begin with an overview of the history, so far as we know it, of the planet Roshar and its inhabitants.
Upcoming topics will include the Heralds, the Unmade, the Knights Radiant, and so on. (Hopefully, the rest won’t be quite as lengthy as this one!) My intent is to be careful about what we actually know, but also to include some of my personal speculations—carefully identified—in case you care to speculate with me. (Also, if you can actually disprove my speculations, please comment and we’ll discuss it!)
Warning: This series will contain spoilers for all of The Stormlight Archive published so far, and will occasionally draw on Words of Brandon for supporting information. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers for other series, or to mark them if they really need to be included. I make no promises about the comment section; however, I’d request that if you want to include spoilers in a comment, please try to white-text them or at least tag them as spoilers so people can skip your comment.
Ahem. History class is about to begin. Settle down and pay attention, now. There will be a quiz.
The Creation of Roshar
Roshar was created, personally and intentionally, by Adonalsium, prior to the Shattering. We currently have no knowledge of whether this same is true of most other planets, though we know at least one he didn’t create. Mistborn Spoiler (highlight to read): Scadrial—and its inhabitant species—was created by the Shards Ruin and Preservation.
The Planet: The main landmass, where the primary action of the series (so far) takes place, is a single super-continent. Its shape is based on a specific Julia set, which I’m not nearly mathematician enough to explain. You’ll have to ask Google about that; I’m just an engineer. We don’t know whether Adonalsium was having fun with maths and did that on purpose, or if it was just Sanderson looking for a cool shape. This continent and its attendant islands are the only significant land on the planet; though it’s possible there is something else out there, there isn’t another continent.
Flora and Fauna: Along with the planet itself, Adonalsium formed a variety of flora and fauna suitable to the living conditions. Most of the flora have some ability to protect themselves from the highstorms which sweep the land at regular intervals. Some pull into holes in the ground, some have strong trunks or branches but pull their leaves inside, some pull into a firmly-anchored shell called a rockbud, and some form tangles of growth sufficient to hold together. The native fauna likewise are well adapted to survive the storms, mostly with strong exoskeletons which protect them from objects carried by the stormwinds. These generally seem to have gemhearts, giving them the ability to absorb Stormlight and in some cases form some level of bond with spren.
Sapient Species: One sapient species is clearly native to the planet. The people known as the singers, later called parsh by the humans, have gemhearts which allow them to take on different forms when activated by different kinds of spren. Many of the forms include some kind of carapace exoskeleton, as well as differing strength, skills, and even mentality.
Two more sapient species took up residence on the island of Aimia, though we have no knowledge yet as to whether they are native to the planet, or emigrated from some other place in the Cosmere. If the latter, we also have no knowledge where they originated or when they arrived. Personally, I’m cautiously of the opinion that they came from somewhere else, but it’s a very loosely-held opinion.
The System: In addition to the primary planet, the Rosharan system contains ten gas giants in the outer reaches, two other planets in the habitable zone, and three moons orbiting the planet Roshar. At some unknown point, humans arrived on the planet Ashyn, the one nearest the sun.
The Arrival of Shards
Some time after Roshar was created, Adonalsium was Shattered—which is a whole story I’m not going to get into here. (Drew McCaffrey will be writing a Cosmere 201 kind of article for you sometime in the near future; maybe he’ll go into it a bit.) Suffice it to say that after the Shattering, the two Shards known as Honor and Cultivation made Roshar their home. It’s not known at this time whether they claimed the entire system, or only the one planet. They made themselves known to the singers, and became their gods, adopting the extant spren Stormfather and Nightwatcher as their representatives. The Vessel of the Shard Honor was a man named Tanavast; we don’t yet know the name of Cultivation’s Vessel. We do know that they were romantically involved. (We also speculate, some of us, that Cultivation’s Vessel is a dragon; in the Cosmere, they’re able to shape-shift.)
At some later point, not yet known to us, a third Shard called Odium arrived in the system. He seems to have laid claim to the planet Braize, which Sanderson has stated is “nine-centric” as opposed to the rest of the system, which is all “ten-centric.”
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Rhythm of War
Speculation: (Some of this is really shifty stuff. I have little to no evidence, okay?) There are good indications that each Shard has a number of particular significance to itself. It appears that ten is Honor’s significant number, and that nine belongs to Odium and its Vessel Rayse, also a human male. (My personal theory is that Cultivation’s number is three, but that’s not terribly relevant here.) I’ve recently developed a set of theories, which may all hang together or may turn out be true in some pieces and false in others. I’ll just go with the extreme version that hangs them all together, here, and include my ideas in the relevant sections.
According to the first part of my theory, the entire system was claimed by Honor & Cultivation, with its ten gas giants and three terrestrial planets (one of which has, notably, three moons). They brought a contingent of humans with them, but since Roshar was already inhabited by the singers, they placed the humans on Ashyn, an eminently habitable planet and more conducive to human life than Roshar. I’m not guessing much about Cultivation, but by my theory, Honor was known to the humans of Ashyn as the Almighty.
At some later point, having destroyed the Shards Ambition, Devotion, and Dominion, Odium came to the Rosharan system intending to destroy Honor and Cultivation. He took up residence on the virtually uninhabitable Braize, making it into his home and twisting its magic (assuming there is inherent magic) to his nine-centric theme.
More speculation upcoming, as the history progresses…
Humans Come to Roshar
Although we don’t know for sure when, how, or whence humans arrived on Ashyn, they were apparently well settled there long, long ago. It’s possible that Adonalsium placed the humans on Ashyn at the same time he populated Roshar; it’s also possible that they arrived independently by whatever means humans normally spread throughout the Cosmere from their origin on Yolen. (But I have A Theory!) In any case, the people of Ashyn learned to manipulate the basic forces by which the world operates, known as Surgebinding, and things got out of hand. They ended up damaging their planet to the point that it was nearly uninhabitable, and fled to Roshar by means we do not yet know. (There sure is a lot we don’t know, isn’t there?)
Arriving on Roshar with what plants and animals they were able to bring along, they initially settled in what is now known as Shinovar, on the far western edge of the continent. Sheltered from the highstorms by mountains, and by virtue of the storms weakening as they cross the entire planet, this was an eminently suitable place for them—or was made so by the Shards—with a biome very similar to Ashyn. The flora and fauna they brought with them, while they may not be exactly the same as the Earth varieties we know, are close enough: horses, pigs, various birds (a.k.a. chickens), mink, rats (hopefully by accident!), wheat, grapes, grass that doesn’t run away… that’s not all of them, but you get the idea. All these, along with the humans, found their new homeland much to their liking.
