The Desolations Nine

[Tempus]

I was thinking about the scale of the Desolations. The Desolations were said to have the follow properties, chronogolistically:

 

• There were apparently 99 Desolations

• The Desolations last years, one as long as eleven

• The Desolations destroyed 90% of the population

• The Desolations often regressed a population back an era of technology or two (Iron Age to Stone)

 

So, we know current Roshar is 4500 years since the last Desolation. Given the above facts, the minimum length we could expect the break between Desolations to take would be eleven years (assuming they do not overlap). More likely, we would expect them to have breaks of a several hundred years (in order to rebuild the population and to account for the loss of tech). That would mean, if there were 99, that the Desolations last for no less than 1100 years, and more likely somewhere between 20 000 and 100 000 years.

 

That's just too long.

 

My theory here is that - There were only nine Desolations, and that was distorted by history to become 99 (possibly through Vorin symmetry).

 

 

Other than my gut feeling that people like Hoid and the Shards haven't been just sitting around derping for a hundred thousand years and then suddenly things got busy, I do have a little bit of evidence to support this claim.

 

 

 

Supporting Points: (From myself and the many posters below!)

 

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In one of Dalinar's flashbacks, the time is referred to as the Eighth Epoch. At the time of the Eighth Epoch, there were Knights Radiant. We know from a certain slightly madman in Words of Radiance that the Knights Radiant were implemented late in the cycle of Desolations, long enough for the Heralds to become both used to and fed up of rebuilding society, but not so early that the Radiants were able to preserve enough knowledge to advance them past the Iron Age.

 

This suggests that there were in fact, nine Desolations, with Dalinar's vision occurring during the eighth. The time between each Desolation was considered an 'Epoch'. With only nine desolations, even at 1000 years in between each Desolation, we only hit 9000 years. Which is a fairly acceptable number, comparatively. I say 1000 because, well, 10 is very Rosharan after all!

 

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The Desolations were devastating enough to reset the technology level an era, for example, from Iron Age to Bronze or Stone Age. This was revealed to us by the person called Taln in WoR, who mentions a number of things that indicates first hand knowledge of the Desolations. He also indicates that they have some time prior to the arrival of the Desolation.

 

This means that each Desolation must take at least enough time between them to lose a tech level (normally takes a thousand years or so to tech up at that point in history - presumably not all knowledge would be lost so shorter than that). And the Desolations must be at least Devastating enough that it wouldn't be unusual for the entire world to lose a thousand years of technological progress - no mean feat, and probably entails huge damage to the population and infrastructure which they would need time to recover from.

 

---

 

The idea of large gaps are supported by Taln's torture. "Taln" withstood 4500 years of torture at ten times the usual intensity. And at that point, Odium has had all the previous times between Desolations to develop his torturing abilities to their max. It would be insane if the Heralds can't withstand at least 450 years when Taln took on ten times that, in both duration and intensity. (PorridgeBrick)

 

 

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It's incredibly hard to rebuild when infrastructure is entirely gone. Consider the fall of Rome. After the Germanic tribes sacked everything, incredible amounts of technology were lost, some of it forever, and the Dark Ages started. The people at that time all knew of the technology that was possible: they'd been the ones using it, some of them building it.

 

That knowledge wasn't passed on. There was neither the economy, governance, nor resources to supply using that technological knowledge. And in this sort of preindustrial society, knowledge is passed down by family lines or apprenticeship. Kill off a family, you kill off the secrets of their trade. In bad times, all you do is try to feed your family. You don't care about spreading your knowledge, preserving technology. Now, let's apply this to the Desolations. They'd literally just learned bronze-working. This wasn't all that widely known, presumably: there's only so much one man can do to teach an entire population in a small time span. And everything was just ruined. Their population has been ravaged. Their farms to supply food, their mines to supply metal, their men sent off to fight in the war, all are decimated.

 

The Heralds can't exactly stay long: they can't risk sending another Desolation. These people are going to be desperate. They're not in the situation to technologically innovate, or even preserve. They're back in the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer societies. It takes time to regrow populations, to rebuild civilization. This again leans towards longer Desolation breaks. (PorridgeBrick)

 

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Brandon consistently offers unreliable in world information, and we know the Vorins tampered with historical texts and accounts in a variety of places. The unlikeliness of the Desolations lasting hundreds of thousands of years provides an indication that they may be one of those unreliable accounts.

 

---

 

Roshar is full of the number 10. The True Desolation being the tenth Desolation would work very well. There is also probably more to the Heralds leaving at exactly the number they did (either 9th or 99th) than just 'they were tired'. Because 99 or 9 are both immediately prior to the number 10 (or ten tens). This is another indication that there is something more going on with the Desolation count and the Oathpact breaking than we are being told.

 

---

 

The Vorins add symmetry to all sorts of things for kicks. Notably, the Herald's names all got symmetrified. Converting nine to ninety-nine to have a more symmetrically pleasing number is not outside the realm of possibility for a religious organization that wants to make everything symmetrical and is changing historical accounts to do so.

 

---

 

Having the Desolations last hundreds of thousands of years is really too long. We know Adonalsium shattered, and that sometime after that Honor, Cultivation, and humans arrived on Roshar. In the meantime, Odium has been around, and Hoid has been doing things, and there was the seventeeth shard. Did those organizations and people really sit around and do nothing for 100k years and then all of the sudden, Hoid starts searching, Odium starts breaking other shards, and the 17th becomes active, all during the span of a couple thousand years? Seems unlikely. I'm not even sure the Heralds could stay sane after 100k years of torture.

 

---

 

In Dalinar's vision in the chapter Starfall, where he talks with the two Radiants and fights the Midnight Essence, his 'wife' implies there hasn't been a Desolation in her life-time, which I'm assuming is ~30 years old.  However, there's still some sort of legend or history regarding Desolations, so the memory hasn't faded completely--meaning to me that one has happened within the last 5 generations (150 years).  Even if we assume that there's generally 100 years from the start of one Desolation until the start of the next, that's still a good ~10,000 years this has been going on.  Tempus's argument that 100k years is too long for anyone to not do anything about it is very reasonable and nearly as applicable to a much smaller number (like 10-20k years) as well. (kaellok)

 

---

 

 

One possibility for length - 4500 years since the last Desolation. 4500 is a perfect multiple of nine. 500 each. If this True Desolation is the tenth Desolation, well, what we're looking at here is another symbolic clue based off the Roshar love of ten, and could place each Desolation gap at 500 years. This is by no means a certain deduction, it could just be general symbolism and non-indicative, but were this to hold true, 99 Desolations would have been about fifty thousand years, but nine would be the nicely symmetrical 4500. It's not conclusive, but is another small shred to add to the symmetry and symbolic tens pile.

