[OB] Theory on Origins of Rosharan Humanity and the Old Magic

[Sairys]

Derp, having a weird issue where "enter" doesn't do anything so typed out in notepad and must have double tapped v when pasting 

[ROSHtaFARian2.0]

35 minutes ago, Sairys said:

Given what we've seen of other shardworld, yes, I expect they would have recovered more.

Regarding Scadrial, it was like that for 1024 years, looking at some timelines this falls between the previous desolation and the beginning of the stormlight chronicles, so that's thousands of years.

It's also a different situation. Different Shards are involved, most of their issues revolved around one human who didn't know what he was doing reacting to all of the problems he was causing.
The global problems were resolved by Harmony and civilisation hits the point it's at in Mistborn 2 around 300 years.

The closest comparisons are Sel and, to a degree, Threnody. 
Odium doesn't appear to have any real interest in making the worlds he passes uninhabitable and, aside from splintering the shards, he doesn't appear to make any really permanent changes to them.

His moves in the Stormlight chronicle seem like he's trying to force himself free, which could enable him to destroy Cultivation and would likely result in him immediately leaving Roshar to hunt down another Shard. Leaving a third world that Odium has left without similar devastation to Ashyn.

Just really makes Ashyn feel different.

I think another thing that's sticking in my mind is the Ashyn theory requires Honor to abandon a world. To break oaths and bonds to that world and travel to another. 
Similarly, it seems as though that would also mean a relatively short time if Odium chases them to Roshar where the Singers seemed to already revere them as Gods.

The reason I brought up Scadrial is not because the timeframes are identical - as you point out, The Final Empire on Scadrial lasted roughly a thousand years where the timetable we're talking about in the Rosharan system would be thousands of years. Rather, my point is look how stagnant Scadrial was throughout that thousand years under the Lord Ruler, in terms of both ecology and technology....with the only thing that kept that thousand years from being replicated for thousands more, was Sazed using the power of Shards to restore the planet's ecology and sow resources that allowed for a swift resurgence in technology and development.

Which again, compared to Ashyn - if Ashyn's magic was only great enough to cause global devastation and permanent damage to that planet due to the Investiture of Shards, then it would make perfect sense that with those Shards' Investiture gone (or mostly gone), the survivors of Ashyn might not have been able to undue or compensate for the damage done to their world with the limited natural and magical resources they had left. Just like if on Scadrial, if Sazed hadn't had access to the Well and Preservation and Ruin's Investiture in the wake of the damage the Lord Ruler did when HE had access to the Well....then no one on Scadrial likely would have had the natural or magical resources to undo or reverse the damage the Lord Ruler had done.

I guess the problem I'm having with the point you make about Odium not having interest in leaving the worlds he passes uninhabitable or making any permanent changes to them is that we know this isn't entirely true. You point to Sel and Threnody as examples of this, which I concede proves that destroying the worlds of rival Shards is not a direct aim of his, but I propose that I don't think that its his goal, but he doesn't exactly mind if it happens. Because see, Sel and Threnody aren't the only example of worlds Odium has left in his wake....we have a third example....the world the Voidbringers came from, bringing Odium with them, and which we know they (and Honor) at least believed to have left this world destroyed in their wake. We just don't know for sure what world it is, and whether it was fully destroyed or just devastated and assumed destroyed by those who left it. But either way, and whether this world is Ashyn as I believe or some other world, the history revealed about the Voidbringers invalidates the idea that Odium as a general rule doesn't make permanent changes to worlds he's passed on from or leave them uninhabitable. It didn't happen on Sel or Threnody, but that doesn't preclude it from being what happened to the original world of the Voidbringers, whatever world that was, and thus I can't see how Ashyn's current state invalidates the idea that Odium and the Voidbringers once came from there instead of potentially supporting it, you know?

Similarly, I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning in regards to The Stormlight Archive. I agree that of course Odium's moves there seem predicated on freeing himself from the Oathpact and whatever else holds him bound to the Rosharan system and presumably killing Cultivation as well. But all his moves there are highly destructive, with the Desolations, the Everstorm, etc, all playing key roles in his attempts to advance his goals on Roshar. So I don't really see how you can argue that his actions are intended to free him to move on to another world and leave Roshar largely intact, making it a third world that doesn't match Ashyn in devastation....when even if we agree that his goal is not to destroy Roshar or its mortal inhabitants specifically, I see nothing that suggests it wouldn't be destroyed in the process or that the possibility his actions might result in its destruction regardless would change anything for him. 

