Southern Scadrians Influenced by Parshendi?

[marles]

I recently have been reading Bands of Mourning again and some of the descriptions given about the masks seemed to have a resemblance to the Parshendi. Feel free to correct anything I say that may be wrong, I'm mostly listening to the audiobook so some stuff may slip my mind.

The way the SoScads use masks leads me to think that Parshendi had some intereaction with the SoScads at some point in the past. Allik's mask is black and red and iirc Iyatil's is red/orange. I'm not sure if we have descriptions of other masks at the moment but these match Parshendi coloring without any additional colors that that would throw it off completely. When Allik is talking about the different SoScad cultures he talks about the Hunters growing into their masks (which we have seen with Iyatil). Growing into the mask so that it becomes a part of them is very much like how the Parshendi grow carapace armor. We also find out that in one of the cultures, masks are changed based on a person's profession, which sounds a lot like the Parshendi changing appearance based on the forms they take.

Of course, the masks also hide their emotions from showing plainly on their faces. The Parshendi show emotions through their rhythms and not on their faces and I believe some of the Parshendi even mention or give a feeling that showing emotions through your facial expression is beneath using the rhythms. Allik gives us a similar feeling when he mentions that he thought all the Northern Scadrians were barbarians because they didn't wear masks, not because the SoScads are further technologically but because they don't wear masks.

I'll admit that the evidence is pretty slim and I can't really think of when/why/how some Parshendi would have been to Southern Scadrial. But it seems almost too coincidental to have a society that sees their masks as the SoScads do and also have those masks and some of the actions around them resemble another culture we've seen elsewhere in the Cosmere. Any additional thoughts/refutations about this?

[Leyrann]

So, first of all, I'm not sure if orange is actually a colour Parshendi have.

There's also a timeline issue though, in that the parshmen have spent the last two thousand years trapped in slaveform, while Stormlight Archive plays more or less around the same time as Mistborn Era 2, meaning that the last time parshmen weren't in slaveform was about 700 years before the Lord Ruler rose to power. Considering Southern Scadrian culture seems to have formed during the Final Empire (when the planet was much warmer), it is unlikely they were influenced by singers.

Of course, the Parshendi were not trapped in slaveform, but we know they have lost access to the forms for a long time, knowing only dullform (and mateform?), and they seem to have lived only in the far east of Roshar, far away from the only known Perpendicularity (in the Horneater peaks).

[marles]

Yeah I'm only really vaguely remembering the description of Iyatil's mask being red/orange, but for some reason I was thinking that the Parshendi carapace was mentioned as having some orange coloring or something (maybe when Bridge 4 is picking through bodies and first discover the carapace is actually part of their bodies). But I haven't gone through the Cosmere nearly as much as most here so my memory of specific details is a bit fuzzy.

I do agree that the timeline does not necessarily match up. Especially considering that even if there were Parshendi that made it to Scadrial as some point, if it happened during TFE they would have had to somehow get in more or less unnoticed (unlikely with TLR sitting on top of Preservation's pool and Ruin's perpendicularity being constantly populated with workers) and then make it across the continent and then ocean.

[Calderis]

Parshendi carapace is orange. 

[Leyrann]

16 hours ago, Calderis said:

Parshendi carapace is orange. 

Yup, I actually came across that today on my OB reread.