Edited May 7, 2014 by Tempus

[PorridgeBrick]

I've been thinking a lot about this myself, so thank you for referring me over here. I agree that there's something very fishy with Roshar and the relative tech levels of the Cosmere. First, we have Shards, animals, and people settling the Tranquelline Halls, developing ecosystems and later civilization. This presumably takes a while, even if the Shards were actively spurring things along. Then Odium attacks, and everyone flees to Roshar, likely resetting their technological level as everyone dies or abandons their homes and possessions. Then, per WoB, everyone chills for a while on Roshar before Odium comes back again (perhaps after a Shard-shattering, planet-destroying temper tantrum on Sel).

ZAS

People have been thrown by you saying Odium is not native to Roshar.

BRANDON

Odium is not native, that's the thing. Are any of them native? So if you dig the deeper question, are any of them native, ehhh, none of them are native to the planets you've seen so far. What I probably should've said to be more precise is that Honor and Cultivation were there long before Odium showed up.

Then finally, you have the Desolations resetting the technological level again and again, with large time gaps in between to allow the population to regrow. After that ends, you have a whole 4500 years after before the present time. As it is, it seem almost unbelievable that Roshar is not more behind in technology than it is. If there were 99 of those Desolations, I think the entire human race should have probably gone extinct by the time Roshar gets its act together.

[Shaggai]

I kind of doubt this. The whole 9 out of 10 thing applied to one of the later Desolations, and Odium apparently got better over time. That figure could have been significantly lower in past Desolations. Humanity could have survived. I also suspect that Epochs were not defined by Desolations - there were certainly other events to define them. The varying strength of Odium's attacks, the emergence of the Knights Radiant, the level of technology attained between Desolations, cycles of ten Desolations (which could easily have had different characteristics, as ten is the holy number of Honor and seems to have some connection to Odium), and so on.

[kaellok]

I believe that you are incorrect.

 

First, you estimate that there's a minimum of 11 years between Desolations. There is no reason to believe this.  A Desolation begins when a Herald breaks and returns to Roshar; WoB implies this to be true. 

 

 

Q:  Is a Desolation caused when a Herald breaks under torture?
A:  This person is asking the right kinds of questions.

 

Q:  What caused a Desolation to end? Was it just the defeat of Odium's forces? Because the Desolations start when the Heralds break under torture.
A:  Because the Heralds can no longer be in existence. There is a certain period of time that they can be there, and after that, if they're there, they will start a new one. So the Heralds do need to leave for a Desolation to end.
Q:  Oh. So they've got a time limit.
A:  They do. Otherwise the Desolation will start again. What they discovered is not all of them have to. As long as one remains, the Desolation will not start again.
Q:  So, by the nine leaving, did that actually break the Oathpact for them? Did it change the cycle of Desolations?
A:  They have not completely broken the Oathpact, despite what they may think.
 

 

Second, there is some unknown length of time after a Desolation that the Heralds can exist--it's highly probable that during this time any that survived would set out creating a base of knowledge for them to draw upon in order to jumpstart the race back to the top.  Just knowing what technology is possible can result in massive leaps forward; think of all the centuries wasted in our own history because "it can't be done."  We can also look to the time difference between Mistborn: HoA and AoL; 300 years sees them in a Steam Age equivalent.  I'd say that 1000 years in between is far too generous.  Also, given Dalinar's vision in Starfall, progress to 'advanced' technology wasn't a given.

 

Third, there are unknown tens of thousands of years that happened during the 99 Desolations.  At least, I'm completely unaware of any timeline for them, or when it started in relation to everything else.  All I have been able to find is that Hoid pre-dates the Heralds (those words, not 'is older than,' which seems deliberately odd but is a different subject). 

 

Fourth, the amount of destruction each Desolation caused was not absolute.  Nahodan's time saw 90% destroyed.  We have little evidence for the rest of the Desolations that occurred. 

 

I think that the Eighth Epoch could be renamed The Epoch of the Desolations.  It's possible that they are counting some other significant event as the start; there's a WoB somewhere about mageocracies and theocracies and many other different kinds of huge governing bodies existing throughout Roshar's history, but not really much detail on when. 

 

 

Q:  You have a tendency to create books with theocracies that are legitimately ruled by the gods, and this seems to be missing. Is that a direction that the Knights Radiant might be heading, or is something else going to happen?
A:  I'm gonna RAFO that one. There was a theocracy on Roshar at one point. There was also a mage-ocracy. A lot of things have existed on Roshar

 

So, it could quite easily be First Epoch -- Life in the Tranquilline Halls

Second Epoch -- Settling on Roshar

Third Epoch -- Everything is Cool

Fourth Epoch -- First Desolation

Fifth Epoch -- Mages rule everything

Sixth Epoch -- Desolation kills everyone.  dark ages again

Seventh Epoch -- Priests rule everything

Eight Epoch -- Radiants are founded

 

So, while you put a lot of thought into your theory, and it makes a lot of sense to count each Desolation as the beginning of a new Epoch (it does, even though I'm arguing against you; that's by far your strongest point because it's logical to count time from the last time the world was basically destroyed and started over again) I just don't think it's right. 

[Maffu17]

Technological growth is always stunted when magic is around. Most of the scientists on Roshar we've met seem to be too hung up on fabrials to bother with anything as mundane as steam. Milestones such as the telegraph, semaphore and telephone are overlooked because of span-reeds for example.

Also its a very different world, I'm not sure if I've seen any coal around and the trees with their crem hardened bark would make logging a lot of trouble.

The Shin mentioned mining though so there are similarities to our own development. However the ability to soulcast may have hampered advanced metallurgy (as Rysn's Babsk mentions they can carve wood and soulcast it into swords). Remember the Herald talked about teaching the populace to craft with bronze, this is a big clue to how advanced they usually find society after returning from damnation.

If i wanted to troll i could say the largest contributor to stagnation is religion and the repression of man. [[Removed the rest of this paragraph as judging by the downvotes I may have annoyed some people, apologies, I was aiming for light humour and took it too far]]

But joking aside, being dissuaded from trying to predict the future, half the population being illiterate, and the sexual prejudices behind the callings all point to religion being a large hindrance. Additionally a more difficult agricultural process, and the Unmade interferences like the Thrill all conspire to hold back the tide of progress.

In the interest of fairness I have to undermine myself by pointing out that "as late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write".

And there's a huge case for argueing that our own religions were far more destructive to our worlds own development.

Edited April 29, 2014 by Maffu17

[Maffu17]

Oh and yea the 99 desolations is a lie. 9 would be more accurate.

Any herald who can withstand 99 cycles of torture isn't going to balk at a hundredth.

[AerionBFII]

I always thought that after a Desolation the next one is worse then the next one worse still and on and on and on.

Like gradually grinding them down and the next on be it the 100th or the 10th it is supposed to break them.

