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Diomedes

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  1. I would like to add it`s not a fight of Humans vs. Singers this time around. Quite a lot of Humans fight on Odium`s side (Sadeas` army, the Iriali, Jah Keved) and some Singers fight on Dalinar`s side. So it is a whole different kind of conflict compared to past Desolations. Odium`s (Rayses) game plan was to draw as many Humans to his side including Dalinar due to the difficulties you mentioned. As he mostly failed doing so regarding the Alethi, that plan did not work as well as intended. But we`ll see, I guess King T will be better at that job. Btw. I had similar ideas as you did and wrote a theory based on it a while ago, that Odium intended to draw Humans to his side by inciting anti-Singer Hatred. I guess I will need to update that one in some time to come.
  2. Just a few points. I refer you to epigraph WoR 41 This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at the time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal;” If the Recreance did not happen in the middle of the fight with the SIngers, why then the feeling of Betrayal? Or rather who were they fighting against, if not against the non-imprisoned Singers.? There is a piece to the puzzle we do not know yet. That`s what is Nale is telling us. As Szeth commented: Nale is interpreting the law as he sees fit, as he has "become" the law. De facto he has gone mad like all the other Heralds. What about freedom from Alethi rule? Enslaved peoples seeking refuge, fugitives from the law, etc. There are people living near the North Pole IRL, which is surely less hospitable than the wastelands. If the Listeners were able to survive, so are some humans. Besides, there were dozens expeditions to Akinah, even though there were tons of deadly currents and never has a vessel come back from there. Somone is always desperate enough to look for profit in nlikely regions. And the Shattered Plains are on the doorstep of Alethkar. A taliking Singer would be as strange on Roshar as a sentient horse would be to us. There has to be some supernatural reason, why the Shattered Plains were obscured from the world. Ah and another thing, like I said in my original post, Singer Radiants are a very recent phenomenon, I still think that the downfall of the original Radiants has made that possible.
  3. O boy you really took your time with my post; But I do have counterarguments So first off, I do think it is a very strange coincendence that the Recreance happened during the time of the False Desolation. Too strange, if you ask me. There has to be some causal link between the two. First of, of course I did not know of this WoB. The Questioner opened up with an issue of chronology (How close is the enslavement of the parshmen to the Recreance, timeline-wise?), Brandon answered it was a couple of decades, therby referring to the wholesale enslavement of the Singers, The next question therefore refers to the wholesale imprisonement factoring into the decision of the Recreance. He does not say that there were no enslaved Singers prior to the Recreance. This brings me to the issue of chronology. We have multiple events here. 1) the event at the Feverstone keep (happened as fighting with the SIngers was still going on, and they were not ripped off their forms yet; 2. The Imprisonement of BAM 3. The Recreance proper. The Recreance was apparently not one single event but two ones, as different orders "gave up". Brandon is refering to the span and the causal link between event 2) and 3) and does clearly not refer to event 1. Besides he does clearly say that the enslavement was "absolutly" a factor in the decision, which is a bit of an argument for my case. "But in the days leading to the Recreance", Ob p. 1052, is the correct timeframe given by the Stormfather. This did not refer to literal days but, from the perspective of the SF to a time epoch, which lasted long enough for the KR to forget what their human origin was. This could well be thounsands of years. The gem archive speaks of the days of the False Desolation, when the Singers were of course not enslaved, but rather fighting the Humans. (chapters 77, 80, 81 Honor is more than keeping Oaths, the attitude you describe here would fit for the Skybreakers, who happen to not participate in the Recreance (what a "coincidence"). For all other orders moral questions are part of what makes them Radiants. Corrupted, I have to admit, would be the wrong term. Rather guided by wrong beliefs like the Honor Spren at Lasting Integrity regarding the Humans. Odium is hardly a reliable source of Information; Maya said "to save", which fits your theory just as mine; Regarding the Stormfather: He says he was "childlike" during these events, his account lacks important context. What kind of Surges used in which way would destroy Roshar? it was Odium`s Surges