[OB] Name for Dulling Process?

[Reckless Disregard]

Anyone name the process that was discovered at the time of the last desolation, or false desolation, that downgraded the Parshendi (listeners, last legion, non-human Voidbringers, insert name here) to Slaveform?

Dulling (though would that be limited to just Dullform)?

desprenning?

Unmading?

Unsplintering?

Tweased?

 

 

[Heir of the Void]

10 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Anyone name the process that was discovered at the time of the last desolation, or false desolation, that downgraded the Parshendi (listeners, last legion, non-human Voidbringers, insert name here) to Slaveform?

There wasn't a process; it occurred all at once, by accident, as a result of the Radiants imprisoning Ba-Ado-Mishram to end the False Desolation. Because she was Connected to them to provide Voidlight and Forms of Power, her sudden imprisonment stripped away their Connection, and this also deprived them of Identity (we don't know how) and turned them into vegetables. 

The Everstorm restored their Connection, but apparently only by connecting them to their (human) country of origin, which is why Alethi parshmen are competent at warfare, Thaylen parshmen sail compulsively, and Azirish parshmen filed a lawsuit. 

We don't have names for either of these processes. 

[thegatorgirl00]

I've seen people refer to it as lobotomizing them. Spiritual lobotomy would probably be pretty accurate, considering the effects on personality and ability to be independent. 

[Reckless Disregard]

So....you agree it was a process. 

I'm not sure if it was an accident. It was clearly a byproduct of imprisoning the unmade. But by imprisoning the unmade, the specific act of the imprisonment, did not in and of itself, cause all of the parsh people to turn into slave form.

We still had the listeners.

So there must've been some separate process, not trying to be snarky, which further stripped away and or removed any voidspren that the parsh people had causing them to turn into slaveform.

Does that make sense?

 

[Greywatch]

We still have the Listeners, I expect, because there was a segment of the parsh population that were not bonded to voidspren/Ba-Ado-Mishram, and thus were left completely unaltered by the event that turned all the other parsh people into the parshmen we see in WoK and WoR.

[Reckless Disregard]

@thegatorgirl00 (Fla gators??)

I thought about lobotomizing but that has too much of a permanency to it. Yes of course with enough Stormlight I guess you could unlobotomize someone, but that doesn't seem to be happening here. It seems that here, it is more of a functioning state but on a vegetative level.   I think of it in my head like the Robin Williams and Robert De Niro movie Awakenings…… Brandon, have you been watching movies again? 

[Heir of the Void]

2 minutes ago, Greywatch said:

We still have the Listeners, I expect, because there was a segment of the parsh population that were not bonded to voidspren/Ba-Ado-Mishram, and thus were left completely unaltered by the event that turned all the other parsh people into dullform.

That seems to be the case. The Listener songs said they fled and assumed Dullform to be separated from their gods, so it seems to be safe to assume that they left the Voidbringers during the False Desolation, sometime before the Imprisonment. 

3 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

So....you agree it was a process. 

I agree it was a process in the sense that a meteorite impact is a process. I find the notion that there were massive bronze-age spiritual lobotomization camps rather laughable, considering that we have no reason to believe that it happened and that the only information we have says that the parshmen lost their mojo when BAM was imprisoned. 

 

11 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

We still had the listeners.

So there must've been some separate process, not trying to be snarky, which further stripped away and or removed any voidspren that the parsh people had causing them to turn into slaveform.

Does that make sense?

Not if the Listeners deserted before the imprisonment. They wouldn't have lost their Connection because they weren't connected to BAM. 

Beyond that, we know BAM 'Facilitated forms of Power', not that she 'provided Voidspren'. Part of the reason that the imprisonment might have been so bad is because the Parshmen had Connected to her to such an extent that she allowed them to assume Forms of Power. Remember that the Listeners said the parshmen slaves 'had no form'; this might be because they were all in a Powerform which was abruptly ripped away during the Imprisonment. They would have no spren to enable the assumption of a normal form, and wouldn't know they needed one or have any method of knowing how to attract and bond the requisite spren if they did. Or maybe they lost that ability because bonding a spren requires a Connection to Roshar, and they had none.