[Tempus]

First, you estimate that there's a minimum of 11 years between Desolations. There is no reason to believe this.  A Desolation begins when a Herald breaks and returns to Roshar; WoB implies this to be true. 

 

The longest Desolation lasted 11 years, as far as we know. If it had intersected with another Desolation, presumably that would have been noted, so it's logical to assume that at least at that time, the Desolation was 11 years apart from the next. In addition, the Heralds are given time to teach entire levels of technology between when they are tortured, and when the Desolation begins. Seeing as the Heralds arrive with no resources but knowledge, that means a nominal gap of anywhere from several months to several years (unless Dalinar goes and pushes things along with a storming war).

 

 

Third, there are unknown tens of thousands of years that happened during the 99 Desolations.  At least, I'm completely unaware of any timeline for them, or when it started in relation to everything else.  All I have been able to find is that Hoid pre-dates the Heralds (those words, not 'is older than,' which seems deliberately odd but is a different subject). 

 

Fourth, the amount of destruction each Desolation caused was not absolute.  Nahodan's time saw 90% destroyed.  We have little evidence for the rest of the Desolations that occurred. 

 

Hoid has a timeskip ability, unknown in nature but similar in result to the Allomantic pulsers. He can skip forward in time, basically, so he's not that old. And it is true the destruction of Desolations is not absolute. However, we know they were frequent enough and consistently devastating enough to reset the tech level thousands of years back from Iron Age to Bronze or Stone often enough to make that occurance common and expected.

 

 

 

I think that the Eighth Epoch could be renamed The Epoch of the Desolations.  It's possible that they are counting some other significant event as the start; there's a WoB somewhere about mageocracies and theocracies and many other different kinds of huge governing bodies existing throughout Roshar's history, but not really much detail on when. 

 

So, it could quite easily be First Epoch -- Life in the Tranquilline Halls

Second Epoch -- Settling on Roshar

Third Epoch -- Everything is Cool

Fourth Epoch -- First Desolation

Fifth Epoch -- Mages rule everything

Sixth Epoch -- Desolation kills everyone.  dark ages again

Seventh Epoch -- Priests rule everything

Eight Epoch -- Radiants are founded

 

 

Well, I like how you counter my supporting points with pure speculation =D. First off, we DO know a little about that WoB. The Vorin theocracy ruled prior to the Era of Silence until the time of the Alethi Sun King, in other words a couple thousand years after the Recreance and presumably a good deal of time after the beginning o the eighth epoch. No way that the theocracy is an epoch. 

 

The Mageocracy almost certainly refers to a time when Surgebinders or KR ruled, which could be during the Desolations, or between the last Desolation and the Recreance. Heralds are presumably exempt because they were off being tortured most of the time - a difficult scenario for a ruler.

 

Either way, I don't think you can just make up some epoch names and then present that as a counter argument, even if the Third Epoch was so cool it wore a bowtie and a fez.

 

 

 

Technological growth is always stunted when magic is around. Most of the scientists on Roshar we've met seem to be too hung up on fabrials to bother with anything as mundane as steam. Milestones such as the telegraph, semaphore and telephone are overlooked because of span-reeds for example.

Also its a very different world, I'm not sure if I've seen any coal around and the trees with their crem hardened bark would make logging a lot of trouble.

The Shin mentioned mining though so there are similarities to our own development. However the ability to soulcast may have hampered advanced metallurgy (as Rysn's Babsk mentions they can carve wood and soulcast it into swords). Remember the Herald talked about teaching the populace to craft with bronze, this is a big clue to how advanced they usually find society after returning from damnation.

If i wanted to troll i could say the largest contributor to stagnation is religion and the repression of man. Since every significant invention in Earth history was by mans hand, from the wheel to the aeroplane to the internet. The situation in Roshar shows that if only women can write they use the gift to make snidey comments about their husbands in the subtext and its likely the span-reed was only developed from a desire to get a heads-up on the latest fashions coming out of Jah keved. Also the motivation behind the pain-riel shows that when women are in charge of science, their low pain threshold and selfishness prompts them to come up with a magical substitution for Epidurals, and relief from cramps. Oh wow, how did I dig myself this deep so quickly...

But joking aside, being dissuaded from trying to predict the future, half the population being illiterate, and the sexual prejudices behind the callings all point to religion being a large hindrance. Additionally a more difficult agricultural process, and the Unmade interferences like the Thrill all conspire to hold back the tide of progress.

In the interest of fairness I have to undermine myself by pointing out that "as late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write".

And there's a huge case for argueing that our own religions were far more destructive to our worlds own development.

 

I would personally presume that the ability to soulcast would advance the material sciences due to relatively easy supply and availability of otherwise rare materials. That said, Roshar is clearly highly advanced in medicine compared to the usual earth tech progression, a little ahead in the scientific inquiry, a little behind in mechanics and engineering.

 

Also, be aware that the Alethi are not the only culture on Roshar. Just pointing that out.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Tempus

[Shaggai]

1. The longest Desolation lasted 11 years, as far as we know. If it had intersected with another Desolation, presumably that would have been noted, so it's logical to assume that at least at that time, the Desolation was 11 years apart from the next. In addition, the Heralds are given time to teach entire levels of technology between when they are tortured, and when the Desolation begins. Seeing as the Heralds arrive with no resources but knowledge, that means a nominal gap of anywhere from several months to several years (unless Dalinar goes and pushes things along with a storming war).

 

 

 

2. Hoid has a timeskip ability, unknown in nature but similar in result to the Allomantic pulsers. He can skip forward in time, basically, so he's not that old. And it is true the destruction of Desolations is not absolute. However, we know they were frequent enough and consistently devastating enough to reset the tech level thousands of years back from Iron Age to Bronze or Stone often enough to make that occurance common and expected.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Well, I like how you counter my supporting points with pure speculation =D. First off, we DO know a little about that WoB. The Vorin theocracy ruled prior to the Era of Silence until the time of the Alethi Sun King, in other words a couple thousand years after the Recreance and presumably a good deal of time after the beginning o the eighth epoch. No way that the theocracy is an epoch. 

 

4. The Mageocracy almost certainly refers to a time when Surgebinders or KR ruled, which could be during the Desolations, or between the last Desolation and the Recreance. Heralds are presumably exempt because they were off being tortured most of the time - a difficult scenario for a ruler.

 

5. Either way, I don't think you can just make up some epoch names and then present that as a counter argument, even if the Third Epoch was so cool it wore a bowtie and a fez.

 

 

 

 

6. I would personally presume that the ability to soulcast would advance the material sciences due to relatively easy supply and availability of otherwise rare materials. That said, Roshar is clearly highly advanced in medicine compared to the usual earth tech progression, a little ahead in the scientific inquiry, a little behind in mechanics and engineering.

