[OB] The secret that caused the Recreance

[+Wax]

It was such a big secret that it must never be known by the Radiants as the back cover proclaims.

Yet, here we are, people found out about it, and other than Nale, nobody else cares.  It's sad, it's mildly shocking.

But really, most people will say, "Ancient History! Blah blah!" and move on.

It is such a big secret that besides someone asking what it was, nobody who's read the book has bothered to make a thread about it until now.

So, is it a case of the "so-called" secret being only part of  a bigger one?  That it affects the future.  Otherwise, I don't know why all the Radiants would also drop their oaths.

Here we have Jasnah willing to kill the Heralds to eliminate the risk of desolations.

I don't expect her to drop Ivory just because a really old document says that human beings are voidbringers.

What are your thoughts?

[Shoots]

I posted a very similar comment in another thread but as it applies here, I'll make it again.

I believe the Radiants made the shattered plains with their powers capable of destroying a world.  

Going into Oathbringer, the mystery I was most eager to find an answer for was what caused the Recreance.    I was thrilled when I found out the answer would be revealed in this book.  But when I finally read the cause my reaction was like "Really? Is that really enough to cause all the knights to break their oaths?"  While having the power to destroy the world is a huge concern, it is also very controversial as seen in our world in debates over gun laws and nuclear weapon restrictions.  While I can see some Radiants saying, "no one should have the power to destroy the world," I imagine other Radiants replying "But we'll use our powers wisely as we have done for hundreds of years."  The argument so far doesn't seem strong enough to convince everyone in 9 orders to break their oaths and kill their spren.  I feel like something more is needed, even more than Honor's rantings at the end of his days.  What could really change the minds of many Radiants is a terrible demonstration of their powers such as destroying a whole country.  Now the argument changes from "we need to break our oaths because otherwise we might break the world" to "we need to break our oaths because we are breaking the world."

[Elsecaller3414]

So do you think that maybe the destruction of the humans’ old world because of similar powers drove them to abandon their oaths?

[Shoots]

 

10 minutes ago, Elsecaller3414 said:

So do you think that maybe the destruction of the humans’ old world because of similar powers drove them to abandon their oaths?

Having powers dangerous to the world seems like stronger motivation to me than realizing humans were invaders on Roshar a long time ago.  Having dangerous powers has a much larger chance of affecting the future than discovering their ancestors were not who they thought they were.

[NightFrost]

I think that the agurement over whether the KR should use their power's or not is what caused the recreance. I think they started fighting over what to do and those clashes started to destroy parts of the world leading them to realize that they need to stop.  However I agree that there must have been something else because knights in the hundreds broke their oaths.

[Greywatch]

I don't know... At first it was really underwhelming for me as well, but then I tried to think about it in context of myself, and Earth, and how I would feel if this place that I thought was mine was stolen from someone else... I felt a bit sick.

For me, this is much more believable as the cause for abandoning oaths. Not that it's such a horrifying shock that they all immediately dropped the oaths right then and there, but as it started to sink in over time, that many Radiants found the entire basis of their oaths and moral value system overturned... I can definitely see Radiants in Orders, like the Windrunners and Edgedancers who are all about protecting people, found it incompatible with their oaths to keep fighting the parshpeople at all. I wasn't sure it mattered to me at first, but by the end of the book I was on board with it.

[jefftucker0525]

Personally I think it was less the secret and more the mindset of the Radiants at the time combined with the fact that they weren't in the middle of a Desolation. Since they weren't in the middle of an apocalypse and believed no more Desolations would occur they're main purpose was gone and on top of that it was built in a lie. They were a group with strong morals, and their moral foundation was destroyed. So it was a drastic response but also one that is within reason when what is essentially ur entire existence is called into question.

 

@Greywatch have an upvote for beating me to the punch lol

Edited November 22, 2017 by Greywatch
Merged because it was a double post!

[Greywatch]

2 minutes ago, jefftucker0525 said:

@Greywatch have an upvote for beating me to the punch lol

Hah, thank you!

[Seloun]

I really hope there's more to it. However, it's hard to imagine Nale and the Stormfather both are clueless about this considering both literally lived through it, and in Nale's case, almost certainly was directly involved.

