Where are missing Shardblades?

[Returned]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

So assuming that 50% of all Radients during Recreance was at 3rd Ideal is not that big of a stretch - that's 1000 of Honorsprens alone.

Definitely possible, but this is a huge assumption. We don't know if the rates of achieving the 3rd oath we see in RoW are typical, but that seems reasonable enough-- they were even better at Radiant-ing back then. But still, we should expect far more Radiant-affiliated people to be at the lower levels rather than an even, 50/50 split. It's just easier to be a squire or aspiring Knight of the 1st or 2nd Ideal than anything higher, and so we should expect far more of those than full Knights.

Regardless, no matter how many Radiants there were at 3+ Ideals sworn, there's just not that much reason to believe that every Radiant who broke their oaths in the Recreance would manifest their Blades when they did it. I mean, why would they? Feverstone was a dramatic statement, maybe intended to let all of the witnesses know that the Knights were walking away from their oaths in a way they couldn't ignore or miss. It's possible that the Blades at Feverstone are more or less the only ones in the Physical Realm on Roshar. That would still be more than we know are accounted for, but far from thousands.

 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

As proven time and time again in books it, the knowledge of next Highstorm is common even among the poorest one.

Stormwardens are a relatively recent addition to Roshar. Pre-Recreance there may have been other ways of knowing about Highstorms (like spren giving warning, maybe, though that wouldn't be available after the Recreance), but we don't know. If predicting a storm isn't reliable or easy then problems would be much more common. At the same time, we know that Kaladin had spent more than one Highstorm outside without proper shelter, so it's far from a guarantee that this would be a major problem.

 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

And than how much cream accumulate on the ground?

A huge amount. To bury a city such that the buildings are indistinguishable from ordinary ground requires a lot of crem. It would take a while to cover a six-foot Shardblade's full height, but like you say it would probably be far more likely that a loose Blade would be buried pretty close to its hilt or lying more parallel to the ground. It would take far less crem to bury. But more importantly, once the thing on the ground doesn't obviously look like a Blade it becomes pretty well hidden-- in just a couple of storms, it could look like a spur of rock or be indistinguishable from the ground.

 

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

I'm also thinking is it relevant to the story? Will finding all those missing Shardblades change anything? It's easy to predict that BAM will be released and that will fixed everything, Deadeyes become alive again etc. Well I think that is just boring! Can BAM reestablish its connection to everything and Roshar just like that, fixing it with ease? The Sprens spiritual web was cracked due to her imprisonment similar to how Radient's web is damage which allows Sprens to form Nahel Bond. It would be much more interesting if the damage was irreversible and to fix Deadeyes reverse Nahel Bond must be made - something like Adolin is doing - that creates so many new possibilities. But that's just my speculation, or rather hopes. 

It doesn't seem relevant to the story to me for there to be, say, four hundred deadeye Shardblades manifested on Roshar versus thousands. Brandon is a good writer and has thought a great deal about these books, so I personally am banking on the story being interesting and not straightforward for the next six thousand pages. I just don't think that that requires a huge cache of Shardblades, more than anywhere else on Roshar ever, be hidden in Shinovar (or anywhere else).

That's not to say that an interesting story can't or won't include such a thing. I just don't find the arguments here that it definitely will to be persuasive. I still think that you're way overestimating the number of Blades manifested on Roshar during the Recreance, which is the key detail for the rest of the theory to work, and underestimating how easily a Blade could be lost (especially before they could be dismissed back to the CR). But you could be right! A question about the number of Blades known on Roshar versus the vision of Feverstone Keep would be a great one for Brandon. Maybe it wouldn't even be RAFO-ed!

Edited May 18, 2022 by Returned

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, alder24 said:

There would be definitely very few Radients of 5th and 4th Ideal, we can take Skybreakers as an example, few lucky one were able to swear 4th Ideal and none 5th since ages, except for Nale. But with 3rd Ideal that's different - it's the point when they become full Radient in most Orders. Majority of Windrunners bonded with Sprens in RoW are already at that Ideal. So assuming that 50% of all Radients during Recreance was at 3rd Ideal is not that big of a stretch - that's 1000 of Honorsprens alone.

Feverstone keep had hundreds of people with both plate and blade, and that was only Windrunners and Stonewards.

Oath 4 at a minimum wouldn't be that uncommon.

[Master Silver]

My thought was that aside from the Shin, the Skybreakers very likely have a huge stockpile of dead blades. They are the only order that did not disband.