Initially, the singers and the humans seem to have gotten along reasonably well. For one thing, we know that there are two people groups—the Herdazians and the Horneaters—whose ancestors are from both species. (We don’t know exactly where in history this blending happened, but “early” seems reasonable.) We also know that Hoid was on the planet in these early days, mingling with the singers and getting along well with them, though he was clearly human. (See the Epilogue to Oathbringer.) Clearly, the two peoples were not completely separated, as there was plenty of socialization. Hoid recalls dancing with a singer who is now one of the Fused; how many of the Heralds did so as well?
More Speculation: (Remember, this is concocted out of thin air and the frailest of logical connections!) To continue from the previous section, my theory is that from Braize, Odium was able to reach out and affect the humans on Ashyn, influencing their nature and magnifying their lust for power. Eventually, they went too far in their striving, and damaged their planet to the point that it could no longer sustain them.
Despite the influence of Odium (or perhaps unaware of it) Honor & Cultivation decided to move their humans to Roshar. (This fits better than anything I’ve heard yet about the mythos of the Voidbringers pushing the humans out of the Tranquiline Halls: the humans who accepted and used Odium’s power, a.k.a. the Void, were the ones who caused the destruction and made it impossible for humans to live there.) The Shards prepared Shinovar as a homeland for the humans, where they and their animals could prosper. Unfortunately for Roshar, Odium slipped in too—either by sneaking in some of his own Investiture in whatever process Honor used for the transfer, or by means of individuals who held some of his power in secret.
And there’s more to come!
The Rise of Conflict
While the singers initially welcomed the humans in accordance with the instruction of their gods, this happy concord didn’t last very long. We don’t know the exact timeline, but it couldn’t have been more than a few decades before things went pear-shaped in a big way. (Word of Brandon tells us that the humans who later became Heralds, with the possible exception of Jezrien’s daughter Shalash, were born on Ashyn and were part of the migration to Roshar. That seems to indicate that it was likely somewhere between one and four decades from the arrival of humans to the escalation of conflict.) What caused the initial conflict is unknown. It may be that some humans got too greedy, or some singers disliked the changes, or even that some of them had been displaced when Shinovar was adjusted to suit the humans.
The Fused: In any case, there was discord. Some of the singers, believing that Honor had betrayed them by bringing and assisting the humans, turned to Odium for aid. He granted them the power to become “Fused”—both the ability to Surgebind, and to become Cognitive Shadows upon their death, able to take over another body at will. Thus they truly became Void-bringers, as they brought Odium’s Investiture to bear in the conflict. (It is possible, of course, that some of the humans had also been using Odium’s Investiture; we have no way of knowing that part.)
The Heralds: To counter this new threat, ten humans—five men and five women—went to Honor with a proposal, which he accepted. Thus was born the Oathpact, intended to end the war completely. These Heralds were given swords which granted paired Surgebinding abilities (“and more” is hinted, though not clarified) and the ability to also become Cognitive Shadows when they died. Moreover, under the new pact, the Heralds went to Braize when they died and bound the Fused there by their unanimous accord. Unfortunately, despite their oath to bind the Fused, the Heralds were only human, and even as Cognitive Shadows they were susceptible to torture.
Thus began the cycle of what came to be known as Desolations. Realizing that the humans could be made to break their oath under sufficient duress, the Fused searched out the Heralds on Braize and tortured them until one finally agreed to let them pass. When this happened, the Heralds all returned to Roshar together… and so did the Fused. The Heralds and the Fused each rallied their people for war: the Fused, determined to destroy the human invaders, and the Heralds, determined to survive on this planet they’d come to. The first time this happened, it must have been quite a shock to both the singers and the humans; it had been hundreds of years since the Fused and the Heralds left, and they had probably settled into some kind of functional coexistent culture.
In any case, world-wide devastation came, likely sending both cultures into a complete tailspin, until finally both Heralds and Fused died and returned to Braize, to start the hunt and the torture again. The timeline of the early Desolations is not entirely clear, nor is the actual number of Desolations, but there were between fifteen and fifty. While at first the Heralds were able to maintain the seal on Braize for hundreds of years at a time, sharing the pain through their bond, eventually their endurance began to diminish.
Knights Radiant: Meanwhile, the humans had either retained or regained the ability to Surgebind. On Roshar, unlike Ashyn, the ability to manipulate the Surges was enabled by spren who would form a bond with the human, mimicking what they had seen Honor do for the Heralds. Despite the Desolations recurring every few centuries, humans began to fight for power among themselves, with Surgebinders quickly becoming the most powerful of the lot. During one Desolation, the Herald Ishar found a way to impose a structure on the spren and their Surgebinders: he defined the orders of Knights Radiant, by which the spren would only form bonds with mortals who could truly speak certain Ideals. He modeled them after the powers granted to the Heralds, using the same Surge pairings and following the nominal roles of the Heralds.
Regals: Somewhere along the line, earlier or later we don’t know, the singers also began to take on new spren bonds—Voidspren bonds. These spren of Odium granted new forms of power to the singers who accepted them, who became known as Regals. They didn’t necessarily have Surgebinding ability, but they were able to manipulate lesser natural phenomena such as lightning and wind, and it seems some forms grant access to Connection and Fortune. These are mostly still a mystery. (The origins of the Unmade are also still a mystery, but they predated the Knights Radiant in some form. Yeah, we’ll have a whole ‘nother post on the Unmade. Not going there right now.)
The Heraldic Epochs: With the new structure of Knights Radiant, human civilization changed. While it seems logical that the humans and singers must have shared the land to some degree, it was also divided into the ten Silver Kingdoms. (Who knows—maybe some of the ten were singer kingdoms!) We know very little about the arrangements inside most of those kingdoms, but the human kingdom known as Alethela became the training ground for the Knights Radiant and for all the humans who would be warriors. The intent was to retain the arts of warfare, so that when the next Desolation came, humanity would be better prepared for it.
(Side note: we also have no clue yet as to when the tower of Urithiru was created, by whom, nor why it was placed where it was.)
From that time on, the Radiants were there to assist the Heralds when a Desolation came, and to an extent it worked: humanity survived. But the toll on the Heralds was profound; as the cycle repeated, they were less and less able to withstand the torture once they were found by the Fused. While the first Desolations came centuries apart, over three thousand years or so that gradually reduced to decades. At the last, one Herald broke almost as soon as they were caught and the torture began, with the result that humanity had barely begun to recover from the previous Desolation before the next one began less than a year later.
Aharietiam: In that particular battle, whether through good luck, good management, or sheer cowardice, all but one of the Heralds survived. Realizing that the only one to die was also the only one who had never broken under torture, they came up with a new plan. Hoping that as long as one Herald was bound, the Fused would be bound as well, the remaining nine abandoned their oaths and their Honorblades, each to go their separate ways and not seek out one another. They would tell humanity that they had won and the cycle was over… and hope that maybe it would work. This event became known as the Final Desolation, or Aharietiam. At some level, they were even right.