...That said, there are some faint hopes:

- We never actually see what Nale told Szeth. It might be something more involved that still leads to the conclusion that the Parshendi law is the rightful law.

- The Stormfather seems to only remember as Dalinar learns - so he can provide confirmation but not necessarily volunteer too much new information.

- The primary source that's revealed to the characters is NOT specifically about the Recreance (being written well before that), but just the fact that the humans are actually the invaders (with Odium).

[Shoots]

Though these same Radiants that supposedly felt terrible for invading the world of the Singers were also the ones who cut the Singers off from their powers by imprisoning the unmade that was providing their voidlight.  The event resulted in many singers being not only slaves physically but also mentally.  It would be the height of irony for Radiants to be torn up over the fact that their ancestors stole the singers land, only to be the ones to steal the Singers minds.

[+Wax]

43 minutes ago, Greywatch said:

I don't know... At first it was really underwhelming for me as well, but then I tried to think about it in context of myself, and Earth, and how I would feel if this place that I thought was mine was stolen from someone else... I felt a bit sick.

For me, this is much more believable as the cause for abandoning oaths. Not that it's such a horrifying shock that they all immediately dropped the oaths right then and there, but as it started to sink in over time, that many Radiants found the entire basis of their oaths and moral value system overturned... I can definitely see Radiants in Orders, like the Windrunners and Edgedancers who are all about protecting people, found it incompatible with their oaths to keep fighting the parshpeople at all. I wasn't sure it mattered to me at first, but by the end of the book I was on board with it.

You felt so sick.. and then you came over to the shard 

I am sure half the humanity were decedents of one type of raiders (viking or not).  We came and took over from all the dinosaurs, who really could have made a fist of developing a brain at some point after millions of years. 

But yeah, nuclear holocaust type weapons shattering Natanatan might be it to cause mass disarmament...

[Subvisual Haze]

It sort of makes sense if you view it as a mass disarmament.  The dangerous powers of the surges were a risk, but an acceptable risk as long as the greater threat of Desolations loomed.  However, if the Radiants actually believed the Heralds' lies about the final desolation having occurred and succeeded (unintentionally) in locking all Singers into a slave form they might have truly believed the greatest remaining threat to Roshar was themselves and choose to disarm for the good of the planet.  Toss in the death of Honor (leaving the Radiants without a final check preventing KRs from going rogue) and a mini-catastrophic incident at the Shattered Plains and the picture takes form of Radiants terrified of themselves.

The biggest flaw with this theory though: I still don't understand why the Stormfather/spren think this will happen again.  Odium is clearly back and an immediate danger to the world.

[Greywatch]

It makes sense to me that there will be more on the Radiants' ability to destroy actual planets in future books, but I feel we can safely say this is what caused nine Orders of them to dissolve their oaths. A lot of us in the west are used to knowing that we're the descendants of conquerors and invaders, but this seems to be a very new concept to the Rosharan humans.

[Stuperman]

Plus it sounds like it was peacetime when they abandoned their oaths. Its much different when someone is trying to kill you and your friends

[emailanimal]

41 minutes ago, Shoots said:

hough these same Radiants that supposedly felt terrible for invading the world of the Singers were also the ones who cut the Singers off from their powers by imprisoning the unmade that was providing their voidlight. 

 

Humans as original Voidbringers is probably more of a shock to the current crop of actors.  Humans using Investiture (recorded as Surgebinding) to destroy a planet (and btw, this is pretty much telegraphed since like page 50 of the book - the moment we get a Vorin view of the Tranquiline Halls) to rip apart a planet is something that makes a terrifying picture to the Knights Radiant circa end of the False Desolation. PLus, as the Stormfather points out, Tanavast is literally no help at that moment.  

The key difference between the emerging KRs of now and the established KR structures of way back when is that way back when I think there was a sort of established culture. KRs knew what they were all about, understood their powers, and understood their role and the role of the Heralds in the Desolations a bit better.  The information that folks using their powers doomed a planet was probably quite a revelation, and I can see how the KRs would just opt to prevent themselves from using the powers.

[aemetha]

I think the revelation is a bit more than just an ancient injustice.