 

Also, be aware that the Alethi are not the only culture on Roshar. Just pointing that out.

1. The Desolations start when the Heralds break. If they stay around for too long, sure, a new Desolation will start, but while a Desolation is continuing a new one probably cannot start. It could be any amount of time, although around a hundred years seems to me to be the most likely.

 

2. Not thousands of years. Taln mentions having to teach them bronze and wishing he could teach them iron. So, assuming that's from before the Radiants were there to preserve knowledge, it only resets them from artificially accelerated Bronze Age to Stone Age. There were only ten Heralds and they couldn't have taught many people how to use bronze. In the Desolations, the deaths of the few people who know how to use bronze... well, it's not that many deaths compared to the total.

 

3. The Hierocracy was after the Desolations, certainly, but there were plenty of other events. And all of this is speculation. Your ideas are just as much speculation as his.

 

4. The mageocracy almost certainly existed during the Desolations, and is likely to have existed before the time of the Radiants. The Radiants were inspired by The Way of Kings. If the Way of Kings is the book of the Radiants, then Surgebinders were probably kings even before the Radiants emerged.

 

5. It's all speculation. Just because those specific epochs and epoch names may not have all been correct doesn't mean that your idea is definitely correct.

 

6. Roshar seems to be at the level of, say, Enlightenment-era Earth. Lots of scientific inquiry, debunking of past notions, lots of technological advances. There are, of course, differences, since progress is not linear.

 

Oh and yea the 99 desolations is a lie. 9 would be more accurate.

Any herald who can withstand 99 cycles of torture isn't going to balk at a hundredth.

Not necessarily. The Heralds just finally snapped. Just because they got through 98 without snapping doesn't mean that the 99th means nothing.

[PorridgeBrick]

First, you estimate that there's a minimum of 11 years between Desolations. There is no reason to believe this.  A Desolation begins when a Herald breaks and returns to Roshar; WoB implies this to be true. 

This supports the idea of large gaps in between, actually. "Taln" withstood 4500 years of torture at ten times the usual intensity. And at that point, Odium has had all the previous times between Desolations to develop his torturing abilities to their max. It would be insane if the Heralds can't withstand at least 450 years when Taln took on ten times that, in both duration and intensity.

Second, there is some unknown length of time after a Desolation that the Heralds can exist--it's highly probable that during this time any that survived would set out creating a base of knowledge for them to draw upon in order to jumpstart the race back to the top.  Just knowing what technology is possible can result in massive leaps forward; think of all the centuries wasted in our own history because "it can't be done."  We can also look to the time difference between Mistborn: HoA and AoL; 300 years sees them in a Steam Age equivalent.  I'd say that 1000 years in between is far too generous.  Also, given Dalinar's vision in Starfall, progress to 'advanced' technology wasn't a given.

It's incredibly hard to rebuild when infrastructure is entirely gone. Consider the fall of Rome. After the Germanic tribes sacked everything, incredible amounts of technology were lost, some of it forever, and the Dark Ages started. The people at that time all knew of the technology that was possible: they'd been the ones using it, some of them building it. That knowledge wasn't passed on. There was neither the economy, governance, nor resources to supply using that technological knowledge. And in this sort of preindustrial society, knowledge is passed down by family lines or apprenticeship. Kill off a family, you kill off the secrets of their trade. In bad times, all you do is try to feed your family. You don't care about spreading your knowledge, preserving technology. Now, let's apply this to the Desolations. They'd literally just learned bronze-working. This wasn't all that widely known, presumably: there's only so much one man can do to teach an entire population in a small time span. And everything was just ruined. Their population has been ravaged. Their farms to supply food, their mines to supply metal, their men sent off to fight in the war, all are decimated. The Heralds can't exactly stay long: they can't risk sending another Desolation. These people are going to be desperate. They're not in the situation to technologically innovate, or even preserve. They're back in the Stone Age, hunter-gatherer societies. It takes time to regrow populations, to rebuild civilization.

And you can't use Scadrial as an example. Sure, it seems Medieval, but that's because TLR has been suppressing everything. They have pocket watches, advanced metalworking. They're a society that's been on the brink of Industrial Revolution for a thousand years, and past that brink in the years before.

Third, there are unknown tens of thousands of years that happened during the 99 Desolations.  At least, I'm completely unaware of any timeline for them, or when it started in relation to everything else.  All I have been able to find is that Hoid pre-dates the Heralds (those words, not 'is older than,' which seems deliberately odd but is a different subject). 

 

Fourth, the amount of destruction each Desolation caused was not absolute.  Nahodan's time saw 90% destroyed.  We have little evidence for the rest of the Desolations that occurred. 

It would be strange if the damage of the Desolations was that much less, however. This is a society of Bronze Age and Stone Age level technology. With ten people-TEN- to stand against the Desolation, ten who know what they're doing. They're facing the entire listener race, who at this point held a considerably larger repertoire of forms with even more terrible power. They can throw lightning, predict the future, make illusions, do whatever awful thing decayform does. Then you have thunderclasts, giant enemies made of stone that can swat men like flies and appear anywhere, at any time. You have the Midnight Essences. You have the Unmade, enormous, godlike spren. You have Voidbinders. And that's likely not all the monstrosities Odium has up his sleeve. Before surgebinders came and gave mankind a chance to defend themselves, the Desolations should be many times worse, not better.

 

I think that the Eighth Epoch could be renamed The Epoch of the Desolations.  It's possible that they are counting some other significant event as the start; there's a WoB somewhere about mageocracies and theocracies and many other different kinds of huge governing bodies existing throughout Roshar's history, but not really much detail on when. 

 

 

So, it could quite easily be First Epoch -- Life in the Tranquilline Halls

Second Epoch -- Settling on Roshar

Third Epoch -- Everything is Cool

Fourth Epoch -- First Desolation

Fifth Epoch -- Mages rule everything

Sixth Epoch -- Desolation kills everyone.  dark ages again

Seventh Epoch -- Priests rule everything

Eight Epoch -- Radiants are founded

 

So, while you put a lot of thought into your theory, and it makes a lot of sense to count each Desolation as the beginning of a new Epoch (it does, even though I'm arguing against you; that's by far your strongest point because it's logical to count time from the last time the world was basically destroyed and started over again) I just don't think it's right.

 

[Tempus]

 

1. The Desolations start when the Heralds break. If they stay around for too long, sure, a new Desolation will start, but while a Desolation is continuing a new one probably cannot start. It could be any amount of time, although around a hundred years seems to me to be the most likely.

 

2. Not thousands of years. Taln mentions having to teach them bronze and wishing he could teach them iron. So, assuming that's from before the Radiants were there to preserve knowledge, it only resets them from artificially accelerated Bronze Age to Stone Age. There were only ten Heralds and they couldn't have taught many people how to use bronze. In the Desolations, the deaths of the few people who know how to use bronze... well, it's not that many deaths compared to the total.

