Jump to content

General Technological Capabilities of Roshar/Alethkar


Recommended Posts

So, the general technological capabilities of Alethkar (taken as being representative of Roshar in general, absent other information). In general, I also figured a thread like this would be a good resource to have.

I am well aware of Sanderson's usual disdain for 'technological levels', though I wanted discuss a field-by-field breakdown. My take is something as follows:

Agricultural Technology: The most important one in any agrarian society, as it determines both the labor productivity of the majority of the population/households and the sizeof the non-agricultural population you can have producing non-food goods or fighting. However, it's also extremely difficult to draw ANY conclusions about, because farming on Roshar is so radically different from on an Earthlike world, and also rarely touched on in the books. We can't really say anything about the management of nitrates (or a different limiting nutrient) in the soil because there is no soil and minimal mention is made of fertilizer or cover crops. Likewise, we see nothing of the implements used for harvesting/planting or how labor-intensive these tasks are. With a set pf population figures, we could find a ratio of farming:non-farming population, but for some reason Sanderson hasn't included the Alethi census figures in any of the books. And soulcasters would ruin that anyway.

Military Science: Here used to refer generally to both the ability to raise and organize an army and keep it supplied in the field. The Alethi capability in this regard is, frankly, insane, and the continued territorial integrity of Jah Keved implies that they cannot be significantly inferior. The Alethi have maintained an army of at least 150,000 men in the Shattered plains for five years, as well as a large number of territorial armies in Alethkar proper. Amaram's army consisted of several thousand men, and it encountered/fought several others during Kaladin's tour of duty, which was presumably mostly within the Sadeas Princedom. Three armies of this size per prince would give us a total of 300,000 men under arms, and I feel this is a conservative estimate.

And all this is apparently done without massive suffering on the home front. By comparison, Imperial China could maybe field similar numbers during their really big wars, but most records indicate this was usually accompied by serious hardship. Or millions of people starving to death. The best historical comparison for the Alethi armies is probably those of the American Civil War or the French Revolutionary War, which is using a lot of words to say that the organization of the armies is worlds apart from their arms. 

EDIT: The Turks were know to raise armies approaching this size on occasion, but those were not full-time professional armies. Most of the (reported) 170,000 troops raised to attack Vienna in the spring of 1683 would have returned to civilian life by 1684; only the Janissaries and some of the cavalry would have remained in the army in the long run. Contrast again with permanent Alethi armies.


Medicine: This one is interesting, because I while Roshar, or at least the Vorin kingdoms, have highly developed medical knowledge (strong corpus of anatomical knowledge, working understanding of infection, and so forth), all of their actual medicine seems to be natural compounds. For instance, when Kaladin is purchasing antiseptic in TWoK, all the listed compounds are plant or animal products. While this is better than having no effective medicine (Assuming everything actually works as well as Kaladin believes it does, anyway, but that's another question), it seems like an important detail to mention. It's possible that Roshar is a low-disease environment for humans, given that they aren't native, but that's both speculation and off-topic.

Chemistry: Probably the weakest field we've seen. Unless I am mistaken, we've never seen reference to a synthetic or manufactured chemical compound. Gunpowder is obviously absent, even as a siege implement or curiosity. None of Jasnah's spanreed contacts, so far as I can tell, are chemists of any sort. This might be Esoteric Knowledge held by the Stormwardens, which would be pretty neat.

MetallurgyThere seems to be a lot of steel in the Alethi armies. For a typical infantryman, a steel spearhead and steel body armor and vambraces/grieves seem to be the norm. Considering how hard it is to manufacture steel with pre-industrial methods, this seems surprising. Roman armies issued body armor on such a scope, but the best Roman armor (Lorica Segmentata) was only iron, with the outside sometimes case hardened into mild steel, which is much easier than manufacturing good steel for the whole thing. This is especially surprising considering the general lack of fuel; forests are relatively rare compared to Earth-like worlds, and fossil fuels are non-existent. There might be some details related to the high-oxygen atmosphere that are relevant, but that's getting really technical. It could be soulcasters, but the fact that the Heralds would teach primitive humans to soulcast and cast bronze rather than soulcasting blanks directly into steel implies that producing steel via soulcasting is at least difficult.