[thegatorgirl00]

7 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

@thegatorgirl00 (Fla gators??)

I thought about lobotomizing but that has too much of a permanency to it. Yes of course with enough Stormlight I guess you could unlobotomize someone, but that doesn't seem to be happening here. It seems that here, it is more of a functioning state but on a vegetative level.   I think of it in my head like the Robin Williams and Robert De Niro movie Awakenings…… Brandon, have you been watching movies again? 

It's my hometown. Even not being super interested in sports, a little bit of the insanity that is southern college football has still managed to seep in. 

Well, lobotomies sever the connection to the part of the brain dealing with personality and decision making. That's why I called it spiritual lobotomy. Sealing Ba-Ado-Mishram tore out the singers who were Connected to her's Connection and Identity. The listener's weren't connected to her, so they avoided those effects. The Everstorm, using Odium's Investiture, healed the parshmen's spirits. 

[Reckless Disregard]

@thegatorgirl00 you bleed orange and blue!!! The orange has me a little worried, all things parsh considered ;p

I am totally with you on the everstorm, using odium's investiture, to heal the slaveform parshmen.

 

@Heir of the VoidWe can call it an event (lower case e. Or occurrence) if that is a better term. 

Concentration camps are no laughing matter but I hear you.

I'm with you on the Listeners being separated at the time of BAM's imprisonment (presuming the timing is right which it seems to be). My only issue is whether the taking of dull form severs Connection. I took it as a flying under the radar, rather than a repudiation or disgorgement of their Spren. 

Considering how the Everstorm placed voidspren within them to create a change to Stormform, maybe going dull did require an expulsion of their Spren, which would sever their Connection.

But then the Listeners would be on the same no-Spren status as the Legion.   A major difference being one had voluntarily removed their spren and the others had a forceful act to sever their Connection (either via removal of voidspren or removal of facilitated forms of power).

Does that mean sealing away BAM removed their spren as well? If they had them? It seems you are leaning toward the FFoP over spren. 

Would that cause a Spiritual lobotomy as @thegatorgirl00 said? almost like the wound you would see when an Aes Sedai was severed and you viewed their "wound" in the spiritual realm. Also why they could be healed and channel again? (Hmm..maybe more appropo in another thread).

Because as I read your post, that would mean that in the past the Parsh warriors would not have voidspren bonds, just powers/upgrades due to their Connection to BAM (not including the dead/recycled Unmade).

Not sure I agree with that. 

Any quotes or WoB on whether the desolation time parsh warriors were bonded with voidspren or just powered up? 

I think that by the Listeners becoming Listeners they went dullform, but they can change form to mate and others, and those don't require voidspren, so it must be a natural ability to change form without going void (or now Nahel like Vendli).  

Meh...

 

Edited December 17, 2017 by Reckless Disregard
Edited to merge double posts.

[thegatorgirl00]

1 hour ago, Reckless Disregard said:

I'm with you on the Listeners being separated at the time of BAM's imprisonment (presuming the timing is right which it seems to be). My only issue is whether the taking of dull form severs Connection. I took it as a flying under the radar, rather than a repudiation or disgorgement of their Spren. 

You seem to have the idea that dullform doesn't have a spren. All forms except slaveform have spren. The ones that provide dullform are just the really common ones that don't do anything else. 

[Heir of the Void]

43 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

But then the Listeners would be on the same no-Spren status as the Legion.   A major difference being one had voluntarily removed their spren and the others had a forceful act to sever their Connection (either via removal of voidspren or removal of facilitated forms of power).

One of the Listener songs said the following with regards to Dullform:

Quote

Dullform dread, with the mind most lost.
The lowest, and the one not bright.
To find this form, one need banish the cost.
It finds you and brings you to blight.

So it seems like a willful renunciation of... something, which given the context would probably be something related to BAM. 

51 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Considering how the Everstorm placed voidspren within them to create a change to Stormform, maybe going dull did require an expulsion of their Spren, which would sever their Connection.

Critically, it didn't. It turned them into funny-colored humans more than anything else, at least the Voidspren showed up. Remember, Stormform and the other Powerforms have glowing red eyes, because they're linked with Voidspren. 