 

3. The Hierocracy was after the Desolations, certainly, but there were plenty of other events. And all of this is speculation. Your ideas are just as much speculation as his.

 

4. The mageocracy almost certainly existed during the Desolations, and is likely to have existed before the time of the Radiants. The Radiants were inspired by The Way of Kings. If the Way of Kings is the book of the Radiants, then Surgebinders were probably kings even before the Radiants emerged.

 

5. It's all speculation. Just because those specific epochs and epoch names may not have all been correct doesn't mean that your idea is definitely correct.

 

6. Roshar seems to be at the level of, say, Enlightenment-era Earth. Lots of scientific inquiry, debunking of past notions, lots of technological advances. There are, of course, differences, since progress is not linear.

 

Not necessarily. The Heralds just finally snapped. Just because they got through 98 without snapping doesn't mean that the 99th means nothing.

 

 

1 & 2. Sure. My original estimate was 10-1000 years, with a higher likelihood of being closer to 50-300. I don't think we're disagreeing here, I was simply presenting the information which helped decide the possible bounds of the timeframe.

 

3, 4, & 5. We are in fact all speculating. I was just pointing out that to counter an argument with a few supporting points by presenting one with no supporting points is not helpful to the discussion. Certainly, there are other options which are possible, and this theory is not guaranteed to be the correct one. But there's no point in bringing up wild guesses, that's not helpful at all. There are plenty of good points to be made for and against with actual evidence and logic.

 

Given the Theocracy, I see no reason to assume that the well known and documented theocracy of the Vorins was not the one which Brandon was referring to. Given the Mageocracy, agreed. Way of Kings was written by Nohadon, who was a king in a time very likely to be prior to Knights Radiant. Unknown if surgebinding was present, or if he was a surgebinder.

 

6. Roshar is approximately at late Medieval-era technology. They are very advanced in medicine, a little advanced in scientific theory (science is just getting started!), a little behind in navigation, and fairly behind in mechanics and engineering.

 

 

If you want some more mushy squishy supporting points...

 

• Brandon consistently offers unreliable in world information, and we know the Vorins tampered with historical texts and accounts in a variety of places. The unlikeliness of the Desolations lasting hundreds of thousands of years provides an indication that they may be one of those unreliable accounts.

 

• Roshar is full of the number 10. The True Desolation being the tenth Desolation would work very well. There is also probably more to the Heralds leaving at exactly the number they did (either 9th or 99th) than just 'they were tired'. Because 99 or 9 are both immediately prior to the number 10 (or ten tens). This is another indication that there is something more going on with the Desolation count and the Oathpact breaking than we are being told.

 

• The Vorins add symmetry to all sorts of things for kicks. Notably, the Herald's names all got symmetrified. Converting nine to ninety-nine to have a more symmetrically pleasing number is not outside the realm of possibility for a religious organization that wants to make everything symmetrical and is changing historical accounts to do so.

 

• Having the Desolations last hundreds of thousands of years is really too long. We know Adonalsium shattered, and that sometime after that Honor, Cultivation, and humans arrived on Roshar. In the meantime, Odium has been around, and Hoid has been doing things, and there was the seventeeth shard. Did those organizations and people really sit around and do nothing for 100k years and then all of the sudden, Hoid starts searching, Odium starts breaking other shards, and the 17th becomes active, all during the span of a couple thousand years? Seems unlikely. I'm not even sure the Heralds could stay sane after 100k years of torture.

 

 

---

 

I also want to add that I shouldn't be the only one upvoting here! This is a nice discussion, everyone should please go and upvote those people who have contributed here.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Tempus

[WeiryWriter]

Well, I like how you counter my supporting points with pure speculation =D. First off, we DO know a little about that WoB. The Vorin theocracy ruled prior to the Era of Silence until the time of the Alethi Sun King, in other words a couple thousand years after the Recreance and presumably a good deal of time after the beginning o the eighth epoch. No way that the theocracy is an epoch. 

 

The Mageocracy almost certainly refers to a time when Surgebinders or KR ruled, which could be during the Desolations, or between the last Desolation and the Recreance. Heralds are presumably exempt because they were off being tortured most of the time - a difficult scenario for a ruler.

 

Minor correction here, the Era of Solitude, began at Aharietem when humanity "won" (at least that is how the believe it to be) so the Hierocracy was during the Era of Solitude.

 

We fought them off ninety and nine times, led by the Heralds and their chosen knights, the ten orders we call the Knights Radiant. Finally, Aharietiam came, the Last Desolation. The Voidbringers were cast back into the Tranquiline Halls. The Heralds followed to force them out of heaven as well, and Roshar’s Heraldic Epochs ended. Mankind entered the Era of Solitude. The modern era.

 

And yes the generally accepted interpretations are that the "theocracy" was the Hierocracy when the Vorin Church held power and that the "mageocracy" refers to the Silver Kingdoms era where the Knights Radiant were dominant.

[potato]

I find this theory extremely plausible. My only question are these:

We know that the Heralds continued presence on Roshar brings about another desolation. If they were unaware of this, how many back-to-back Desolation could they have caused before they figured that out?

What time frame between them?

I only ask because that could significantly reduce the overall length of time we are discussing. Also, though we know that the Heralds freely chose to join the Oathpact, perhaps they were unaware of the exact details when they did.

[Tempus]

I find this theory extremely plausible. My only question are these:

We know that the Heralds continued presence on Roshar brings about another desolation. If they were unaware of this, how many back-to-back Desolation could they have caused before they figured that out?

What time frame between them?

I only ask because that could significantly reduce the overall length of time we are discussing. Also, though we know that the Heralds freely chose to join the Oathpact, perhaps they were unaware of the exact details when they did.

 

Generally, we don't have enough details about the Oathpact to draw any conclusions, sadly. It could be that the Oathpact was signed with full knowledge of what it would entail - the name would certainly evoke some kind of willing and cooperative contract. I honestly can't imagine that any group of people would consent to being consistently tortured for eons on end without very good justification, though. And if they didn't know about the whole torture thing, why would they keep the oath so long? I'm working under the premise that the Heralds got together/were chosen to enter into the Oathpact as part of Honor's plan to counter Odium (Honor being all about Bondy/Oathy things), and were thus informed of what it would entail.

[PorridgeBrick]

I find this theory extremely plausible. My only question are these:

We know that the Heralds continued presence on Roshar brings about another desolation. If they were unaware of this, how many back-to-back Desolation could they have caused before they figured that out?

What time frame between them?

I only ask because that could significantly reduce the overall length of time we are discussing. Also, though we know that the Heralds freely chose to join the Oathpact, perhaps they were unaware of the exact details when they did.