Even More Speculation! Following on to the previous section… Ultimately, Odium managed to gain a small foothold on Roshar—not enough to take over, but enough to influence some people of both species, fomenting distrust and animosity. As tension arose between them, he influenced certain of the singers to believe that he, Odium, was the god of the humans, and that Honor, whom they thought of as their god, had betrayed them by deciding to help the “invaders” instead of his own people.
He then managed to influence enough of the singers that they turned to him for help against the humans and against Honor, and they became the true Void-bringers—the ones who brought the use of Odium’s Investiture to Roshar. Since Odium’s center of power was Braize, these Cognitive Shadows had to go there when killed, and to be renewed and sent back to Roshar for a new body. They also induced others of their people to form bonds with Voidspren, with the result that more and more, the singers became Odium’s people even though they still revered Honor and Cultivation.
Era of Solitude
After the entirety of the Oathpact was dropped on Taln, the Desolations stopped, and both species had time to recover their cultures and redevelop their civilizations. We know very little about this early time, and it’s possible that it was during this phase rather than three thousand years earlier that the blended races mentioned earlier (Herdazians and Horneaters) developed.
This time of coexistence, known now as the Era of Solitude, lasted for about another three thousand years, give or take a bit. While the Heralds were going around incognito, the Knights Radiant were still very much there, and probably helped the recovery efforts tremendously through healing, Soulcasting, and so on. On the singer side, while the Voidforms were no longer available to them, they still had the full range of natural forms inherent to Roshar, and the Unmade were still present and influential.
Splintering of Honor: Behind the scenes—or above them, or Beyond them—a different drama was playing out. Honor and Cultivation, presumably based on discovering that Odium was going around trying to destroy the other Shards, had found a way to bind Odium to Braize. We know almost nothing of the mechanism that enforced this imprisonment, but Odium was not pleased. Fighting to be free of their containment, as well as to destroy them, he finally managed part of his goal: he was able to splinter Honor, killing the Vessel Tanavast. This probably had some indirect effects on other events, if only because Honor wasn’t around to help, or in his death throes may have hindered his original intent. Worth noting, Sanderson has said that the death of a Shard is a protracted event.
False Desolation: Back on the physical planet… It’s quite probable that there were occasional clashes between the humans and the singers as time went on, and with varied results. Ultimately, one of the more intelligent Unmade came up with a new weapon: Ba-Ado-Mishram figured out how to create Connection between herself, with her Void power, and the singers. Suddenly, the Regals were back. This war, known as the False Desolation, pitted the Knights Radiant and their human armies against the Unmade, the Regals, and the singer armies.
It seems to have been during this time when one group of singers decided they’d had enough of this everlasting warfare, and they broke off. How they did it we’re not yet sure, but they all took on dullform, broke their Connection to the Unmade, and just left. In order to avoid being pulled back in, they refused all other forms for hundreds of years, living only in dullform and mateform. No longer willing to be the signers, they designated themselves the listeners, and they avoided all contact outside their own group.
Meanwhile, back at the war, things were not going well for the humans. In the end, the Bondsmith Melishi (the only Bondsmith at the time) came up with a plan to trap & imprison Ba-Ado-Mishram; it succeeded, and broke her Connection to the singers, or theirs to her. In what seems to have been an unanticipated side effect, it also blocked their ability to take on any forms—even those natural to their species on Roshar. From that point on, the singers were gone; with no capacity to bond with even the most basic spren, they became nearly catatonic.
We don’t know exactly what came next; obviously, the war was over, since one entire side was now scarcely able to function, in shock, and seemed to be only barely sentient. It’s likely that a large number of the singers simply died for lack of anyone to help them live. In my own (less than humble, okay) opinion, those who survived were probably cared for at some level by humans who couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Once people realized that the singers, now called parshmen, were able to follow basic instructions, it would have been natural to put them to work at simple, menial labor. At first, and for many, it was likely just a matter of earning their keep. All too soon, though, they became slaves, to be bought and sold, valued for their obedience; they were treated like extra-smart animals who understood language but had no initiative of their own.
The Recreance: The effect on the singers may have been part of what sparked the next major event in human history: the Recreance. It didn’t take place immediately after the end of the war, but the difference is a matter of decades later—not just a few years, but not centuries, either. For reasons not entirely clear to us yet, and I won’t speculate just now, the Knights Radiant decided to quit en masse. With the exception of the Skybreakers, also for reasons we don’t know, the Knights abandoned their Shardblades and their Shardplate, leaving them in heaps and just… walking away. Their Shardblades, which were the physical manifestation of their bonded spren, were locked into those forms, and naturally became prizes worth fighting and killing to possess.
The Hierocracy: Yet again, civilization was thrown into turmoil. We don’t know what happened to the Knights Radiant after that. We do know that subsequently, the Vorin church attempted to step into the power vacuum and take control of All The Things. In their effort to make sure the Almighty was properly honored, they decided that rewriting history was a justifiable effort, and so the Hierocracy was responsible for the destruction of great swathes of information. Fortunately for the world, they only held sway in a few kingdoms, so while Vorin history is still in question—and along with it, much of the history of the Knights Radiant—the larger history fared a little better. Much of the past record was, as always, lost to the ravages of time, but other nations still had their own historical records.
Eventually, the Hierocracy was put down, and the church was placed in an odd position of both authority and subservience. While the church’s influence in matters of the faith was still strong, the individual members of the clergy, the ardents, were not allowed to hold any kind of civil authority, and were in fact a different kind of slave. Side note: it seems that the current date system begins at approximately the time when the Hierocracy was put down.
And on: Since that time, various individuals from several nations have attempted to dominate the world, but each have failed. It’s quite possible, though only speculative, that many of them were recipients of Honor’s visions by way of the Stormfather, but they always interpreted “Unite them” solely as a matter of political and military “unification.”
Well. That was… long-winded and exhausting. Exhaustive… maybe? Sorta? Forget the quiz, though; I don’t have the will to write it, much less correct the papers! Next week, we’ll go into more detail on Everything We Know About the Heralds. Hopefully it won’t be as long as this one!! For now, dive into the comment section with questions, corrections, and speculations! Also, if you have counter-evidence for my theory, please say so!
Alice is a Sanderson Beta-Reader, mega-fan, and occasional theory-crafter. She takes great pride in the moment at Emerald City Comic Con 2018 when, in conversation about some disputed fan interpretation of a scene, Sanderson said, “You’re right. Just tell them I said, ‘Alice is always right.'” She is also an administrator of two Facebook fan groups: The Stormlight Archive (spoilers allowed for Stormlight books only; everything else has to be spoiler-tagged) and the Storm Cellar (Sanderson fans loosely centered around the Tor rereads, spoilers for all Sanderson books allowed).
Mentioning the series where the first spoiler takes place at all kind of gives away what you’re trying to hide, IMO.
Excellent write up, Alice! I pretty much agree with your speculation on certain events.
