[OB] New developments on Roshar in modern age

[Zelly Shardbearer]

So there's a few things that have changed since the last desolation 4,500 years ago.  Thought we could poke at these and see if there's anything they have in common that point towards a larger shift in power or change occurring somewhere?

1) The Everstorm.  Several characters literally call it "a new thing". How ever Odium used to transform the Fused, it wasn't by traveling storm.

2) Odium possessing men.  Both the Fused and (I think) Ash are surprised when Odium takes control of Amaram's army, mentioning it as a new skill.

3) Sja-anat's corruption of higher spren and radiant spren.   Hessi's Mythica describes radiants of old saying she could only corrupt lesser spren.  Sja-anat herself says that they have never before "enlightened" a spren as powerful as one who controls the Oathgate. (This one is questionable as the ability could come from Sja-anat's herself and newfound identity away from Odium).

 

Anything I miss?

Also this brings up the question:  Why now?  What has Odium being doing for all these millennia? 

Edited March 30, 2018 by Zellyia

[Calderis God Beyond]

12 minutes ago, Zellyia said:

Also this brings up the question:  Why now?  What has Odium being doing for all these millennia? 

The easiest answer I can think of is that Honor is dead. Odium was probably always capable of making these things happen, but they could have been thwarted by the opposition. 

Now there's half as much opposition. 

[BillLangdon Awakened Object]

 So for #1, I don’t think the everetorm is new because the Parshmen are slaves now. In desolation’s before, I don’t think the Parshendi were cast into slavery so much as they were in hiding like the parshendi of the shattered plains. Odium schemed a way to “activate” hordes of parshmen who were too dull to actively welcome a new form via the high storm, so he used his stormspren to subvert venli and Her sister into getting one large group to willingly take stormform, which allows the everstorm to force the rest to “awaken” as it were. A brilliant tactical move. 

 

Odium was able to possess men using the Thrill unmade. I think this has to do with the waiting period of having that unmade basically reside in Alethkar and Ja Keved regions for millennia. It’s influence on whole generations of people influenced their culture and essentially made the alethi the way they are, and made a much wider connection between The Thrill and the Souls of men in that region. Even then he needed to set the rift dominos. I don’t think he could have controlled Dalinar’s men because they didn’t have the exact buildup of hatred and resentment.

sja Amat I can’t explain yet.

 

why wait so long? I think the answer is this: he lost every desolation before. Honorable Men were just too resilient to beat. But with honor gone, all he needed was time, a resource he has all too much of. After all the time, men forgot how to have honor and how to stand united. By waiting milenia, he let humanity do half the job for him.

[Zelly Shardbearer]

44 minutes ago, BillLangdon said:

 So for #1, I don’t think the everetorm is new because the Parshmen are slaves now. In desolation’s before, I don’t think the Parshendi were cast into slavery so much as they were in hiding like the parshendi of the shattered plains. Odium schemed a way to “activate” hordes of parshmen who were too dull to actively welcome a new form via the high storm, so he used his stormspren to subvert venli and Her sister into getting one large group to willingly take stormform, which allows the everstorm to force the rest to “awaken” as it were. A brilliant tactical move. 

The chapter heading quotes from Mythica say that the Radiants of old were fighting the parsh (non Fused) and needed a way to seal their forms. They are all from the same drawer of recorded gems:

Quote

"Something must be done about the remnants of Odium's forces. The parsh, as they are now called, continue their war with zeal, even without their masters from Damnation."

"A coalition has been formed among scholar Radiants. Our goal is to deny the enemy their supply of Voidlight; this will prevent their continuing transformations, and give us an edge in combat."

"Our revelation is fueled by the theory that the Unmade can perhaps be captured like ordinary spren. It would require a special prison. And Melishi."

"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."

"We are uncertain the effects this will have on the parsh. At the very least, it should deny them forms of power. Melishi is confident, but Naze-daughter-Kuzodo warns of unintended side effects."

The "unintended side effects" I assumed were the parsh being denied all forms of power and thus trapped in their slave form.

Eshonai's people were a small band of the parsh who turned their backs on Odium and so were not affected.

[Yata Mistborn]

@Zellyia BAM provided an easier access to the Forms of Power. She was bond to almost every Singer of that time with the exception of the Listeners who fleed before.