 

We know from WoB I believe that the Heralds and Honor were the original parties of the Oathpact, so they do indeed know the exact terms. I doubt they ever actually stayed around long enough to cause any back-to-back Desolations.

[kaellok]

During Dalinar's vision with Nahodan, we learn that they had Surgebinders, but the Knights Radiant don't seem to have formed yet.  I don't have access to my books right now--does anyone know/remember who told us that it had been 99 Desolations? 

 

Although we're all speculating here, we're not just using baseless speculation.  As I said before, it makes a lot of sense for each Desolation to end the Epoch that came before it.  If your religious history that permeates much of life believes that you came to the world from somewhere else, it also makes sense to me to consider that the First Age, or the Golden Age, or the Everything is Perfect Because we are With God Age or whatever else you want to call it.  We just don't have access to the information on what ended each age, so we each go with what we think is most believable/rational/logical.

 

Now that I've done more math and worked in my own "reasonable" numbers, well, 99 Desolations seems way too many.  I should have started with math, but I was tired at the time ;D  In Dalinar's vision in the chapter Starfall, where he talks with the two Radiants and fights the Midnight Essence, his 'wife' implies there hasn't been a Desolation in her life-time, which I'm assuming is ~30 years old.  However, there's still some sort of legend or history regarding Desolations, so the memory hasn't faded completely--meaning to me that one has happened within the last 5 generations (150 years).  Even if we assume that there's generally 100 years from the start of one Desolation until the start of the next, that's still a good ~10,000 years this has been going on.  Tempus's argument that 100k years is too long for anyone to not do anything about it is very reasonable and nearly as applicable to a much smaller number (like 10-20k years) as well. 

 

If it's actually been 4500 years since the last Desolation, given the focus on symmetry, then I would guess that there were 4500 years of Desolations before.  I'm still not convinced on the only 9 Desolations thing, but the numbers I can come up with just don't seem reasonable otherwise.

 

 

Either way, I don't think you can just make up some epoch names and then present that as a counter argument, even if the Third Epoch was so cool it wore a bowtie and a fez.

 

Fezzes are cool.

Edited April 22, 2014 by kaellok

[Tempus]

I should have started with math, but I was tired at the time ;D  In Dalinar's vision in the chapter Starfall, where he talks with the two Radiants and fights the Midnight Essence, his 'wife' implies there hasn't been a Desolation in her life-time, which I'm assuming is ~30 years old.  However, there's still some sort of legend or history regarding Desolations, so the memory hasn't faded completely--meaning to me that one has happened within the last 5 generations (150 years).  

 

If it's actually been 4500 years since the last Desolation, given the focus on symmetry, then I would guess that there were 4500 years of Desolations before.  I'm still not convinced on the only 9 Desolations thing, but the numbers I can come up with just don't seem reasonable otherwise.

 

That is a very good point about the lady in Dalinar's vision. However, five generations is probably too short as a maximum - Roshar has evidently preserved the legends of the Desolations for 4500 years. The Bible, a nice text to use as a comparison given Vorin's similarities to the influence of Christianity on Western civilization up to an including the Roman Empire, is about 2900 years old, and went through a large number of revisions and additions during this time (especially during the first thousand years or so it was around).

 

Given the apparent Rosharan excellence at preserving accounts and documents, and their equal negligence in developing technology (by far the laziest shardworld we've seen in that respect, but we'll cut them some slack because of the biweekly storms that wrack the planet), it's not inconceivable to hit the thousands of years mark as an upper bound.

 

 

Here is the cool thing I just noticed, though.

 

4500 years since the last Desolation. 4500 is a perfect multiple of nine, yes? 500 each. If this True Desolation is the tenth Desolation, well, what we're looking at here is another symbolic clue based off the Roshar love of ten, and could place each Desolation gap at 500 years. This is by no means a certain deduction, it could just be general symbolism and non-indicative, but were this to hold true, 99 Desolations would have been about fifty thousand years, but nine would be the nicely symmetrical 4500 as you suggest. It's not conclusive, but is another small shred to add to the symmetry and symbolic tens pile.

[Shaggai]

1 & 2. Sure. My original estimate was 10-1000 years, with a higher likelihood of being closer to 50-300. I don't think we're disagreeing here, I was simply presenting the information which helped decide the possible bounds of the timeframe.

 

3, 4, & 5. We are in fact all speculating. I was just pointing out that to counter an argument with a few supporting points by presenting one with no supporting points is not helpful to the discussion. Certainly, there are other options which are possible, and this theory is not guaranteed to be the correct one. But there's no point in bringing up wild guesses, that's not helpful at all. There are plenty of good points to be made for and against with actual evidence and logic.

 

Given the Theocracy, I see no reason to assume that the well known and documented theocracy of the Vorins was not the one which Brandon was referring to. Given the Mageocracy, agreed. Way of Kings was written by Nohadon, who was a king in a time very likely to be prior to Knights Radiant. Unknown if surgebinding was present, or if he was a surgebinder.

 

6. Roshar is approximately at late Medieval-era technology. They are very advanced in medicine, a little advanced in scientific theory (science is just getting started!), a little behind in navigation, and fairly behind in mechanics and engineering.

 

 

If you want some more mushy squishy supporting points...

 

7. • Brandon consistently offers unreliable in world information, and we know the Vorins tampered with historical texts and accounts in a variety of places. The unlikeliness of the Desolations lasting hundreds of thousands of years provides an indication that they may be one of those unreliable accounts.

 

8. • Roshar is full of the number 10. The True Desolation being the tenth Desolation would work very well. There is also probably more to the Heralds leaving at exactly the number they did (either 9th or 99th) than just 'they were tired'. Because 99 or 9 are both immediately prior to the number 10 (or ten tens). This is another indication that there is something more going on with the Desolation count and the Oathpact breaking than we are being told.

 

9. • The Vorins add symmetry to all sorts of things for kicks. Notably, the Herald's names all got symmetrified. Converting nine to ninety-nine to have a more symmetrically pleasing number is not outside the realm of possibility for a religious organization that wants to make everything symmetrical and is changing historical accounts to do so.

 

10. • Having the Desolations last hundreds of thousands of years is really too long. We know Adonalsium shattered, and that sometime after that Honor, Cultivation, and humans arrived on Roshar. In the meantime, Odium has been around, and Hoid has been doing things, and there was the seventeeth shard. Did those organizations and people really sit around and do nothing for 100k years and then all of the sudden, Hoid starts searching, Odium starts breaking other shards, and the 17th becomes active, all during the span of a couple thousand years? Seems unlikely. I'm not even sure the Heralds could stay sane after 100k years of torture.