Great article. Really helped me to get my timeline straight. And I enjoyed the speculations :)
Though while reading it I thought about the mix of singers and humans. The Herdazians and Horneaters seem mostly human with some singer like features. Do we know if there is an equivalent on the singer side (mostly singer with some slight human aspects)? I can’t remember if something like that was ever mentioned.
(Hope you get what I mean and sorry for my not so good english :))
@3 They probably integrated into the Herdazians or Horneaters or were bred out of the parshman. Or were wiped out by the Fused or Regals.
Alice, can you explain why you think there were decades between the False Desolation and the Recreance? In the Feverstone Keep vision, the soldiers are clearly expecting some sort of attack. If that isn’t from the False Desolation, then do you have a sense of what conflict it was?
Looking back at Dalinar’s vision one of the men refers to the enemy as “devils”. It’s certainly possible to refer to any enemy that way, but it also strongly suggests that the men think they’re still fighting the Fused/Singers, not knowing that they’d been robbed of their forms recently.
I might have missed some other clue…
That’s really informative. Are you getting all that information from the Stormlight Archive books?
Probably. More info can be found in Arcanum Unbounded and Sanderson’s website though.
Excellent overview Alice. It seems that while Senator Warren has a Plan for everything, Alice has a Theory for every unresolved Cosmere issue.
In my opinion, Cultivation worked with Odium to kill Honor (despite having a relationship with Honor).
During the Dalinar unity scene in OB, Odium mentions that “we killed you”. The “we” when talking about killing “you” could be that Odium and Cultivation killed Honor together. Cultivation said that sometimes things have to be pruned to let the entire being grow. Even though Cultivation had a romantic relationship with Honor, perhaps over time the Cultivation aspect of the Shard took over so much that she felt the best way to save her adopted planet of Roshar was to kill Honor and splinter the Shard. Perhaps this was because of something she foresaw. I believe that we learned that Cultivation is better at foreshadowing/reading the future than Honor. Having worked with Odium could be the “he” Cultivation was referring to when she granted Dalinar his boon. Perhaps her foretelling told her that in order to ultimately defeat Odium, Honor had to die and the Shard splintered.
I would not believe it possible except for two things. First, Cultivation is an immoral concept (neither good or bad). Sometimes a farmer has to kill (prune or cut of branches that are living) to ensure the entire organism grows to its fullest potential. This is also like a farmer burning some of his fields to help it grow better in the long term. Second, it would be unexpected and unexpected is what Brandon often writes.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
aka the musespren
Alice, that was INCREDIBLY helpful! I even printed out a copy to use as a reference as i begin my reread in preparation for “The Rhythm of War”. I hope it’s not inappropriate to say (if it is please strike this line) but I read these around the same time I was reading Patrick Rothfuss’s novels, and I get some of the histories of the worlds… well, confused.I am sure after i have reread them more than the 1-3 times I have so far, that won’t be an issue. So, Thanks!!
Well that was nice. I hadn’t thought that the “The Gods Switched Sides/The Sides Switched Gods” event could mostly just be and due to Odium lying to people about people.
@5:
Not sure if Alice was referencing this directly, but this is the question I asked Brandon at a signing:
:)
Very good overview. Just a couple notes:
First, Honor’s death didn’t happen until after the Recreance. This is strongly implied by Honor’s data dump including a vision of the Recreance, and confirmed by WoB and later in Oathbringer, where the Stormfather describes how the Knights immediately pre-Recreance had open communication with Honor, and Honor’s deteriorating mental state was a big contributor to the decision to abandon the knighthood.
Second, the following is all wrong:
Again referring to the vision of the Recreance which Dalinar received, we know that it happened immediately at the end of the war. (Or at least started there; apparently it was a process rather than an all-at-once event.) The revelation at the end of Oathbringer of “the secret that broke the Knights Radiant” was them learning that humankind had invaded Roshar, which originally belonged to the Singers, after destroying their previous world with Surgebinding. And reading between the lines, from the epigraphs from Words of Radiance (the in-universe book) and the Urithiru message gems, (given their nature, and the way all the stories are named after in-world works, would it be wrong to call this collection of gems the Stormlight Archive?), it’s pretty clear that the inadvertent creation of the Parshmen was the trigger that made them all decide that their Surgebinding was Just Too Dangerous and needed to be abandoned once and for all in order to avoid destroying Roshar.
Other than those minor points, this was an excellent and thorough overview of what we know so far about the history of Roshar!
I’m going to be that obnoxious “well, actually” voice a few times. Only because Alice knows her stuff and I know that being super nitpicky won’t be taken the wrong way. XD
Hmm, I wouldn’t think that “Almighty” was a term until Vorinism.
Potentially splitting hairs, but I believe the Eila Stele said that the humans from Ashyn (paraphrasing) “used Surges”, not that they used Surgebinding? Is there a reference specifically saying that they used Surgebinding? The distinction COULD matter.
Agree that it is Surgebinding, but we don’t technically know that’s what it is. (That’s right people, some of us don’t think the Fused are Voidbinding.)
Hmm, I’ve wondered about this. I think my opinion isn’t popular though. I’m not convinced that Ishar’s imposition included ALL of that. We clearly see in Dalinar’s Nohadon vision (the one from Stormfather) that Surgebinders existed prior to the founding of the Knights Radiant. Heck, Nohadon hadn’t even written his book which the Radiant ideals are based on at that point. So where did Ishar step in? Before this, implying his role was about putting rules on how the nahel bond works? Or was it after, implying he established the organization known as the Knights Radiant? I don’t think it can be both.
I want to say it was very likely created not long before (or during the lifetime of) Nohadon. It seems pretty unlikely to me that the Oathgates were built afterward, and you need a Knight Radiant to operate Oathgates. I guess it’s possible the Oathgates operated by some other means at first? Eh. Especially considering the role it plays as the headquarters of the Radiants, I think it’s fairly safe to assume it was created after Surgebinders were a thing. And it was clearly around before/during Nohadon’s life. So it’s just a question of how long unorganized Surgebinders were around, and I guess I assume Ishar didn’t let that happen for more than a Desolation or two?
What makes you say that? Aren’t there clear references dating Dalinar’s Recreance vision to the False Desolation?
Oathbringer spoilers follow:
I thought Oathbringer made it pretty clear that the reason for the Recreance was that the Knights learned that 1. the Singers were the original inhabitants of Roshar, and that the humans were interlopers, and that 2. human access to surges had destroyed their previous home on Ashyn. They then decided that the cause in which they had been fighting was unjust, and that it was too dangerous for any humans to access surges through a Nahel bond.
Thanks Alice; that was a good article. A few quick thoughts:
-I liked the flora/fauna section, but I wonder if spren should have been included in that section and gotten a separate call out as one of the native things that Adonalsium created for Roshar. Of course, it could be argued that spren could have been included in the sapient species as well.