When Melishi trapped her, he forceful remove her also rip Singers' Souls and this marked the birth of the Parshmen, Singers unable to change Form by a Spiritual Wound.

The Everstorm Simply is a mass Healing for the Parshmen, they would be' unable to take a Form (of Power or not) without their Souls healed.

The Everstorm was needed or Odium could only use Listeners to make Regals' and Reborn Fused.

Also the Everstorm is a shortcut for the Fused to return in Roshar without be' sent on Braize. It's an anti Oathpact mechanism too if some of the Heralds would die

[Leyrann Honorspren]

10 hours ago, BillLangdon said:

 So for #1, I don’t think the everetorm is new because the Parshmen are slaves now. In desolation’s before, I don’t think the Parshendi were cast into slavery so much as they were in hiding like the parshendi of the shattered plains. Odium schemed a way to “activate” hordes of parshmen who were too dull to actively welcome a new form via the high storm, so he used his stormspren to subvert venli and Her sister into getting one large group to willingly take stormform, which allows the everstorm to force the rest to “awaken” as it were. A brilliant tactical move. 

The Everstorm is new. It's mentioned several times near the end of WoR and the start of OB by several sources, the Stormfather among them. As @Yata also pointed out, it circumvents the Oathpact (which kept the Fused on Braize after they died) because Fused no longer go back to Braize, but instead go into the Everstorm to be reborn the next cycle. If the Everstorm had existed before, the Oathpact would never have worked.

10 hours ago, BillLangdon said:

why wait so long? I think the answer is this: he lost every desolation before. Honorable Men were just too resilient to beat. But with honor gone, all he needed was time, a resource he has all too much of. After all the time, men forgot how to have honor and how to stand united. By waiting milenia, he let humanity do half the job for him.

While this granted him some things, remember what Taln said to Ash when he was lucid: Those four and a half thousand years allowed humankind to advance. Previously, Desolations set back humankind further than they could progress in between, and they kept occuring closer together because the Heralds could not hold out as long anymore. Now, however, humankind has advanced technology for four and a half thousand years. They have steel armor, all kinds of fabrials, near-instant communication across all of Roshar, most likely a higher population than previously, and so on. This is the first time that humankind has renaissance level technology to deal with a Desolation, rather than early medieval at best. That is going to make an enormous difference.

All in all, I'm not sure if Odium likes having had to wait this long. We know from Brandon that the Oathpact was still kind of working, so most likely Taln being on Braize stopped him from being able to do more until, finally, he managed to position the Alethi and the Parshendi such that the Parshendi summoned the Everstorm. Likely, the splintering of Honor (which seems to have happened around the Recreance) and Odium having to recover from it (something Brandon has told us he needs to do after splintering a shard) took up quite a bit of his time as well.

[BillLangdon Awakened Object]

3 hours ago, Leyrann said:

 

14 hours ago, BillLangdon said:

 So for #1, I don’t think the everetorm is new because the Parshmen are slaves now. In desolation’s before, I don’t think the Parshendi were cast into slavery so much as they were in hiding like the parshendi of the shattered plains. Odium schemed a way to “activate” hordes of parshmen who were too dull to actively welcome a new form via the high storm, so he used his stormspren to subvert venli and Her sister into getting one large group to willingly take stormform, which allows the everstorm to force the rest to “awaken” as it were. A brilliant tactical move. 

The Everstorm is new. It's mentioned several times near the end of WoR and the start of OB by several sources

 

Yeah my bad. It’s actually a typo, I meant to write, “I *think the everstorm is new because...” but fair points made.

[IronBars Hazekiller]

14 hours ago, Zellyia said:

So there's a few things that have changed since the last desolation 4,500 years ago.  Thought we could poke at these and see if there's anything they have in common that point towards a larger shift in power or change occurring somewhere?

1) The Everstorm.  Several characters literally call it "a new thing". How ever Odium used to transform the Fused, it wasn't by traveling storm.

2) Odium possessing men.  Both the Fused and (I think) Ash are surprised when Odium takes control of Amaram's army, mentioning it as a new skill.