that destroyed Ashyn not Honor`s. I think it is a bit more complicated than KR exist, therefore Roshar gets destroyed. I think it is the continous clash of Odium and Honors Surges that was feared by the Radiants, a perpetual Desolation, If it was just the Surges, how would the enslavement of the Singers factor in the decision for the Recreance, as attested by your WoB? Kaladin does not know anything on the Recreance and was just speculating. Given that each and every one of the KR made this decision does speak to a common, not an individual decision. But would the Spren remember their past periods of bondage with their previous KR? Syl hardly remembers anything from her previous knights. They needed something different than a collective breaking of Oaths in order for the Spren to remember. Deadeyes were of course not intended. That is was what the Radiants intended. But granted to your WoB, there probably was not a cover up by the Radiants, only by Cultivation. Point taken You misunderstood me here. Why was there all these millenia no Alethi Higprince or entrepeneur seeking riches beyond Alethkar in say for instance gigantic Chasmfiends, that stumbeled upon the Listeners living just at the border of Alethkar? Was there no group of slaves or peasents desperate enuogh trying to find same farmable land ? You can travel through the wastelands to the Shattered Plains in wagons btw. as Shallan did. I think ist safe to assume she has ways of influencing events on Roshar beyond the Nightwatcher. Perhaps she does have a secret society like Harmony does? But seriously there are so many different ways to think of its hard to choose from. Honor was also based on Roshar just as Cultivation and he founded the Heralds and protected the KR to serve his interests.
  4. 1) The Recreance and the “False Desolation” First a few preliminary thoughts. The Recreance happened during the "False Desolation", in which BAM handed out Forms to the Singers, as Jasnah concluded in chapter 56 of OB by inspecting Dalinars vision of the Recreance. The Humans in Dalinars vision also appear to be a very multi-ethnic group, a kind of coalition that only came together to fight against the Singers in a Desolation. The following two epigraphs confirm this, as the “sentiment of betrayal” was surely regarding the war against the Singers and not some other human group, which would not have access to surges. The last epigraph suggests that all these events were connected somehow. “This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at the time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal;” WoR chapter 41 epigraph. "Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her." OB chapter 80 epigraph. “I was there when Ba-Ado-Mishram was captured. I know the truth of the Radiants, the Recreance, and the Nahel spren RoW.” Ch. 94. Epigraph. (Kalak speaking) 2) The Discovery As the original Radiants faced the False Desolation one thing was made patently clear: The Heralds had lied to them, when they said that the Humans or Team Honor had “won” the wars of the Desolations. Because here was BAM, handing out void forms and leading a Desolation in all but name. This must have caused some considerable consternation and a desire to know what actually happened. I think they figured out pretty quickly that the Heralds had walked away from the Oathpact at the cost of Taln staying back. That was pretty easy to find out given the nine swords in Shinovar. They learned that they were in this kind of limbo state inbetween Desolations and Peacetimes. Odium would come back eventually. I do think however that Taravangian was right in seeing the discovery of the Humans as Odium`s original people being the “fact” that caused the Recreance. But as with many other things, this lacks its proper context in order to be meaningful. 3. Singer Slavery Here comes my actual theory. I think the Singers being reduced to servitude was not a consequence of BAM`s imprisonment. They already had been made slaves sometime after the Humans had “won” the war of the Desolations, let`s say after 1000 years. The False Desolation probably started out as a mass slave rebellion of the Singers. So why did the KR accept Singer slavery? Institutions corrupt over time. The Vorin church was founded during the time of the Heralds as well. The Skybreakers were a KR order and currently serve Odium. Or take the storming Honor Spren of Lasting Integrity, which condemned all Humans based on the false belief that the Radiants had killed their spren en masse during the Recreance. The Knights Radiants could likewise condemn all Singers based on the false belief, that Singers were by nature Odium`s people, like the orcs in LotR, and Humans Honor`s chosen ones. This should be seen as the core ideology, which justified the enslavement of a large portion of Singers, if not all of them. As the Radiants figured out the secrets of the Eila Stele, the core ideology upon which they had justified the enslavement of large numbers of an entire species fell apart. 