-I know cymatics were mostly just discussed in Way of Kings and haven’t been explored in the books much more since then, but it seems that cymatics and sound manipulation/sensitivity do play a large role in this series, what with the Dawncities, Dawnsingers, the Rhythms, the Shattered Plains, etc. I’m curious if Brandon expands on them more in Rhythm of War, since we’ll be seeing more of the Singers perspective.
-I am rather skeptical of the “benevolent slaveowner” myth. I find the need to soften the horrible act of people owning and selling other people (by believing that some owners were “nice” or “good” and “took care of their slaves” or “treated them like family”) as understandable, but I think it often comes from a place of discomfort or denial. Specifically to Roshar, it’s established that the Singers/Parshmen have been the humans’ mortal enemies for centuries, if not millennia. It’s been established that when humans on Roshar find themselves in a position to benefit from an unforeseen circumstance that results in a potentially precious resource (prime example: the Feverstone Keep vision and the unclaimed Shardblades and Shardplate), they don’t become benevolent humanitarians, but instead they revert to their more base desires and fight to control and exploit the resource. I envision something similar with the parshmen after they had their Connection severed; the Rosharans saw them as a resource, and exploited them as such. The wealthier or more powerful you were, the more you could own/control. I’m sure there was the occasional owner that felt bad about it or believed they were treating their slaves more nicely than other slave owners, but they still were slave owners.
And to be fair, there are people/countries in present day Roshar that have no problem owning humans as slaves, and we see those humans slaves being treated fairly poorly for the most part as well (with Shallan being an in-book-example of a benevolent owner of human slaves).
I look forward to the Unmade and Herald articles! This is helping tide me over until Rhythm of War.
Alice, Thank you for this. I had not understood the False Desolation before this.
@15 Thanks for bringing up the Dawn Singers. That is another area where we know so very little. It’s hard to say if they are just interesting “historical data” or if that knowledge will be ciritcal to understanding what happens in the next book. I have an expectation that Venli’s story will show us a lot of history from the Singer’s side.
Interesting. Any particular reason people think Cultivation is a dragon?
Really nice overview. I find that these articles on Tor can sometimes be fan-theories presented as absolute fact and I was extremely happy to note that this is not one of those time. Wonderful timeline. I definitely do not mind the length, especially in a time of lockdown. I do have a couple of thoughts of my own. Because I got rather near the character limit myself, I left out specifically pointing out the many, many times I agree with your speculation or analysis, and I hope it doesn’t come across as overly harsh thereby.
I’m personally of the opinion that humans did not learn Surgebinding on Ashyn. I know what the Elia Stele says. It seems to me that that’s very Honor/Roshar specific, and it would be weird to see it on Roshar. As far as the mention in the Elia Stele, even apart from how it’s written by people who don’t know or understand much about the humans, Surges are basically their word for magic. If the ancient Dawnsingers had seen a coinshot hopping about, they would wonder what Surge let her do such a thing. It’s possible, but I don’t think it belongs in the “we know it’s true” portion.
As far as early interactions being positive… yes, Hoid danced with them, and he is also clearly human… but he’s also a master of disguise. I don’t think we can rule out that they thought he was a Dawnsinger. Or even if his arrival predated humans, as a whole, and he was just a singular, charming human. As for the rest… the Desolations began rather quickly. At least several of the Heralds were part of the migration, and still alive when the battles had gone on so long that they needed a solution to the Fused constantly returning. Maybe they somehow lived for hundreds of years, admittedly. As for the cross-species, I find myself thinking that the two species just being compatible is unlikely in the extreme. I personally suspect that Cultivation had a hand in it; I see clues to this in the Unkalaki creation myth.
Interesting about Ishar… do we actually know that he purposefully crafted those aspects of Surgebinding? I had figured they were just natural pairings that appeared in both Honorblades and spren.
Also, not sure how literally you mean the ‘speaking the oaths’. I’m pretty sure the books make it clear that the Ideals arose with the Knights Radiant which didn’t happen until after Nohadon had written his book.
Re: listeners: Hrm, I appreciate your ‘it seems’ but I think you’re overselling the idea that they could have taken other, non-powered forms, and just chose to stay in dullform and mateform. I’m pretty sure that knowing how to take on the others was more like something they lost when the Last Legion became the listeners, rather than a decision on their part not to take on other forms. Their songs tell of how to do it, and it seems odd to me they would have kept those songs, if the other forms had some danger. Which, again, it doesn’t really seem like taking on warform or nimbleform was especially dangerous? Unless you’re going the route of, as long as they were stupid, they’d be too dumb to be tricked into taking on Stormform.
As far as your last comment on the Visions provoking conquest… that actually dovetails with a personal theory of mine. It seems the call of the Bondsmith is Unity but it’s long been my belief that all three face it differently. I imagine the Nightsmith will be someone like Rock who believes in unity through creating a thing people will want to join and protect. The Stormsmith, by comparison, thinks that unity comes from following a strong leader, i.e. “me”. If the Stormfather has actually been finding various potential Stormsmiths throughout history, that would match my idea that one of the qualifications for being a Stormsmith is that you feel like things would be better if people would all just do what you say.
@@@@@ 12: I think you misunderstand how the death of a Shard works. By the time of Secret History, was Fuzz dead already, or not? Different people would say yes or not. It’s a bit like determining if time of death is brain death, or when the body cools, or when the brain can’t be revived, or organ failure, or simply when the doctors stop trying to save the person, or when the bacteria inside the person have finished decomposition. Also, we know he created the Visions before the Recreance happened. In the epilogue of one of the Visions, he says, “Not all of these are things I have seen. Some of them are things I know are inevitable.” And the Recreance one is stated to be, chronologically, the latest of them all. Since he’s done at least a few of them before the event occurred, the Recreance vision has to be something which hadn’t happened yet.
So basically… what do you consider his “Death”? Whatever thing, attack or whatever, that was the ultimate cause for his death clearly happened before the Recreance, since the Stormfather talks of how one of the reasons it happened was that the “current generation” of Radiants learned of the past, but by then Honor was too far gone to coach them through thinking it was okay. Whatever killed Honor definitely happened before the Recreance. However the death of a Shard works, his final “death throes” weren’t yet done by the time of the Recreance. The rest comes down to personal terminology and speculation.
I’ll confess I’m not at all sure what you mean when you talk about the “all wrong” part. You seem to mainly be agreeing, but maybe making a stronger case?
