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Hello everyone. While talking with some other people recently, I hit on an idea that I think explains humanity's success in their first attack against the Singers. To set the stage, humanity at this point is living in Shinovar, does not have Surgebinding, and is probably less populous than the Singers. How is humanity so successful then, that the Singers feel the need to ally with Odium and create the Fused to fight back? Where does this power that allowed the initial conflicts go? I believe that the answer to both questions is that humanity still had access to Surges... from the diseases of Ashyn. 1) Ashyn's Investiture accesses Surges, and is disease based. This point is the keystone of the whole theory, so first let's look at some WoBs. This WoB vaguely details the mechanics of Ashyn's Investiture. Ashyn's powers are accessed when you grow ill, and they go away when you get better. Additionally we have this WoB. These two things together imply that catching a disease let you access the Surges, in slightly different forms than Radiants currently can. I think we can make a safe assumption that anyone with these diseases is going to be capable of similar feats to those we've see from our Radiants. This brings us to point number two. 2) The Surges allowed humanity the ability to expand aggressively So when humanity arrived on Roshar from Ashyn, they might have had some of these diseases among their population. Humans stayed in Shinovar long enough for some sembalance of peace to exist between Singer and human. However, at some point humanity aggressively expanded, to the point that every major Singer city was captured. Every Dawncity is likely a former Singer capital. How did humanity do this? The Elia Steele gives us a hint: So humanity was using Surges. The problem with this is that the nahel bond could not have existed at this point. The nahel bond mimics the Honorblades, and the Honorblades did not come into existence until the Fused came into existence, which had to have been after this initial aggressive expansion. So how was humanity using the Surges? The diseases of Ashyn. Where did these diseases go, then? Well... 3) The extra Investiture from repeated exposure to Stormlight made humanity too disease resistant Humans expanded aggressively, and then settled in Singer territories, probably very confident in their ability to hold on to their gains. Of course we know that they didn't, so what changed? Humans began to become Invested by the background Investiture of the storms. Every so often, humanity gets bombarded by large amounts of free floating Investiture. Unlike any native life form on Roshar, it has no way to express itself, so in the case of humans it just makes humanity as a whole healthier, and more resistant to disease. This WoB seems to back up this theory: So humanity becomes more disease resistant, the Ashyn diseases start dying off. This leads us to the Second Desolation. Somehow, the Singer have recovered their numbers, and in addition have made a bargain with Odium to create the Fused, the Regals, and access Surges. This puts humanity on the defensive, and requires the Oathpact and eventually the Radiants to give humanity relatively even footing. Conclusion: I think I've made a pretty good argument for the timeline of the first two conflicts between humanity and the Singers. I've left out any mention of Urithuru, because I don't know how it fits in yet. I am also not really sure how the Girl Who Looked Up fits in, unless she somehow allowed stormlight to inundate the Shinovar region like it does the rest of the world. Anyway, would like to hear people's thoughts.