Anyway, if anyone else has thoughts or suggestions, or if I've gotten something wrong, please say so,

 

Edited by Heir of the Void
Link to comment
Share on other sites

58 minutes ago, Heir of the Void said:

In general, I also figured a thread like this would be a good resource to have.

I agree. The only other variant of this that we have is from the Roshar vs Scadrial thread, courtesy of Erunion, but that one is slightly tinged by focusing on the combat aspect. (Not to mention being a little outdated post Oathbringer)

1 hour ago, Heir of the Void said:

Agricultural Technology:

  1. We can't really say anything about the management of nitrates (or a different limiting nutrient) in the soil because there is no soil and minimal mention is made of fertilizer or cover crops.
  2. Likewise, we see nothing of the implements used for harvesting/planting or how labor-intensive these tasks are.
  3. With a set of population figures, we could find a ratio of farming:non-farming population, but for some reason Sanderson hasn't included the Alethi census figures in any of the books. And soulcasters would ruin that anyway.

1. Crem is the soil-replacement/analogue. Stormlight helps plants grow.

Quote

Brandon Sanderson
Now I mean one of the big adaptations they've had to make is that they have to use crem, so a lot of the trees that you'll find on Roshar, they will be using crem that falls and you use this to create shells, you use this to infuse your bark, they use this in a lot of different ways, the minerals there are very important because they're not getting from the soil what plants on our world get from soil, a lot of them do. You have to get all of your minerals and things basically have to come from the crem.

Bystander
Which the farmers already knew.

Brandon Sanderson
Which the farmers already knew.


Question
For Words of Radiance, could you put a comment about something in the upcoming books, something not too specific, just something I can think about? Something like "Renarin has a spren" you wrote for somebody else in The Way of Kings?

Brandon Sanderson (Paraphrased)
Brandon wrote "Stormlight makes plants grow" in the guy's book.

2. Minor mentions of Tools/Intensity(from their respective wiki articles)

Quote

Clema is a crop grown on Roshar. It is fairly intensive to grow, similar to tallew or lavis.
Lavis is a species of plant from the rockbud family. As the dark brown polyps begin to grow, they have to be wormed. Farmers must carefully go over each polyp searching for worm burrows. Each field can take weeks to check and it is important to check repeatedly for worms since any worm that is missed results in the loss of the entire polyp.
Tallew was a type of rice native to Roshar. (No further info, but it's a rice that can be made into flatbread) Per Clema entry, it's intensive too.
Flangria is a type of meat found on Roshar. Flangria is produced via Soulcasting, which makes it far cheaper than other kinds of meat.

3. Talk of Food and Population(spoiler tag b/c good lord this text wall).

Spoiler

ebilutionist
How would food production be like without soulcasters? Has Alethkar, for example, grown far beyond what it could (population-wise) without them?

Brandon Sanderson
The food question is a great one. As far as the Alethi go, it's more a matter of concentration than raw food production. Shipping is SLOW in Alethkar. It's long, which makes getting between north and south difficult, and the rivers aren't as useful as they are on (say) Earth.

The warcamps, for example, would starve themselves out short order without soulcasters. Supply lines are just not an Alethi strength. Kholinar, while not as big as Scadrian population centers, is also large enough that it depends on soulcasters for some of its food. It could survive without them, though, with northern Alethi food production.

Really, warfare is where they've learned to extend themselves, and depend on the soulcasters. Remember, gemstones in them DO break, so you do still need a ready supply of emeralds. The larger, the better.

ebilutionist
Very interesting on the food logistics of Alethkar - I never did quite imagine Kholinar was smaller than say, Elendel, but the technological progress there explains it.

Given how slow food transportation is, I would presume fresh food is a no-go. Are spices and preserved food selling well in Roshar, then? As for population centers, is Kholinar the largest around, or are other places a lot larger?

Brandon Sanderson
There's a reason that Herdazian food (which makes soulcast meat taste good) is popular these days.