@@@@@15: I get what you’re saying and normally I wouldn’t normally be on the side of trying to justify slavery. However, in this specific case, it is true that the parshmen are, in fact, sub-human. Now, we the reader know they don’t have to be, but the best minds on Roshar at the time were unable to heal the mental damage. They actually were human-shaped beings incapable of enough thought to keep themselves safe and alive. The options were literally, let them die, or take them over. And, over time, as the history was forgotten and people grew up only knowing them as the sub-humans they are, the relationship would turn to slavery. It’s not great, and I’m not trying to defend it, and I’m sure there were horrible people who saw the parshmen as nothing but easy slave labor, but by and large it ignores the reality (or, well, fantasy) of the situation to just say “I’m against all slavery” and lump this in with everything else. Maybe the gemstones were biased and inaccurate, but they definitely gave the sense that people saw what happened to the parsh as a horrible thing, not as a boon to themselves. Basically, everything you say is right… but you refuse to acknowledge the reality that just turning around and freeing your parshmen wasn’t an option so much as it was a death sentence. And that modern Rosharans don’t have the benefit of your enlightened modern sensibilities, and have literally no reason to suspect that parshmen are capable of thought beyond that of well-trained beasts. Imagine, if you will, that tomorrow you find out that cats are actually capable of cognizance and that they now consider forcing them to wear collars and crap in boxes and wear silly costumes and be the butt of internet memes is beneath them; would you look back and say that for laughing at Ceiling Cat you acknowledge you were retroactively supporting the subordination of a sapient species?
@11 Thanks, Austin! That really does make me wonder who they were fighting…
Oh, this is so fun!! I’m going to break my replies up a bit, so I don’t post a single massive wall of text here…
Kefka @1 – Heh. Yeah, it kinda gives it away, but I couldn’t figure out what else to do. If you just say “Spoiler” then people don’t know whether they dare click or not, depending on what they’ve read. Oh well.
Sishal @3 – Totally makes sense. So far as we know, there isn’t a corresponding singer group; on a guess, the early generations just stayed with the humans and intermarried more strongly on that side. It’s quite possible that the humans were more accepting of the mixed race than the singers were, too -especially once the reaction against the “invaders” ramped up.
marethyu316 @5 – Huh. I thought I’d linked that WoB, but I guess not, and tonight I can’t find it, for some reason. Sometime in the not-too-distant past, someone asked him about the time lapse between those two events, and he said it was a matter of a decades, rather than years, but not centuries. I’ll try to find it so I can give the exact quote, but I’m not sure where to look now.
Note: I realized something in discussion today, which I’ll add to the post as an ETA. We don’t actually know how quickly the singers were affected by the entrapment of Ba-Ado-Mishram. We know they were no longer able to change forms, but they may have retained the form they held at the time. The other thing they would have lost was the ability to use Voidlight to heal, so even if they retained their forms, they would have started dying a lot more quickly. This might also explain why the Recreance didn’t happen right away – if it wasn’t entirely obvious what had happened, and only became clear over time, they might have had a different reaction.
snoweel @6 – Most of it comes from these books (especially the epigraphs), some of it is from books outside the Stormlight Archive, and some of it is based on questions Brandon has answered at various times. The Arcanum is a fairly thorough collection of what we refer to as “Words of Brandon” – things he’s told us outside the texts, one way or another.
Andrew @8 – Heh. Maybe not every unresolved issue, but… yeah, most of them!!
I’ve heard the theory about Cultivation conspiring with Odium to kill Honor, and frankly, I don’t believe it for a skinny minute. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Odium doesn’t believe it, though. (I’ve been wrong before, of course, so take this for what it’s worth.) I believe that Honor and Cultivation together built whatever-it-is that holds Odium bound to Braize. My theory (of course I have one, though I haven’t worked on it with both hands yet) is that they knew there was risk involved, but they did it anyway. Over the course of time, as Odium continued to fight, they realized that something was going to give. Rather than let it be the binding itself, Honor sacrificed himself to let Odium think he’d won something, while (by their private agreement) Cultivation sort of faded into the background. This would allow Odium to think he was winning, and perhaps overextend himself, while actually keeping his prison intact.
I dunno; there are all sorts of places this could go. I just don’t buy the notion that Cultivation betrayed Honor. She may have foreseen his death, but that doesn’t mean she actively participated in helping Odium kill him.
Stepper @9 – Oh, cool!! My whole intent was to lay things out to help form a better historical foundation for people, so this makes me very happy. :D
illrede @10 – I’m not sure if Odium is able to lie directly, but I’m betting he has ways to get people to believe things that aren’t true when it suits him!
Part 2…
Austin @11 – The wording of that sounds way too familiar, so it’s possible I was misreading and/or conflating things. I might have been thinking “enslavement of parshmen” = “trapping Ba-Ado-Mishram in the gemstone” as an instantaneous event, with the Recreance coming 20 years (give or take a few) later. Then when I was looking things up while writing, I focused more on the answer than the question?
Mason @12 – I guess I wasn’t entirely clear: Honor’s death began before the Recreance, but wasn’t completed until after. I noted that it was “a protracted event” – I just forgot to point out how long the process took. (When I asked Brandon about all this at a signing, it seemed pretty clear that it was a process of centuries, not just a year or two.) I was focusing more on the people-events and left the Shard-event as background. Not entirely fair.
While it was inaccurate to say that the Recreance didn’t happen until sometime after the war, it was a matter of decades after the entrapment of Ba-Ado-Mishram. We aren’t sure who the Windrunners and Stonewards were still fighting near Feverstone Keep: was it singers still in their Voidforms, if trapping her didn’t immediately destroy those forms? Was it humans still fighting on the side of the rest of the Unmade? We don’t know that yet, and I should make that clear. However, the idea that the Recreance was a matter of “Oh, no! We just found out that humans were the invaders! We must Sacrifice It All!!” (as per the end of Oathbringer) is another one of those things I just don’t buy. Perhaps it was part of the reason, but I simply don’t believe that was the whole thing. There’s more to the story that we (and the current-era humans) don’t know. I would accept that learning about the destruction of Ashyn, combined with seeing what they did to the singers, and twisted by Honor’s tormented ravings, would all be part of what caused the Recreance – but I think there is at least one more major factor that we don’t know yet. I won’t venture any guesses on what the other factor(s) might be, but I believe there’s more.
(Also, someone suggested that the gemstone library could be called the Stormlight Archive and Brandon shot it down. He was very specific that the Stormlight Archive is the series of in-world books, and not the gemstone records of the Knights Radiant. For what that’s worth.)
Part 3 and counting…
jofwu @13 – Thank you for that confidence! I will (as seen above – and following) argue for my ideas, but I’m glad to know that you know I won’t take it wrong! :D
While it’s quite possible that “Almighty” is a more recent term, it just seemed to fit with the theory (not entirely loony, maybe?) that Honor was their god while on Ashyn. Odd things carry over when history becomes legend and legend becomes myth.