First, they invaded with their god of the void.

Then they stole their gods and spren, making them find new gods and spren of their ancestors.

Then they fought desolation after desolation endlessly killing.

Then after the last desolation, there was an unprecedented gap before a new one. During that gap there was no access to the heavy artillery of their side. Humans were clearly the dominant side at the time. Hundreds of years of fighting and skirmishing, they had to be on the brink of extinction. The Parshendi were on the brink of extinction after a few short years of fighting without radiants.

So it's not just that they stole their homes in ancient times, they were exterminating an entire people. They avoided the extermination by enslaving them instead and then cast off the mantle of radiants while repeating that mantra so often heard at the end of a truly damaging conflict - never again.

Anyway, that's a possible explanation as to why the origin story is such a big deal. They didn't just fall on the wrong side of fair and just in the conflict - they kept falling on the wrong side of fair and just.

[Shoots]

I'm definitely looking forward to more information about the recreance in future books which can tell us more about the radiants motivation. 

One concern I have right now is why did the Radiants completely do away with their oaths?  Shouldn't getting rid of the dawnshards be enough.  After all it wasn't nahel bonds that destroyed their previous world because the bonded spren are of Honor and Cultivation.  Our source from Dawnchant says Odium was the humans' god when they invaded Roshar so it must have been power from him that destroyed their old world.

Another concern I have is how the Radiants reacted to the news that their ancestors were invaders.  I completely understand that the KR would be distressed.  I would be to.  But breaking their oaths didn't right any wrongs.  It didn't even prevent them from continuing to beat up on the singers because they enslaved the singers.  

Anyways I'm sure these concerns of mine and others will be addressed as we hear more of the events surrounding the recreance.  

[emailanimal]

37 minutes ago, aemetha said:

Then they stole their gods and spren, making them find new gods and spren of their ancestors.

Not disagreeing with how this entire thing looks like to the singers, but disagreeing with  the actual interpretations.

I think that Honor and Cultivation have made a conscious decision to "convert" the humans who resettled on Roshar.  From the perspective of the singers it may have looked like "stealing", but I would be careful at assigning humans more agency than they deserve in this. The true agency here belongs to the Shards. They pursued the humans. 

The question still remains of what specifically Odium did in response. It looks like some singers were sufficiently pissed to be convinced to take on voidspren and enter their first power forms.  My current semi-theory is that Odium appealed to individual singers, converted them to powerforms and made them attack the humans. He then somehow gained the ability to retain the Cognitive Shadows of the singers in powerform who were killed by the humans (or other singers?) as part of the chaos that ensued. following that, Odium figured out a way to bond the Cognitive Shadows of the singers to actual living singers in lieu of actual forms (either benign or strom). This is how the Fused were created. Once Honor saw the Fused, he realized that all previous agreements with Odium aside, he has a problem. I am not certain why he specifically chose 10 people to fulfill the Oathpact, and I am not certain what is the specific mechanism by which the ability of the Heralds to be tortured in Damnation prevents singer ancestor Cognitive Shadows from descending upon Roshar and infiltrating.

Hoid interestingly enough recognizes some of them.

 

14 minutes ago, Shoots said:

Another concern I have is how the Radiants reacted to the news that their ancestors were invaders.  I completely understand that the KR would be distressed.  I would be to.  But breaking their oaths didn't right any wrongs.  It didn't even prevent them from continuing to beat up on the singers because they enslaved the singers.  

The distress, I think came from the "these powers were used to destroy  a planet" part, not from the "you are invaders in other people's world" part.  The Knights Radiant appeared to be very scared that their use of the powers will lead to such breaking of a planet reasonably soon. This may be because they just created the Shattered Plains, or because they terraformed (rosharformed) something, or because of any other reason. But they must have believed that they are on the verge of destroying Roshar with their powers. This probably means that they were very advanced with those powers, and had some examples of the sort of devastation Surgebinding could do from very recent past.