 

 

---

 

11. I also want to add that I shouldn't be the only one upvoting here! This is a nice discussion, everyone should please go and upvote those people who have contributed here.

1-5. No argument here, or at least none worth the space.

6. Scientific Revolution idea level, maybe? It's just that the Enlightenment parallels are pretty large (lots of philosophy, we've got empiricism in the house, feminism and to a much lesser degree atheism are starting to kind of be things, and the whole "riots in Kholinar" thing is totally going to be the French Revolution).

7. Two things. First, this is the timescale of Shards. Thousands of years isn't too much. Second, I find it much more likely that it would be a hundred to a few hundred years in between. A hundred thousand years for 99 Deolations would be around a thousand per Desolation, which seems to be too much. A few tens of thousands of years are much, much less.

8. The use of 10 works just as well with 100 as with 10. In fact, it might even work better.

9. 99 vs. 9 doesn't seem like a matter of symmetry. If you postulated that it was, say, 83, I might agree that it was possible, but 100 works well enough that there wouldn't be much of a motive to change it.

10. See 7. It's much more likely that it was only a hundred or a few hundred years in between Desolations, because of how long it's been this time. If the space was only four or five times as long, it wouldn't have as much of a kick when the next Desolation came. Whereas if it was somewhere between one hundred and four or five hundred times as long, that would be a serious shock.

11. You're right. Everyone, including me, go upvote some stuff.

[cris34b]

I heard speak of fezzes.

 

Hmm, I like 10,000, so i'm going to start there. Its nice and... 10. No further explanation needed.

 

Take 10,000-4,500=6500.

6500/9=722.222...

6500/99=65.6565...

We know the desolations lasted 11 years max. I'll assume they were all around 10 years.

 

722.22-10=732.22 years between desolations

65.65-10=55.65 years between desolations

 

Now, the woman in Starfall was 30 years old (ish)

 

732.22-30=702.22

55.65-30=25.65

 

At minimum, the desolation would have taken place 25 years before her lifetime.

 

That means both of these are plausible, as she wouldn't have lived through either of those numbers.

I personally am not going to pick a side in the argument. Just giving some numbers. Do with them as you wish.

[Tempus]

6. Scientific Revolution idea level, maybe? It's just that the Enlightenment parallels are pretty large (lots of philosophy, we've got empiricism in the house, feminism and to a much lesser degree atheism are starting to kind of be things, and the whole "riots in Kholinar" thing is totally going to be the French Revolution).

 

I have another thread about this, but basically, for 'Renaissance', I'm looking for Scientific Method (discovery of knowledge), printing presses (proliferation of knowledge), advanced navigation (proliferation of trade), and Muskets (application of knowledge to killing things) in order to declare a society 'Renaissance level'. Those being the key technology assets and discoveries that defined the beginning of that period of technology. Equivalent technologies would count, if they fulfilled that role. Roshar is well on it's way to developing the scientific method - Jasnah, Shallan, and Navani all demonstrate aspects of good scientific research. It still needs to be standardized as a discipline and codified, however. The other three major aspects are all missing, however. Most notable of those is military - Roshar seems to have no gunpowder weapons at all, and this could be because scarcity of materials and lack of need for metallurgy has stunted them in that respect. There should still be advanced military applications applied from the new sciences introduced, in this case, they should be fabrial based. But Navani has only just begun this process.

 

Given those clues, and a large amount of other clues, I'm putting them in late medieval. By the end of the Stormlight Archive, I think we will see them advance further in the military respect (though why the war hungry Alethi haven't done so before beats me - they even mention that bizarity in-text, if I recall), bringing the military tech up to early Renaissance. If the Oathgates satisfy trade requirements, and Mr.T spreads and advances some of that learning (and hopefully figures out how to share it effectively), then we could see a full early Renaissance level society by the end of the Archive, or if not then I suspect it should arrive within fifty years or so.

 

Providing of course that Urithiru provides as much providential information as could be hoped for, and that the tiny issue of the world-spanning cataclysm doesn't get in the way.

 

[Shaggai]

I have another thread about this, but basically, for 'Renaissance', I'm looking for Scientific Method (discovery of knowledge), printing presses (proliferation of knowledge), advanced navigation (proliferation of trade), and Muskets (application of knowledge to killing things) in order to declare a society 'Renaissance level'. Those being the key technology assets and discoveries that defined the beginning of that period of technology. Equivalent technologies would count, if they fulfilled that role. Roshar is well on it's way to developing the scientific method - Jasnah, Shallan, and Navani all demonstrate aspects of good scientific research. It still needs to be standardized as a discipline and codified, however. The other three major aspects are all missing, however. Most notable of those is military - Roshar seems to have no gunpowder weapons at all, and this could be because scarcity of materials and lack of need for metallurgy has stunted them in that respect. There should still be advanced military applications applied from the new sciences introduced, in this case, they should be fabrial based. But Navani has only just begun this process.

 

Given those clues, and a large amount of other clues, I'm putting them in late medieval. By the end of the Stormlight Archive, I think we will see them advance further in the military respect (though why the war hungry Alethi haven't done so before beats me - they even mention that bizarity in-text, if I recall), bringing the military tech up to early Renaissance. If the Oathgates satisfy trade requirements, and Mr.T spreads and advances some of that learning (and hopefully figures out how to share it effectively), then we could see a full early Renaissance level society by the end of the Archive, or if not then I suspect it should arrive within fifty years or so.

 

Providing of course that Urithiru provides as much providential information as could be hoped for, and that the tiny issue of the world-spanning cataclysm doesn't get in the way.

The Renaissance had less philosophy and riots though. Maybe Enlightenment for ideas, Late Medieval/Renaissance for tech? Ideological and technological progress can be somewhat separate. I think one of the reasons military tech is so far behind is because they haven't reached that critical threshold of tech where it becomes basically an arms race, with increasingly fast advances. I would also expect the Shardblades and Plate to do some of it. Why waste your time with new stuff when you've got Shardbearers to smash their armies? Edited April 22, 2014 by Shaggai

[PorridgeBrick]

I definitely think muskets shouldn't really factor into the equation at all– for the reasons you mentioned, and because we as far as I'm aware only discovered gunpowder by accident, way before the Renaissance. To discover it purposely would require extremely advanced scientific knowledge considerably beyond the Renaissance level. And the military stagnation in other respects is probably from the presence of Shardplate and Shardblades– who needs killing machines when we have them already?

However, the other issues are valid. It seems that while their science is certainly of the Renaissance, with logarithms, advanced medicine, the scientific method, etc, its application is far behind. I wonder if the divide has something to do with the class divides between the Ardentia and the rest.

[Tempus]

Gunpowder discovery is an accident, but many discoveries are. The key with discoveries of that sort are not 'how' they happened, but the probability of someone stumbling upon it. If you roll enough dice, you will eventually get a six, so to speak. No one set out and said "I'm gonna try all these weird powders until some mixture of them explodes". However, there are a number of factors which assist in the accidental discovery of gunpowder.