The distinction between “using Surges” and “Surgebinding” … might be a thing? I don’t know; I was (obviously) treating them as two terms for the same thing. I can’t say that “Surgebinding” only applies to the particular pairings of the Knights Radiant, though, because Nohadon used the term before the Radiants were established. It’s possible that the spren bonds only ever granted those pairings, since they were trying to emulate what Honor had done with the Heralds, but I’m not prepared to hang my hat on that limitation. For what it’s worth, we don’t even know if the same “surges’ would apply on Ashyn and Roshar. Would they?
I’m still not 100% sure whether what the Fused do is Surgebinding or Voidbinding, but until we know more, there’s not really much point in discussing it. (Not here, anyway.) We know the Regals and Fused use Voidlight instead of Stormlight, though, right? Is the nomenclature determined by the source of the Investiture, or by the forces being used? So I don’t honestly know which is the right term. I used Surgebinding here rather than try to sort out the distinction, but one thing we know: the spren who bond to form the Knights Radiant were not part of what gave the Fused their ability. Maybe it’s not really Surgebinding unless it involves those spren, and since the Fused and the Regals use Voidlight, they’re Voidbinding? We can only guess. I can make equally valid arguments on both sides of this one, based on what we know now.
Ishar… True, we don’t really know exactly how much of the limitation was imposed by him; it’s quite possible (as noted) that the pairings Honor gave the Heralds were the only way Surgebinding was ever done by bonds with Rosharan spren. Nohadon even mentions that “not all spren are as discerning as honorspren” – so maybe all ten spren “families” were already in existence based on the powers of the Heralds, and Ishar just found a way to add the Ideals to the system. Another thing we don’t know about it is whether the Knights Radiant was a plan Ishar hatched and implemented all in one go, or if it was something he worked out over the course of two (or more) cycles of torment and Desolation. It could be that his observation of the Surgebinders during one Desolation gave him something to think about while they hid from the Fused back on Braize, and it took several cycles to work out the details.
I don’t want to indulge in any discussion about Urithiru here and now, so… yes, it was clearly there during Nohadon’s lifetime. I won’t guess how much functionality it had, nor whether the Surgebinders were able to work the Oathgates before they became the Knights Radiant. There are many, many questions still to be answered.
The timespan and exact definition of the False Desolation seems to be in question, as I discussed above. Does the False Desolation end with the entrapment of Ba-Ado-Mishram? Or does it continue as long as anyone is still fighting? Does it matter who is still fighting? We don’t have those answers yet.
Really nice – this is the kind of thing I kept looking for after finishing Oathbringer (and ended up being sucked down rabbit holes on the coppermind wiki).
The only few caveats I’d have are:
1)Are we sure that the interbreeding between humans/singers is evidence of a harmonious relationship? There’s definitely a more sinister side to it in some cultures.
2)I don’t know that Odium is necessary for humans to start to ‘go bad’, as it were, on Ashyn or otherwise. Surely he was fanning the flames and taking advantage of it, but I think even without Odium there could have been conflict.
3)Regarding the parsh, while I agree with the overall point about denial (especially as it pertains to real world slavery we know about today that involved other human beings) it’s really not perfectly applicable to the parsh which literally were unable to take care of themselves. Unscrupulous people certainly took advantage of it, but once what was done was done, there weren’t a lot of other alternatives, except perhaps allowing them to live out their days on a nature preserve or something (which, on one hand, may have been the more ethical alternative, but on the other hand would have resulted in their extinction since I think at the time they didn’t know about the Listeners). By the time we see it in present day Alethi it was a morally dubious practice (what with the selling, separating families, potentially overworking them, etc).
@16 – Yes, I’d love to hear more in RoW about the Dawnsingers history, and even if they were involved in some/all of the creation of the Dawncities. Also, it was cool for Nale to let us know in Oathbringer that the Dawnsingers are basically the Fused.
@17 – I don’t know Ceiling Cat. Is he like Garfield or Heathcliff? Clear proof of cat’s sapience for decades now :-)
If it makes you feel better (and if I’m understanding you correctly) I believe that you believe that you aren’t actually justifying slavery, as it appears you don’t consider them as people (and therefore, not slaves) but you see them as… something more like sub-human livestock? And the Rosharans did/do as well, so their actions aren’t actually that bad? That kinda strays from my main point (and I would disagree with that interpretation), if that is what you’re saying.
My whole point has to do with challenging the belief in the “benevolent slave owner” in general; and specifically that the Rosharan human’s decision to take the parshmen as slaves (or “entities to care for, and assign menial tasks to” if you prefer) most likely originated from a position of self-interest and greed, and not from a position of selflessness or kindness.
As far as we know, the Rosharan humans:
I find it a stretch to believe that when another exploitable resource (in the form of the rather pliable parshmen) became available, the impetus to add them as “servants who will do whatever you tell them to” came from a position of selflessness. Especially, as slavery appears to be an acceptable practice in Roshar.
@22 – I agree that “real world slavery” and what happened to the parshmen here isn’t apples to apples, and there are definite differences. I just challenge the belief that humans would choose to house and protect their (formally) mortal enemies who are now helpless out of a sense of kindness or humanitarianism, versus choosing to do so out of their own self-interest and because they see a potential resource that they can exploit. At least as far as the various kingdoms, governments and institutions of power were concerned; maybe there were a few individuals who, at first, were generally trying to care for as many parshmen as they could.
Or if we were to look at this via Shardic influence: by this time in Roshar’s history, Honor’s influence had waned, and Cultivation and/or Odium’s influence would likely be more active. Neither of those Shards Intents would appear to encourage a selfless dedication to the caretaking of the weak, but either Intent could support using and exploiting the parshmen for selfish advancement.
I am really curious as to where readers see this incredibly altruistic version of Recreance-era Rosharans. Is there anywhere in the text that shows Rosharans to be selfless humanitarians, willing to give of themselves on such a large scale while seeking little back in return? Or to do so in any Rosharan era that we’ve been exposed to so far, for that matter?
super helpful. citations would be really nice, so i can catch up on my reading-
like from where do we know about the planets in the Roshar system????
Way to go! great summary and very well put together. Can’t wait to find out how close the speculation is!
Caroline @24 – the Arcanum Unbounded anthology contained a lot of ‘supplemental’ material (presented as in world scholarship) about the different shard worlds each of their novellas/stories take place in.
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When do we find out that Roshar was created by Adonalsium? Was that in the Arkanum unbounded and I just missed it, or was it somewhere else? I knew it wasn’t created by honor&cultivation, but i thought it was just kinda there, like a naturally occurring planet.
Also, great post Alice! It’s good to get things straight in my mind after not reading the books for a while. Lots of interesting brain food to chew on…
No, it has been established that some Alethi do that. We haven’t seen, say, Purelakers do any such think, nor would every Alethi do them. (Think about Sebarial, for example.)
@Steel Savant:
I believe that’s a “Word of Brandon” (typically abbreviated “WoB”). Brandon sometimes answers questions about the Cosmere at signings, or on Reddit, or at launch parties.