Then, they simply decided that they needed to not just stop using the powers, but to actually prevent others from using them as well. They did two things. They abandoned their Ideals, and became incapable of further Surgebinding. They also traumatized/destroyed/severely offended the sapient spren and with this prevented the spren from seeking new Nahel bonds. It's a bit of a sacrifice, but this  appears to be a conscious decision. Orders like Eslecallers and Truthwatchers probably would not have done something like this without a significant amount of deliberation. So, at least part of the Recreance was thought out at least somewhat ahead of time and agreed upon.

 

 

[Ryder]

The problem I have with thinking that the Recreance was actually a mass disarmament after whatever happened to Natanatan, is it seems like there are much better ways to achieve this.  In WoK when Kaladin is freaking out over his new abilities, Syl says she could leave and it would stop.  Why didn't the Radiant's spren just leave and stop forming bonds with people, as they did after the Recreance?  Even if the Nahel bond can't be voluntarily broken by the spren once the KR reaches a certain level, they could just agree not to surgebind for the rest of their lives.  Once that generation of Radiants died out, you wouldn't have to worry about destroying the world anymore, and you wouldn't have murdered 8 groups of sentient beings.  It just seems like there are better ways to disband the KR if what you're worried about is accidentally destroying Roshar.  

[kaellok]

2 hours ago, Stuperman said:

Plus it sounds like it was peacetime when they abandoned their oaths. Its much different when someone is trying to kill you and your friends

Check Dalinar's vision of Feverstone Keep from Part 4, ch.52 "A Highway To The Sun", p.725 of hardcover version of Way of Kings. 

"It has to be the rear defense force," one soldier muttered.  "They can't have gotten through our lines.  Not with the Radiants fighting..."

1 hour ago, Shoots said:

I'm definitely looking forward to more information about the recreance in future books which can tell us more about the radiants motivation. 

One concern I have right now is why did the Radiants completely do away with their oaths?  Shouldn't getting rid of the dawnshards be enough.  After all it wasn't nahel bonds that destroyed their previous world because the bonded spren are of Honor and Cultivation.  Our source from Dawnchant says Odium was the humans' god when they invaded Roshar so it must have been power from him that destroyed their old world.

Another concern I have is how the Radiants reacted to the news that their ancestors were invaders.  I completely understand that the KR would be distressed.  I would be to.  But breaking their oaths didn't right any wrongs.  It didn't even prevent them from continuing to beat up on the singers because they enslaved the singers.  

Anyways I'm sure these concerns of mine and others will be addressed as we hear more of the events surrounding the recreance.  

This right here, 1000%.  Except for being sure that the concerns will be addressed, as nothing about the Radiant actions for the Recreance make a storming bit of sense to me, and the more we learn the more that stays the same.

3 hours ago, Elsecaller3414 said:

So do you think that maybe the destruction of the humans’ old world because of similar powers drove them to abandon their oaths?

I'm honestly wondering if Hoid had a part to play in that.  Frustratingly, I am unable to find the specific quote where he basically says that he wants to help, but need be he would see the world destroyed if it was necessary for his cause (I thought this was to Dalinar or Jasnah, but seem unable to find where.  Drat.)

 

3 hours ago, Greywatch said:

I don't know... At first it was really underwhelming for me as well, but then I tried to think about it in context of myself, and Earth, and how I would feel if this place that I thought was mine was stolen from someone else... I felt a bit sick.

For me, this is much more believable as the cause for abandoning oaths. Not that it's such a horrifying shock that they all immediately dropped the oaths right then and there, but as it started to sink in over time, that many Radiants found the entire basis of their oaths and moral value system overturned... I can definitely see Radiants in Orders, like the Windrunners and Edgedancers who are all about protecting people, found it incompatible with their oaths to keep fighting the parshpeople at all. I wasn't sure it mattered to me at first, but by the end of the book I was on board with it.

I think that similar to what happened in the meeting with Dalinar and the coalition, there was at least a 1-2-3 punch (probably 1 thru 9) directed at each of the Orders, orchestrated by Odium.  Dalinar comments on how easily it was orchestrated against him, Mr T recognizes how his grandest accomplishment in the planning of the Diagram is a fraction of what Odium can concoct in moments based upon it, and Kaladin even says that he thinks the Recreance didn't happen all at once, but was caused by Radiants finding something that they couldn't ignore, and eventually had to face--that something being something that shook their confidence in their own principles.