As for the potential problem with Honor breaking oaths and bonds in order to fit this theory that he fled from Ashyn to Roshar....it doesn't sound very Honorable, I agree. But consider that we know it takes thousands of years before a Shard's Intent starts influencing or even overriding the Vessel's original personality....and the events we're all talking about here took place thousands of years in the past, and thus all the Vessels involved likely had a great more of their original personalities fueling their actions than simply being dictated by their Intents. So if the events with Ashyn were far enough back in the past, it might not have been particularly honorable or noble for Honor to divest himself from Ashyn and flee to Roshar...but that doesn't mean he COULDN'T, if Tanavast felt sufficiently motivated by any number of more human reasons. In fact from what little we've seen of Honor, he strikes me as someone who seemed to have a lot of regrets and self-recriminations, which certainly supports that idea.

Finally, I do agree that events when laid out as I did in this thread seem a bit close together, and that it makes it sound like there was a very short time between Honor and Cultivation arriving on Roshar and gaining the Singers' reverence, and Odium following them. The truth is, we have no idea what kind of timetable we're looking at here or the scale of the timeline, and there are any number of reasons why Odium might not have followed Honor & Cultivation immediately. Maybe he was wounded or weakened by them and stayed on Ashyn for a time to recuperate before coming after them again. Maybe it took him awhile to withdraw his Investiture from Ashyn and that's part of why he prefers not to Invest in Shardworlds, it could be a more time consuming process for some Shards than others depending on their Intent or any number of factors. Or it could simply be the warped perspective of history, and maybe there wasn't much time between Honor/Cultivation's arrival and Odium's at all, and its only because of the way looking far back in history stretches our perception of lengths of time that makes it seem like the Singers spent long with just Honor and Cultivation before Odium came with the Voidbringers.

What I mean by that is, most people when you mention Cleopatra, they'll immediately associate her with other things they know about ancient Egypt, like the pyramids, and unless they're students of history specifically, they're more likely to link her to the time of the pyramids in their head than they are with the modern day. And yet, the first of the Great Pyramids is thought to have been constructed around 2500 BC....while Cleopatra only died in 30 BC, which in the timeline of human history puts Cleopatra closer to the current year than it does the time of the pyramids. And this would come as a surprise to most people, because the instinct is to look at two events far back in history and because of how divergent both these things are from modern experiences, it makes more 'sense' in our minds to lump those two events closer together than to lump one of them closer to us, depending on the actual timeline involved. It could very well be the same phenomenon here in the Stormlight Archive. Because the characters are learning of these events that are all so far back in history and so removed from their current worldview, their sense of the actual timeline of events and the actual lengths of time linking or separating these distant historical events is skewed. And so in the lens of Rosharan history, it SEEMS to the characters like the Singers spent a considerable length of time basking in just the presence of Honor and Cultivation, unencumbered by the presence of Odium or the Voidbringers, when in actuality, we might find it wasn't so long a time in between these things at all.

 

[Sairys]

The notes about Scadrial kinda need to also have the context that Preservation was there trying to have the world in a static state, that one supremely powerful being was there the entire time trying to maintain control over that world. It also didn't last and I don't believe we've seen any magic system capable of replicating that?

 

There's an also issue of definitions in that post. Primarily around what it means to "Destroy a World" given that a world is distinct from a planet.

For us the world isn't just earth, it's the countries, the cultures, and the people. Our individual worlds are even more specific, they could be "the english-speaking world", for some we say their family is their entire world, geeks can also be described as being fascinated with other worlds which can become even more broad up to universal or larger scales.

There are a few things that could "destroy our entire world", such global pandemics, that would ultimately only kill off humanity.

 

So... the original world of Sel was destroyed, the planet Sel remains. The culture and people that originally created Elantris are gone, not even a memory. Given how the Dor came to be in it's current state, their magic systems were probably all destroyed.
Roshar seems to have been mostly destroyed with each desolation, the Heralds are really the ones that carried on the knowledge to the civilisations that developed after them. The world of the original inhabitants has effectively been destroyed.

Scadrial was kinda destroyed by Lord Ruler and replaced with something else.

And so on.

Potentially, Ashyn could even be less of a "destroyed world", there was a cataclysm but their magic system may have survived, the pockets similarly might have saved their culture and their people.

 

Also, for the Cleopatra example the Aztec empire may work more nicely given we're nearing only the 500th anniversary of its, end.

It also seems like what you've written and your conclusion is in opposition.

As you note, when we look back into history we have the tendency to lump things together even if they're separated by thousands of years.

That would lead to the expectation that historians looking back would think the arrivals of Honour and Cultivation are followed soon by the arrival of Odium, when the reality would be that they were hundreds, if not thousands of years separate.

If it was relatively recent history then it would likely lead to the feeling that much longer has passed than it really has. 

Following the logic presented, that it seems to be a long time between could imply that it's longer than that.