Thanks for the recap Alice! It is nice to have everything we know, and don’t know, laid out together.
One thing I think is good to note is that Ashyn is still inhabited, according to Arcanum Unbounded. The humans didn’t completely destroy the planet, just most of it, and there might still be some Investiture on the planet to Invest the Floating Cities.
Part 4, quite late…
Clinton @14 – As I mentioned in one or more of my previous posts, I’m not convinced that what we learned at the end of Oathbringer is the whole story. There’s always another secret.
KiManiak @15 – I tend not to think of the spren as part of “flora & fauna” for some reason… but I definitely glossed over the spren. I’m not sure if I’ll have a separate post just for spren, or if I’ll deal with them as part of the Knights Radiant post, but they didn’t fit in my mind with the “history” aspect. My mind can only hold so much at once? Heh.
Cymatics… I really want to know more about it, but we know so little that there’s just not much to say. It exists on Roshar? I’ve had multiple theories on the cymatically-shaped city sites, and not one of them has more support than another. Might have been Adonalsium, might have been the singers, might have been Honor & Cultivation, might have been the Aimians… I’d really love to learn more!
Re: the enslavement of the parsh… Well, in any slaveholding society, there will always be some who are more benevolent than others, just because individuals are different and see things differently. Some will be benevolent for the sake of the slaves, while others will be “benevolent” for the sake of the economic benefit of what they see as the equivalent of “healthy animals.” Some will be cruel just because they’re inherently nasty people, and some will be cruel because they don’t care and slaves can just be replaced when they wear out. So you’ll get the whole range, and I’m not going to argue in favor of slavery.
I will, however, argue that it’s unreasonable to think that the humans jumped immediately into active and vicious slavery. First of all, we don’t know how immediate the impact was. Did they all lose their forms the instant their Connection was severed? Or did they retain their forms (without benefit of healing) until they tried to change forms and discovered that a spren could leave, but a new one couldn’t bond? If it was the first, those on the battlefield would far more likely have been slaughtered where they stood rather than being enslaved – or at least, the large majority would. The others would simply have been left to die. I don’t see how anyone would have thought, “Oh, look, slaves!” without first having enough interaction to realize that they could be taught and motivated to work. It’s possible I’m wrong about this, of course, but I believe that the most probable sequence of events would have been as I suggested. Many would have died on the battlefield, and many more by their inability to do anything for themselves, but somebody had to be the first to give a parshmen some food and attempt to communicate. (Did they even speak the same language? Betting not…) It’s quite possible that the time between “feed the poor starving creature” and “work your fingers to the bone if you want food” was a matter of weeks rather than months or years; no objection there. But I doubt it happened on the battlefield.
As you note, of course, slavery was a commonly accepted practice on Roshar (as, indeed, it was on earth until the last few centuries), and was not by any means a racial issue. Aside from the parshmen, who you couldn’t free if you wanted to without killing them, a person’s racial heritage meant nothing in terms of slavery; if you got on the wrong side of the wrong people, you could be made a slave quite easily. Shallan’s brother Jushu was within an ace of being made a slave, and he was a fourth-dahn lighteyes. So… yeah. Slavery was widespread, and by the time of our main action, the parsh were the highly valuable slaves; someone like Kaladin or Jushu, who just got on the wrong side of someone more clever or more powerful, would be cheap labor until they weren’t worth the trouble any more. It’s worth noting that most of the Rosharan cultures, not just the Vorin ones, held parshmen as slaves.
Bob @17 – Honestly, I can’t remember where “maybe Cultivation’s Vessel is a dragon” came from. Possibly it was totally founded on the hope that at least one of the Vessels is a dragon, and then speculation about which one it could be! There are a few we know were human, and one we know was Sho Del, but none that are confirmed dragons. There’s also been speculation that Endowment’s Vessel is a dragon, since Nalthis has dragon myths, but no one (except Team Dragonsteel) knows for sure.
While I certainly don’t believe the Eila Stele is unbiased history, some of it I assume to be more or less true. I suppose its possible that they weren’t manipulating the Surges on Ashyn at all, but they sure did something nasty. I personally assume that “Surgebinding” is the magic of the Rosharan system rather than just the one planet. That would mean that on the planet Roshar, Surgebinding is accessed via a spren bond, while on Ashyn it would be accessed via the viruses or bacteria or whatever. And the “surges” might look different from one planet to another, for all we know.
This, of course, is sheer speculation…
The biggest reason I’m certain Hoid was dancing with Vatwha as a human (rather than appearing as a singer) is that in the epilogue to Oathbringer, when he was disguising himself as a beggar with a missing tooth, he was concerned that she would recognize him. He decided that he had to be pleased with her failure to recognize him, since it meant his disguise was adequate to the task, but he seriously considered the possibility that she would know him if she saw him. That says to me that he was very much a human at the time, and recognizable as such. They Eila Stele actually confirms this, in a way, because it clearly says that the singers took them in and pitied them.
Good point, that Cultivation probably had a hand in the cross-species compatibility. For some reason, she apparently thought it was a good idea. Perhaps she was trying to reduce the chances of a conflict she saw coming?
About Ishar, as noted in a previous comment, it may well be that he had nothing to do with the pairings and that those were simply the spren mimicking what they saw Honor had done. We don’t know what the relationship between Nohadon, Ishar, and the Knights Radiant was exactly.
Re: the listeners, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “something they lost when the Last Legion became the listeners, rather than a decision on their part not to take on other forms.” My understanding, limited though it is, was that the Last Legion made a decision to take only dullform and mateform, refusing all other forms as being too likely to lead to further submission to the Fused and/or Unmade, and as part of that decision named themselves listeners rather than singers. So I don’t know what distinction you’re making.
Re the rest, I agree. :D
Lisamarie @22 – Of course, a good chunk of the stuff in these articles will need updating once RoW comes out… Heh. But at least this will hopefully have people up to speed on what we already know, so they can integrate the new information along the way!
Re: interbreeding – No, you’re right, it’s not proof of harmonious relationship. There’s also no evidence for anything more sinister, though, and given that this is Sanderson, I’m simply assuming he didn’t build two entire peoples on rape. (Then again, I’m the person who still believes there is more to the history than we’ve been told yet, and that the conflict was started by a few bad apples on both sides, while most of both races were perfectly happy to get along. We’ll see.)
Re: Odium’s influence on humans – Even in my theory, I wouldn’t remotely say that humans needed Odium to start to go bad. That’s why I specified “magnifying their lust for power” – because humans always have some of that. The thing I think Odium did was push them (or some of them) to more dangerous measures in their conflicts, until they almost destroyed themselves.
Many good points, all! Thanks for the discussion!!
@Wetlandernw:
We know that Cultivation is one of the better Shards at futuresight. I would argue that she was right about reducing the future conflict, inevitably, meaning that it would have been even worse without her intervention.