So, maybe one Order mostly thinks that because the Parshendi were the original inhabitants, that the Radiants should murder their best friends instead of killing any more of them.  I can see a certain logic behind that being the intent of what happened, but I still am not buying that as the actual explanation/reason.  Then again, the humans have a rather cavalier and heavy-handed relationship with the spren.  If we look at modern-day Skybreakers, Szeth flat-out says he's going to Say the Third Ideal and form a full Bond with a spren, even though he doesn't seem to have actually interacted with one yet.  That may be a peculiarity of the Skybreakers, or it could be that there were similar traditions for all the Orders in the past.  

1 hour ago, emailanimal said:

Then, they simply decided that they needed to not just stop using the powers, but to actually prevent others from using them as well. They did two things. They abandoned their Ideals, and became incapable of further Surgebinding. They also traumatized/destroyed/severely offended the sapient spren and with this prevented the spren from seeking new Nahel bonds. It's a bit of a sacrifice, but this  appears to be a conscious decision. Orders like Eslecallers and Truthwatchers probably would not have done something like this without a significant amount of deliberation. So, at least part of the Recreance was thought out at least somewhat ahead of time and agreed upon.

I was a child in the 80s.  I may not have as many memories of living with the Cold War as others do that were older, but I distinctly remember having nuclear strike drills right alongside fire drills and tornado drills while in elementary school.  I know some small portion of what it feels like to know that there is a sizable chance that the world will end (anything more than a 0.00001% chance on any given day is pretty damnation high, all things considered).  

Would I kill my best friend, and encourage thousands of my co-workers and friends to kill their best friends just because none of us thought that we could be trusted to not push the button to launch a nuclear weapon or five?  Absolutely not, that's foolish--that doesn't solve anything, and it's just murder.  The nukes would still be there, and even if nobody was left who knew how to use them, the nukes are still there.  Honor was alive post-Aharietium and pre-Recreance, and apparently in at least infrequent contact with the Radiants, so there's no reason for them to have believed that there would be no more Desolations.

 

As in WoK and WoR, OB does nothing to advance a reasonable/rational/logical reason for the Recreance that also sits well emotionally.  It remains the single largest fear that I have in the series--that that's all we get, some half-answer that is hand-waved and generally accepted because it fits as long as you don't think about it like, at all.  If everything about the world, and the interaction of every single sapient spren ever, wasn't directly dependent upon the cause of the Recreance, I wouldn't feel that it mattered so much.  The fatalism that the sapient spren have about being murdered by humans they bond--but bonding them anyway--demands an explanation when those spren are fairly central characters in an epic fantasy story.  It's not something that I have been able to overlook easily.  And so, instead, as with WoK and WoR, I continue to hope that whatever is the final form of What Really Happened works for me and everyone else.

[+Wax]

19 minutes ago, kaellok said:

Frustratingly, I am unable to find the specific quote where he basically says that he wants to help, but need be he would see the world destroyed

Quote

“Wit smiled. “I am but a man, Dalinar, so much as I wish it were not true at times. I am no Radiant. And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.”

 

 

[kaellok]

8 minutes ago, axcellence said:

 

Bloody hells, you beautiful person!  That's the one!

[sylian]

Hi everyone! This is my first post here and let me say you have the most amazing community. The 17th shard opened my eyes for so much things in the books that I have totally missed. Also, I would like to appologize for any mistakes I make as English is not my native language.

So, that said, I have this wild theory of mine....it may be completely foolish as my knowledge of the cosmere is really shallow, it seems. But here is what I think happened with the Recreance...