Azimir is larger in population than Kholinar. Kholinar is big by Rosharan standards, but far smaller than an Earth population center (like London) at a comparable time. The warcamps had it beat by a lot--depending on how you view the warcamps. (As one city, or ten small ones.)

ebilutionist
Does that just mean Herdazian food is incredibly spice-heavy, then? Also, why is Soulcast food bland? Is it due to the nature of the object (changing food to food makes it tastier than stone to food), or just because the Soulcaster lacks practice, like Jasnah did with strawberry jam?

Brandon Sanderson
Flavorful, rather than spicy. Most western food is already spicy. The Herdazians offer something a little different, and are pretty good with soulcast meat. The portability is also a bit of a revolution.

Soulcasting anything other than the basic Essence requires some innate knowledge and practice. People could learn to soulcast better food, but it would have to be a Radiant with control over the process. The soulcaster fabrials are far more rigid in what they can create.


2 hours ago, Heir of the Void said:

Military Science: [...]And all this is apparently done without massive suffering on the home front. By comparison, Imperial China could maybe field similar numbers during their really big wars, but most records indicate this was usually accompied by serious hardship. Or millions of people starving to death.

To quote Erunion:

Quote

Soulcasters. Soulcasters. Soul flipping casters. I'm a history geek, particularly a history of war geek, and frankly, SOULCASTERS. Those things are so insanely useful it's not even funny.


1 hour ago, Heir of the Void said:

Medicine: This one is interesting, because I while Roshar, or at least the Vorin kingdoms, have highly developed medical knowledge (strong corpus of anatomical knowledge, working understanding of infection, and so forth), all of their actual medicine seems to be natural compounds.

  1. Assuming everything actually works as well as Kaladin believes it does, anyway, but that's another question.
  2. It's possible that Roshar is a low-disease environment for humans, given that they aren't native, but that's both speculation and off-topic.

1. I'd imagine that they wouldn't teach something that doesn't work, but that's only an opinion.
2. Ambient Stormlight improves the overall healthiness of Roshar, to the point that a minor outbreak of the sniffles got called a plague.

Quote

Questioner
Another person asked about the plague in the Purelake.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
Turns out, that was a pathogen introduced by worldhoppers. People on Roshar normally have greater health than elsewhere in the cosmere because they are more invested (stormlight and all that). This "plague" was what we call… the common cold.


1 hour ago, Heir of the Void said:

Chemistry: Probably the weakest field we've seen. Unless I am mistaken, we've never seen reference to a synthetic or manufactured chemical compound. Gunpowder is obviously absent, even as a siege implement or curiosity. None of Jasnah's spanreed contacts, so far as I can tell, are chemists of any sort. This might be Esoteric Knowledge held by the Stormwardens, which would be pretty neat.

I've got a couple ideas about that. Gunpowder doesn't get discovered because water, water everywhere. As for other things, the spoiler tag WoB contained this: "Soulcasting anything other than the basic Essence requires some intimate knowledge and practice. And likely a Radiant, the soulcaster fabrials are far more rigid in what they can create."

It doesn't explain why nobody seems to have discovered any of these compounds, but it could explain why they haven't caught on. Inability to mass-produce is gonna turn sponsors away from the tech, especially in the age of Soulcasters. (Stuff like this could also be in the realm of things the Heralds know, which got lost between Desolations)

2 hours ago, Heir of the Void said:

MetallurgyThere seems to be a lot of steel in the Alethi armies. Considering how hard it is to manufacture steel with pre-industrial methods, this seems surprising. It could be soulcasters, but the fact that the Heralds would teach primitive humans to soulcast and cast bronze rather than soulcasting blanks directly into steel implies that producing steel via soulcasting is at least difficult.

Per Taln, Kalak would teach them Bronze because "their stone tools" would be insufficient, and they would teach them Steel "if they had enough time." I agree that Steel is probably harder to make, but it's been 4,500 years since the last Desolation, so I'd think they've had enough time to figure it out on their own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow this topic is right up my alley. First I would like to point out that our assumptions about how bad the plague in the purelake is may be a little off. We know that it is the common cold pathogen causing it but if Rosharan immune systems have no immunity to noroviruses then the common cold may be quite a bit more severe than it is on earth. 