 

The first of these is mining - sulphur is a common byproduct of early mining operations. Especially salt mining. It had a number of uses, but chief is that it burns hot and nasty and makes foul smoke that kills things, like bugs and rodents, but doesn't damage stuff like regular smoke. So you've got one component of black powder.

 

Then you have charcoal. Charcoal is a common fuel for burning things nice and hot. It comes from trees. Mix charcoal and sulphur, and you get some incredible and nasty flames, much bigger than either on it's own. And you burn sulphur anyway, so sooner or later, it's gonna happen.

 

The last ingredient to traditional black powder is an oxidant, usually saltpetre. Early ways to make it is basically take a bunch of poop, especially bat or bird poop, and then stick it in water for a while and saltpetre crystals will form. This occurred pretty normally with fertilizing. If some dude should think for whatever reason to throw some of these crystals into those weirdly strong sulphur/charcoal flames, you'd get a small explosion. Sulphur and saltpetre were occasionally used for some old ceramics and pottery (as firing and flux agents, respectively). They were both occasionally used for old medicines (because anything weird that makes things die or grows on poop is probably medicine, right?). Pursue these avenues and you'd soon find gunpowder.

 

Roshar has the following issues:

 

• Very little mining. Crystals are plentiful and more useful than metal in some ways, and metal can be soulcast.

• Very few hardwood trees. The trees on Roshar are weird and jungly, and not necessarily suitable to make charcoal (it requires hardwoods).

• Very few bird or batlike creatures. Saltpetre is more difficult to find via mining (and they're low on mining), so without high nitrate poops around, sources would be scarce.

 

 

So basically, Roshar is not likely to find gunpowder because the ingredients are rare and thus the chance of them being used in collusion become very small.

 

I actually feel that shardplate should bring military science in terms of fabrial weapon making to a more accelerated path, though. If you have these fabrials, and you know that shardplate is awesome and uses gemstones LIKE fabrials, why would you not investigate their use as weapons as much as possible? Make more things like the half-shard shields, fabrial powered artillery, fabrial traps, procurement devices, or simple fabrial engines for locomotion of siege equipment or gear.

 

---

 

Lastly, I agree with you ideologically in general. I am concerned mostly with tech level when I talk about Renaissance. I'm honestly not qualified to talk about cultural anthropology except in the most vague and sweeping senses.

[cris34b]

Hmm, maybe this relates in a way to the Thrill? I imagine it isn't as powerful from behind a cannon as it is with a parshendi on the end of your spear. We've got to consider that not only has this planet been dealing with powerful storms and extinction events, but also a daily interference with superstitions and magic.

 

This is a planet where people have been told it is possible to have incredible magical powers, but at the same time told those powers are evil.

 

They have to deal with the Unmade, dark spirits of immense power which cause things like the Thrill, a bloody thirst for war that leaves logic in the dust.

 

They have the Old Magic, where people get seemingly magical boons in exchange for a curse, which usually outweighs the benifits.

 

And then they've been suppressed by their church, their currently exististing books that survived altered and changed.

 

These are people who are afraid to predict the future. And if you don't predict the future, you don't realy look to the future either. One could call Dalinar's forethought and planning heretical.

 

All of these things seem small at first. But they stack up pretty heavily to weigh these people down. On such a harsh planet, Its very surprising that these people have any existing culture at all, not factoring the Desolations in.

Edited April 22, 2014 by cris34b

[Shaggai]

Gunpowder discovery is an accident, but many discoveries are. The key with discoveries of that sort are not 'how' they happened, but the probability of someone stumbling upon it. If you roll enough dice, you will eventually get a six, so to speak. No one set out and said "I'm gonna try all these weird powders until some mixture of them explodes". However, there are a number of factors which assist in the accidental discovery of gunpowder.

 

The first of these is mining - sulphur is a common byproduct of early mining operations. Especially salt mining. It had a number of uses, but chief is that it burns hot and nasty and makes foul smoke that kills things, like bugs and rodents, but doesn't damage stuff like regular smoke. So you've got one component of black powder.

 

Then you have charcoal. Charcoal is a common fuel for burning things nice and hot. It comes from trees. Mix charcoal and sulphur, and you get some incredible and nasty flames, much bigger than either on it's own. And you burn sulphur anyway, so sooner or later, it's gonna happen.

 

The last ingredient to traditional black powder is an oxidant, usually saltpetre. Early ways to make it is basically take a bunch of poop, especially bat or bird poop, and then stick it in water for a while and saltpetre crystals will form. This occurred pretty normally with fertilizing. If some dude should think for whatever reason to throw some of these crystals into those weirdly strong sulphur/charcoal flames, you'd get a small explosion. Sulphur and saltpetre were occasionally used for some old ceramics and pottery (as firing and flux agents, respectively). They were both occasionally used for old medicines (because anything weird that makes things die or grows on poop is probably medicine, right?). Pursue these avenues and you'd soon find gunpowder.

 

Roshar has the following issues:

 

• Very little mining. Crystals are plentiful and more useful than metal in some ways, and metal can be soulcast.

• Very few hardwood trees. The trees on Roshar are weird and jungly, and not necessarily suitable to make charcoal (it requires hardwoods).

• Very few bird or batlike creatures. Saltpetre is more difficult to find via mining (and they're low on mining), so without high nitrate poops around, sources would be scarce.

 

 

So basically, Roshar is not likely to find gunpowder because the ingredients are rare and thus the chance of them being used in collusion become very small.

 

I actually feel that shardplate should bring military science in terms of fabrial weapon making to a more accelerated path, though. If you have these fabrials, and you know that shardplate is awesome and uses gemstones LIKE fabrials, why would you not investigate their use as weapons as much as possible? Make more things like the half-shard shields, fabrial powered artillery, fabrial traps, procurement devices, or simple fabrial engines for locomotion of siege equipment or gear.

 

---

 

Lastly, I agree with you ideologically in general. I am concerned mostly with tech level when I talk about Renaissance. I'm honestly not qualified to talk about cultural anthropology except in the most vague and sweeping senses.

Wood can be Soulcast, so they don't need to do much for charcoal. But you're right, there's no real reason to make saltpetre or sulfur. Fabrials are useful, but suitable gemstones are expensive enough that it wouldn't really be possible to outfit all your soldiers with fabrial things. Soulcasters are used, of course, removing the need for supply transport, but one thing to remember about fabrials is that the science is new. They just came up with the whole "archery platform" thing. In the absence of the True Desolation, I would expect them to have hit a threshold at which technology grows faster and faster. Unfortunately, I suspect that they'll end up back several hundred years by the time it ends.