So the radiants figure out the humanity destroyed their planet and after been given some nice land on Roshar they go and invade all of it. Honor is in a pretty bad shape and maybe says something like "never mind, don't think about it, you have sworn to protect humanity, go and kill some Listeners.." Then the Skybreakers go like "you crazy fool, we are invaders, this is wrong, we think the Listeners should kill all humans available and we will not stop them from this. So long and thanks for all the fish". And puff, they fly in the sky and go somewhere else. I like to think they might go to the Shin land as this was the only place given to humanity. However, the rest of the Radiants are like "well, we have sworn to protect humanity, we can't simply leave them. And Honor says who cares what happened initially, he may be crazy and dying but he knows his stuff. But, we can't continue fighting, vaporizing second planet in a row would be a Very Bad Thing. We would rather go home and cut stone with our fancy swords and make houses" I personally can't imagine Kaladin doing anything to kill Syl, I can imagine him to destroy the entire planet for her well being. I don't think he is unique in this so really the Radiants killing their spren seems unimaginable. However, going somewhere to quietly live happily ever after seems pretty legid to me. Except for those who have no land to go - what happened to their home, anyway?

But, there is one big issue with this happily ever after plan - the listeners keep fighting, at least most of them - I think the ones that are found on the Shattered Plains were deserters, I can remember something about abandoning their gods. So what to do. I really think they saw one option here - Kill Them All and put an end. But the night presented a different solution...related to the unique abilities of the Bondsmiths. (I don't have the book in front of me to give you exact quotes, sorry). I think the Bondsmith here is the Third One we know nothing about. And also, this solution might have some nasty side effects. Pretty obvious to me, the solution is to do something to the listeners to stop them from bonding with spren and turn them to parshmen as we see them now. What a good idea. I don't think the side effects are the parshmen having less consciousness than a dog. I think this was part of the point, or at least no one would complain - better robot slave than dead, right. So in the morning, a field full of listeners and knights killing each other, the Bondsmith Does His Thing and as a result, we have a field full of parshmen. Stop fighting, go doing whatever you like. Yay! Except the side effects which I think were destroying all of the Nahel bonds around and killing every one of the spren. Therefore - the Recreance. I think this had quite a regional effect as we have the Skybreakers and we have the Listeners from the SP.

I might be completely wrong but I like the theory because: it aligns with Dalinar vision about the Recreance - they were fighting( with whom? - the listeners) and then they came and left the dead spren, no more listeners also; the skybreakers are still around but work for Odium now; the third bondsmith is nowhere around and has suffered enough - it even makes sense that the third bondsmith is not dead like the rest of the spren bonded at that time because he/she is the one that has done it. Or maybe IS dead?

 

Wow, what a long first post. Thank you for reading and please let me know if you think this is too wild guess on my side.

[StormWrath]

On 22/11/2017 at 6:48 AM, Ryder said:

The problem I have with thinking that the Recreance was actually a mass disarmament after whatever happened to Natanatan, is it seems like there are much better ways to achieve this.  In WoK when Kaladin is freaking out over his new abilities, Syl says she could leave and it would stop.  Why didn't the Radiant's spren just leave and stop forming bonds with people, as they did after the Recreance?  Even if the Nahel bond can't be voluntarily broken by the spren once the KR reaches a certain level, they could just agree not to surgebind for the rest of their lives.  Once that generation of Radiants died out, you wouldn't have to worry about destroying the world anymore, and you wouldn't have murdered 8 groups of sentient beings.  It just seems like there are better ways to disband the KR if what you're worried about is accidentally destroying Roshar.  

This is the most important post on this thread, I think Brandon has written himself into a corner where he cannot provide a satisfying reason for the recreance, I saw a poster warning about this some months ago. Seriously if the KR thought Surgebinding would destroy Roshar then they should just stop practicing it and never draw Stormlight or ask the spren to cut off the bond since they're able to do that as syl suggested.

The reason for the recreance is very underwhelming, I thought it must be some super catastrophic reason that would make all but one order abandon their oaths and kill their best friends. There's not even opposition from some members of the other orders, ALL of them agreed to betray their vows.

Edited December 23, 2017 by StormWrath

[+archvenison]

I don't think that the Recreance was caused by the Radiants making a conscious, logical decision to stop betray their ideals.  Rather, the revelation that humans were originally the bad guys and had used their powers to destroy a different world, combined with Honour saying they would do it again (and perhaps whatever happened in Natanatan) caused them to lose conviction in the Ideals and thus act contrary to them.  As we know from Kaladin in WoR this is enough to kill their spren.  Also when Syl offered to leave Kaladin he had only sworn the first Ideal which I suspect is before the point of no return.