What I am a lot more sure about is the reason they will have real trouble discovering gunpowder is the difficulty they will have isolating saltpeter AKA potassium nitrate. That is the oxidizing molecule in gunpowder and what makes it a viable explosive. Fuels are easy charcoal is just one of the fuels you could use to make an explosive but you have to have saltpeter to provide it with oxygen so it can burn rapidly without mixing with air. There are a relatively limited number of naturally occurring chemicals which can do that and rosharan hydrology probably renders most of them unavailable. Most of the mineral deposits of that kind of salt are found in dried up desert lakebeds which roshar is distinctly lacking in. There are a number of oxidizers which could probably be made by someone like Jasnah but she would need to know what she was making first and roshar doesn't appear to have the theory of the elements yet much less periodicity or an understanding of oxygens role in combustion. Until someone tries Antoine Lavoisier's experiments with mercury oxides they don't have a chance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier#Oxygen_theory_of_combustion

Edited by physicskid
spelling, grammar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

3. Talk of Food and Population(spoiler tag b/c good lord this text wall).

I've seen that - unfortunately none of those give us a rough value for the total population of Alethakar, or it's population density, or the total size of the country, which is something I'd really like to know.

The details about concentration make sense, as that was the big limit on historical city formation. It 

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Kholinar is big by Rosharan standards, but far smaller than an Earth population center (like London) at a comparable time.

This, unfortunately, tells us nothing. Are we talking about London in 1500 (50,000) or London in 1600 (200,000)? Or Paris in 1700 (600,000)? Any of these could conceivably be 'comparable time periods'.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

People could learn to soulcast better food, but it would have to be a Radiant with control over the process. The soulcaster fabrials are far more rigid in what they can create.

This, at least, supports the theory that Soulcasters can't be used to make steel. The Azish soulcaster that made copper was apparently a rarity, and significant enough that they let it dictate the aesthetics of their capital, though a Radiant soulcaster might be able to. 

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

so I'd think they've had enough time to figure it out on their own.

I was referring to making it via soulcasting; obviously they know how to make steel the normal way.


The problem is the sheer volume of fuel and labor required. There don't seem to be enough forests to use charcoal fuel, and coke is out of a question. The labor required for both would also be... significant, especially considering the hundreds of thousands of men tied up in warfare.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Gunpowder doesn't get discovered because water, water everywhere.

No, gunpowder doesn't get used because water, water everywhere. Fairly few chemical breakthroughs are made in an open field during torrential rain. It's a small distinction, but a key one. Also, if any form of explosive device were possible, one would expect that to be a common tactic against Shardbearers. Or at least a tatic; it couldn't possibly be worse than ropes.

All that said, cannons would basically be the one way for normies to deal with Thunderclast. Presently, there isn't really anything they can do. Odium probably could have overrun most of Roshar, or at least sacked the major cities, by using thunderclast attack followed by a Drop Assault by airmobile Fused carrying other fused to mop up.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

Inability to mass-produce is gonna turn sponsors away from the tech

Not necessarily. If your patronizing an alchemist for prestige or personal curiosity, you don't really care how marketable their products are. 

More broadly, technology for its own sake or for the purpose of implementing it is very much a modern Western bias, and is by no means a historical or cultural constant, even on earth. The ancient Greeks, for instance, considered the notion of a philosopher, including a natural philosopher, actually doing work with their learning to be somewhat distasteful. Chinese scholarship was more focused on the works of past masters, and the notion of research flies in the face in the Inward Perfection philosophy... but that's a tangent.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

1. I'd imagine that they wouldn't teach something that doesn't work, but that's only an opinion.

Empirically incorrect; people taught a lot of things that didn't work, and I don't see why Roshar would be any different. But we know at least the antiseptics and trauma surgery does work, and anything else is pure speculation.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

2. Ambient Stormlight improves the overall healthiness of Roshar, to the point that a minor outbreak of the sniffles got called a plague.

Huh.

So then why aren't the cities bigger?
 