Actually, I'm not sure we've seen any stormform parshmen since the battle of the Narak, except maybe for Venli's group for the few minutes before they got Fuse'd. 

55 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

But then the Listeners would be on the same no-Spren status as the Legion.   A major difference being one had voluntarily removed their spren and the others had a forceful act to sever their Connection (either via removal of voidspren or removal of facilitated forms of power).

This is true. If they used the correct process to change forms, it might at least provide them with some of the requisite Connection to stay out of Slaveform.

57 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Does that mean sealing away BAM removed their spren as well? If they had them? It seems you are leaning toward the FFoP over spren...

Is FFoP 'Facilitate Forms of Power'? Because if so, probably, but obviously I'm far from certain. It's basically the model that best fits the data we have more than anything else. 

57 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

Because as I read your post, that would mean that in the past the Parsh warriors would not have voidspren bonds, just powers/upgrades due to their Connection to BAM (not including the dead/recycled Unmade).

Not sure I agree with that. 

It could be that they were all basically connected to the same Voidspren, who was one of the Unmade. Maybe she used the Odium Rhythms to transmit her power to all the parshmen at once or something. The key detail, as I see it, is that there's no reason to expect that imprisoning BAM would also vaporize any Voidspren she'd procured and given to he parshmen. The fact that they were so severely impacted by her capture indicates some sort of ongoing relationship.
 

At this point, we're mostly in the realm of conjecture, though, so who knows? Maybe Cultivation engineered the False Desolation and framed BAM. Maybe Hoid had some Voidspren spores on his coat when he was visiting. Maybe it was swam gas.

45 minutes ago, Reckless Disregard said:

almost like the wound you would see when an Aes Sedai was severed and you viewed their "wound" in the spiritual realm

Well, critically, they remained functional, albeit cripplingly depressing, after being Severed. They lose their will to live, not their ability to think. Significantly, Logan (the best character in that series, but that's another matter) remained an active character who actually did things for several books after being Severed, though that was an unusual case. The Parshmen don't seem to have been functional enough to have survived on their own after losing their Connection.

[Reckless Disregard]

30 minutes ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

You seem to have the idea that dullform doesn't have a spren. All forms except slaveform have spren. The ones that provide dullform are just the really common ones that don't do anything else. 

No, I just meant Dullform is a lower tier ( the lowest) form for the parsh.  I think when 'they' abandoned Odium and went dullform they still had spren. But they were so 'low' that they flew under the radar of BAM. 

In reading the posts above, it may be that the spren they did have were kicked out by voidspren when the everstorm hit.  Or they are now roommates with the voidspren in the driver's seat. 

It's just interesting to know if all parsh spren have a hole in them that allows Odium in.  If they did, then is dull form so low that Odium missed them? You'd think he'd be pretty po'd at deserters.

 

Edited December 17, 2017 by Reckless Disregard

[Seloun]

Since it turns Listeners into not-Listeners... Deafening could work. Doesn't sounds very lyrical, though. Anything that sounds like cutting off from music might also work.

How about The Dissonance? (a la Recreance)

[.S.A.M.K.M]

I wonder if this could be somehow duplicated in some manner. Specificly against the fused. Either to remove their anger and hatred that fuels them, keeping them from moving on, or to somehow break the limit sanity and control, so they won't be able to reason or plan.

[IllNsickly]

I guess I just thought of it as Severing.

A mild A’La WoT nod.

[.S.A.M.K.M]

I just had an idea, Eshonai was the sole Parshendi Shard bearer. I wonder if Timber is an echo of the spren of her blade, healed due to the Everstorm. Which is why it speaks to Venli using listerner songs. Just like how healed parshmen spoke the language of the locals, and behaved in a similar manner. So once she says the word that allow a blade to form, the blade the bad guys have will disappear and reappear in her hands. Imagine if the use of the blades lead to a secret chapter of the Knights radiants to be formed amongst the void bringers.

do we know what they are doing with the current shards in their hands? Could this effect be duplicated using the humans with Parshendi blood as a replacement, to restore blade? So recruit heavily amongst the horn eaters and herdazians.