3) Sja-anat's corruption of higher spren and radiant spren.   Hessi's Mythica describes radiants of old saying she could only corrupt lesser spren.  Sja-anat herself says that they have never before "enlightened" a spren as powerful as one who controls the Oathgate. (This one is questionable as the ability could come from Sja-anat's herself and newfound identity away from Odium).

 

Anything I miss?

Also this brings up the question:  Why now?  What has Odium being doing for all these millennia? 

As someone else said the Everstorm is the means by which Odium countered what Melishi did to the original singers. 

As for sja anat its still supposition that she can corrupt bondable spren.

Why did Odium wait ? In my opinion he was waiting until he had a champion who couldnt be defeated, ie the blacktorn. He groomed Dalinar from an early age, to prepare him for his role. Unfortunately for Odium, Cultivation intervened and ruined that

[hypatia High Prelan]

I think we are looking to much at the Desolations from the human side.

Granted, the humans had to start anew every time - but wasn't this also a problem for the Singers?

Perhaps more so because they need to be in special forms to have children. Another problem should be the settlement - did the Singer have a region where they were able to lick their wounds?

For me the shorter times between the Desolation look more and more like a Pyrrhic victory for Odium.

[Leyrann Honorspren]

2 hours ago, hypatia said:

I think we are looking to much at the Desolations from the human side.

Granted, the humans had to start anew every time - but wasn't this also a problem for the Singers?

Perhaps more so because they need to be in special forms to have children. Another problem should be the settlement - did the Singer have a region where they were able to lick their wounds?

For me the shorter times between the Desolation look more and more like a Pyrrhic victory for Odium.

If that was so, why did the time between Desolations get progressively shorter? Just wait 200 years before you start torturing those Heralds if that means you're better off.

[hypatia High Prelan]

@Leyrann

Perhaps, but I'm not convinced Odium is interested in any of the population. He needs to fill his void with emotions.

What we know about the history - even if I'm sure there will be more - is that Roshar was populated with the Singers. Humans were allowed to settle in Shinovar.

Then they started to expand and we end up with Roshar fully within human hands - I can't see a refugium for the Singers to regenerate in the times between the Desolations.

Nowadays the tide seems to have changed - with the "help" of the human population the Parshmen are again spread all over Roshar, whereas the Humans - as said above - are divided and were diminishing themselves over the years without an enemy.

As to Odium using Humans to fight Humans - I think this clever, because whoever dies it will be a Humans.

For the question why Odium hadn't done this before - perhaps this is now possible because Honor is dead.

[Leyrann Honorspren]

@hypatia I'm not seeing what your argument is now. You said in your last post that you thought Desolations occuring closer and closer together were perhaps a pyrrhic victory for Odium, which was what I replied to, but I don't see how your new post relates to that.

[hypatia High Prelan]

Ah, I see the problem.

No, my question was about the consequences of the Desolations for the Singers. We just know about the losses of the human population, not the death rate of the Singer.

And then the map of the Silver Kingdoms, where the whole landmass is divided in Human Kingdoms - no land left for the original population.

My core question would be - how many Singer were on Roshar at the Last or False Desolation, when obviously the human expansion left no room for them?

I just can't see Humans and Singer living friendly side by side between the Desolations.

[Leyrann Honorspren]

18 minutes ago, hypatia said:

Ah, I see the problem.

No, my question was about the consequences of the Desolations for the Singers. We just know about the losses of the human population, not the death rate of the Singer.

And then the map of the Silver Kingdoms, where the whole landmass is divided in Human Kingdoms - no land left for the original population.

My core question would be - how many Singer were on Roshar at the Last or False Desolation, when obviously the human expansion left no room for them?

I just can't see Humans and Singer living friendly side by side between the Desolations.

I guess we just don't know.

Feverstone Keep was somewhere in the Northwest of Roshar though, and considering the listeners lived in the far east, I think that it would have been a patchwork of human and singer lands in reality. The map might of course not be all that accurate.

What we know is that humans were set back further and further every next Desolation, so I would assume they suffered more than the singers. Of course, a difference is also that 10 humans with advanced knowledge came back (the Heralds) while hundreds or even thousands of singers with advanced knowledge came back (the Fused), which I suppose would mean they could always get a jumpstart in technology and the like at the start of any Desolation.