4. The Recreance As we know from Way of Kings slavery is not compatible with Honor. Sadeas used slaves as bridgemen, Dalinar did not. The Knights Radiants therefore discovered something equally shocking: their own order had become corrupted to the ways of Odium as according to the Eila Stele all human beings can be. If things would go on unchanged forever, the Knights Radiants as a whole would become servants of Odium, as the Skybreakers are now. So the Radiants decided to end their order altogether by breaking the Nahel bond and telling the Spren in Shadesmar this was done in malicious intent to make sure no new bonds would be created in the future. This way they wanted to ensure no corrupted KR institution would ever arise to make a resistance to Odium impossible, once he did come back. Secondly, to eliminate the reason for anti-singer prejudice the KR wanted Humanity to forget millennia of wars against the Singers as Voidbringers. In this regard they conducted a large scale cover up operation to ensure key information was lost, like that the Parshmen were the Voidbringers or the location of Urithiru. There is a certain symmetry to Dalinar`s arc in OB I think. Humanity, like Dalinar, had to forget, in order to be make a rebirth of an honorable KR order largely impartial to the Singers possible. The gift of forgetting goes for the Spren as well. They could only "forgive" the Singers as Leshwi put it, because they were so mad at the Humans in the first place. The same also goes for the Singers of course. The fact is there are now Singer Radiants, which had not existed for all those millienia of Desolations. I think the Recreance has made that possible. I also think that the KR, like Dalinar, had help from Cultivation in this regard. Did you ever wonder how a gigantic tower in the middle of Roshar could go unnoticed for millenia? Or that a community of sentient Singers with convinient knowledge of millenias past could be hidden from Humanity though being situated right at the border of Alethkar? Cultivation made sure it stayed that way.
  5. @crème de la crèmling great post, but you did not adress the issue of 20-30 years between migration, and conquest/ oathpact. I don`t think there were two oathpacts. I think one way to resolve the timeline issue is the Oathgates. They probably already existed during the migration or rather, they were constructed to enable the migration. Subsequently they enabled the conquest of the countries outside of Shinovar. So why would the Humans get out of Shinovar so quickly? To gain land and to become rich, obviously. Some poor farmer working on a rich estate in Shinovar could become a rich landowner himself by settling the neighboring kingdoms. Think about the settlement of America which was not caused by a shortage of land in Europe. We also don`t know wether all of Roshar was settled by Humans during the Oathpact. It is likely imo that only the western half was settled by Humans and the eastern half by Singers. Also Humans seem to have a way higher rate of reproduction than Singers. The Listeners stayed a couple of thousand years near the Shattered Planes, without ever growing their population to more than we see in tWoK. The Human population rose probably very quickly in Shinovar, which led to the settlement of the neighboring kingdoms. This made the ancient SIngers worry and they turned therefore to Odium.
  6. I noticed both WoK/ WoR ( set A) and OB / RoW (set B ) have common characteristics in plot structure and character development, that makes them mirror each other in a way. Since symmetries (like Keteks) are very much a part of SA worldbuilding, I do not think this is coincidental, as Pattern said art is kind of like math.... (A): centered on the Shattered Plains vs OB/ RoW (B): centered on Urithiru; Unrelated: (B) both feature a trip through Shadesmar with Adolin and Shallan and to Hearthstone with Kaladin; (A) at the end Dalinar bonds to the Stormfather (B) at the end Navani bonds to the Sibling (A) main chars Kaladin / Shallan a baited romantic relationship; (B) Dalinar/ Navani an actual romantic relationship (A) flashback chars Kaladin/ Shallan both had trauma in their past, (B) Dalinar and Venli inflicted trauma on a large scale in their past but regret it later; (A) Sadeas is the main villain; (B) Odium is the main villain, both die at the end of the respective set. (A) Szeth is a menace or a minor villain,; (B) Szeth does not really do that much (A) Szeth holds the Honorblade, with which Gavilar is murdered in the beginning (B) Szeth holds Nightblood with which Odium is murdered in the end. Let`s see weather you can find more symmetries, I am sure I missed a lot Oh and this also means the next installment is going to be the odd one sticking out, which is fitting for Szeths book.