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

To quote Erunion:

Yes, but feeding soldiers is only part of the equation. The part that's much harder, especially with a standing army, is paying them.  We know soldiers, even in the providential armies, receive regular, fairly good pay. They are also extremely well equipped, which costs money. The aristocracy also seem to have no issue conscripting troops from the general population for their more-or-less continious conflicts, which is... impressive. Even more so considering that Roshar doesn't have Central Banking, and thus they can't finance warfare by monetizing debt (or printing money), which was the usual method of financing such things.

So it's got to be more than just Soulcasters.

16 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

2. Minor mentions of Tools/Intensity(from their respective wiki articles)

Interesting. It's probably safe to assume none of these allow the population density of Earth-rice, given that we don't really see that level of density anywhere - Azimir is a larger city than Kholinar, though if it were twice or more as large (which would be entirely within reason for a rice vs non-rice/non-potato density). 

Beyond that, what we probably can say for sure is that there is no real mechanization of agriculture on Roshar. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure how a mechanical reaper would even work with rockbud-based crops, though I could probably come up with something - a rolling crusher followed by some kind of scoop, maybe.

18 hours ago, The One Who Connects said:

I'm aware - the issue is that without more details quantitative information, we can't really judge how effective human manipulation of that system is, and thus can't really make any judgement of their agricultural technology.

12 hours ago, physicskid said:

First I would like to point out that our assumptions about how bad the plague in the purelake is may be a little off. We know that it is the common cold pathogen causing it but if Rosharan immune systems have no immunity to noroviruses then the common cold may be quite a bit more severe than it is on earth. 

While I'm all for the War of the Worlds, Brandon explicitly described it as 'A Plague of the Sniffles', and made it sound like it wasn't all that serious. Also, Sezth visited the Purelake, and it didn't seem like it was particularly disease-ridden. It's not exactly conclusive, but there's no indication it's worse than it is.

12 hours ago, physicskid said:

What I am a lot more sure about is the reason they will have real trouble discovering gunpowder is the difficulty they will have isolating saltpeter AKA potassium nitrate... Most of the mineral deposits of that kind of salt are found in dried up desert lakebeds which roshar is distinctly lacking in. 

This is a good point, actually. That said, there are other sources; guano was a big one for a while, and a Rosharan animal might have conprable biology. There are also a number of options involving allowing urine to accumulate with other organic materials to produce Calcium nitrate, then leeching it out with water and reacting it with potash to produce potassium nitrate. 

Though that might impede discovery. 

12 hours ago, physicskid said:

There are a number of oxidizers which could probably be made by someone like Jasnah

I doubt it. Jasnah is a revisionist historian, not a natural philosopher. The only times she directly addresses the natural sciences are to quiz Shallan on her education, and to adress that she doesn't know nearly as much about Fabrials as her mother.

Of course, I assume someone could, unless my crackpot theory that there are no chemists on Roshar is actually true.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Following on Leyrann's post, on Earth the stone age is largely considered to be something like 8000 to 2000 BC or thereabouts.  It was therefore around 3800 years from the end of the Stone Age until chemistry became a thing on Earth. What we know of what Roshar is like after a Desolations suggests a reversion to Stone Age tech or thereabouts, not to mention the depopulation that goes with it and the reverting to subsistence farming - survival being far more important than development.

So the fact that we are 4500 years ish after the last desolation means that we're not that far out of bounds from what happened on Earth, particularly in light of the probable lack of a mass extinction event at 2000 BC on Earth, which would put them a few hundred years ahead of Roshar in terms of development and recovery.  So no, I don't really find the lack of chemistry advancement all that odd.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎9‎/‎04‎/‎2018 at 11:35 PM, Draigon said:

I'm not sure where it would fall in the various areas of technical advancement, but there is an active industry creating glass bottles with metal caps.

Glass is very important. It's one of the reasons Europe got ahead of China. Clears glass in particular is important. Without it you don't have telescopes (they have spyglasses) or microscopes/magnifying glass (can't remember if we have seen one, but they likely do). Not to mention inert sadly worked glass without which any complex chemistry is basically impossible.

Speaking of chemistry, didn't Shallan mention it as one of the sciences in her first meeting with Jasnah in WoK?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...