  7. Idk, it could be anything, we have to little to say anything really
  8. Guys there is another loophole you have not thought about. Dalinar speaks of containing Odium which makes me think about the cold war. As we all know the USA and SU not being at war with each other did not lead to world peace. 1. Neutral countries like Shinovar (and the Honorblades..), are not mentioned in the contract. Conquering them is off limits. 2. The contract speaks of forbidding Odium to work against D. his allies and their kingdoms. But Odium is allowed to defend his allies. Therefore: if say a majority of Alethi princes rebelled, crowned their own, by rule of conquest legitimate king and went over to Odium on their own accord, Odium is allowed to defend them. (Remember House Sadeas, Queen Aesudan, Amaram, Moash, which were under Odium`s influence but you get my point). Todium can thereby win back the territories ceded to Dalinar in the contract in case he loses.
  9. There has been some discussion on the names of the Unmade referring to ancient hebrew and phoenician myth. Since this parallel is established, I thought it would be interesting to share some thoughts of mine regarding greek mythology, Dalinar and Taln. 1. Dalinar and Hercules/Herakles You may remember Hercules being this fun adventure hero of greek myth. He slays monsters, liberates people. Most known are the twelve labours at the end of which he goes down to the underworld/ Hades to capture the hellhound Cerberus. He is the guy of Disney`s "Hercules". Yet, in the original myth there exists a way darker side of our hero. He is a heavy drinker and a violent man. In fact in almost every myth Hercules murders somebody. Most famously he murdered his own wife Megara and children in a fit of rage. For some reason the people at Disney thought it cool, to cast the wife he later murdered in myth into the movie. According to some versions this was the entire reason he was tasked with the twelve labours as a punishment for his misdeeds. Here Hercules is depicted murdering his wife and children. https://www.worldhistory.org/Megara_(Wife_of_Hercules)/ This brought me to Dalinar. Like Hercules he has an alcohol abuse problem. He used to be this warlord who enjoyed to sack and destroy cities. Hercules is btw. likewise thought to have been a general and to have destroyed a lot of cities. One prominent example is Troy, which he destroyed with an army one generation before the trojan war. Hercules is of course heavily musculed like Dalinar. Both are this brute human force of nature who buldozer through everything, friend and foe alike. the episode of murdering his wife makes up the plot of two famous tragedies, one of the Athenian author Euripidies, and of the roman philosopher Seneca. In both versions his jealous stepmother Hera sends down the godess "madness" to earth to indue Hercules with mad rage. In this blindness he committs the crime. Interestingly enough however, Hercules still thinks he is guilty, even though his mind was influenced by the godess. He is so desperate he almost wants to kill himself. I think the parallel to Dalinar killing Evi under influence of the Thrill is pretty clear. At the end of his life Hercules is betrayed by Deianara who sends him a poisened shirt. According to some versions she did not know the poisen was fatal and merely wanted to make Hercules love her again. Anyways, the pain is so intense Hercules decided to burn himself on a pyre to end his agony. Through burning himself he ascended into being a god. Again, the parallel to Dalinars ascension to being-who-knows-what in OB is interesting. Obviously not everything in Dalinar`s life can be thrown into this Hercules mould, but I think the parallels are there. 2. Taln/ Philoctetes Philoctetes is a greek hero only hardcore nerds of greek mythology, like me know about. So allow me to introduce you to him. As Hercules was sitting in agony on his funeral pyre, nobody dared to put the wood on fire. The only one who managed to do it, was a certain Philoctetes a native of the area and a gifted archer. Thanking him Hercules gave him his famous bow as a gift. As the Trojan War came along, Philoctetes participateted as one of the primary heros. He was the best archer in the entire greek army. Yet as the navy was approaching Troy, Philoctetes got bitten by a snake. Because he was in such great pains he screamed all day and disturbed the entire army. Rather than caring for him the leaders of the army decided to abandon him on the nearby island of Lemnos, breaking the oaths they had sworn. On that island he stayed for the entire rest of the war, also during the events of Homers Iliad, which is why his story is not widely known. In the tenth year however a prophet sent by the gods came to the greeks telling them, they could not conquer Troy until they had retrieved Philoctetes. He carried the bow of Hercules, which had already taken Troy once before and would be needed to do it again. There are multiple tragedies depicting the greek delegation trying to get Philoctetes back to Troy. Needless to say the man was almost driven mad from pain by that point. In Sophocles version he almost committed suicide at the end of the play. Nonetheless, he was in the end convinced to return to the greek army. He was healed and In the last months of the war Philoctetes killed Paris, who had started the entire mess. A paralell could exist to Taln who was likewise abandoned against the Oathpact and was driven mad by pain after thousands of years of torture. Yet he could play a very crucial role in future books, even though he did not in RoW.
  10. The Skybreakers also did join Odium, that a Radiant order was OK with it does not mean anything. I`d also like to point out that Mraize referencred Sadeas murder as necessary while he was trying to convince Shallan to murder the Herald. Sanderson still throws some shade on that murder. I`d like to know about your opinions on Radiant killing Ialai, was that necessary too? @Oltux72 "When he killed Sadeas, basic Alethi mores backed him up." They also backed up Dalinar commiting war crimes. Alethi codes of conduct are somewhat amoral. I felt a bit disappointed about Adolin this book. He has become an almost perfect character, which he was not before, I do not see, where this came from. I could almost hear @DeployParachute sigh with disappointment at that arc.
  11. That's what I noticed out in front. Here's the outline for the next two books, just casually dropped in our laps. That is what we are led to expect. These expectations could be subverted by a plot twist (Fused taking Urithiru, rebellions from the highprinces etc.). I hope for the subversion tbh. Also what did Wit tell Jasnah that she does not communicate to us? Does he not know so many more things about the Radiants and their powers, Odium and the secret of Roshar? I got the feeling Wit, Jasnah and Odium play some four dimensional chess with everyone else as their pawns.
  12. I for one, am glad Sanderson has not resolved this plot. They both were not at a good place at the end of OB. It would have been really frustrating to open this book to find out their issues have been sorted off screen.
  13. I disagree, the Fused are going insane, The spren can change from a dead Radiant to an alive one, therby they also replenish their numbers. Besides this war is more than about Radiants vs. Fused. The Radiants could manage to win the war by retaking all the territory and then only have to deal with some rogue Fused, who would be powerless without their armies and be hunted down time and time again by the Radiants and their supporters, The Fused seemed pretty desperate last chapter, there has to be a reason for that. You might like my theory.
  14. Idk, This should be the arc of RoW which will leave our heroes betrayed and abondoned to fend off Odium alone, kinda like Taln for all those millenia. Last book should feature them finding somehow a way to overcome those odds and to banish Odium for a couple of years. That would be anything but bleak! @IcaroRibeiro @Schneeente Thx for your kind words
  15. They could reveal all the secrets of the Tower to the Radiants. Knowing King T. is on Odium`s side is a big deal. That conversation lacks context, there is so much we do not know about the Diagram. Odium, however, wants to recruit as many Humans as possible. He does not seem to have a preference for his tools.
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