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Why IS odium helping the parshmen?


Renen

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Reading the part where the fused tell Venli about fighting to make a world for parshmen, I got thinking... Why on earth is odium even bothering with the parshmen? I mean we know he is strapped. Presumably his #1 goal is to not be trapped. So how is he trying to accomplish that? Does murdering all humans somehow free him (doubtful)? Is he just doing it for the lulz(that sounds like a silly reason)? What is his goal for helping these random humanoids with gemhearts murder some other humanoids? It is highly unlikely he just gave up on leaving the system and just decided that mads murder is a fun time waster. 

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1 hour ago, Renen said:

Reading the part where the fused tell Venli about fighting to make a world for parshmen, I got thinking... Why on earth is odium even bothering with the parshmen? I mean we know he is strapped. Presumably his #1 goal is to not be trapped. So how is he trying to accomplish that? Does murdering all humans somehow free him (doubtful)? Is he just doing it for the lulz(that sounds like a silly reason)? What is his goal for helping these random humanoids with gemhearts murder some other humanoids? It is highly unlikely he just gave up on leaving the system and just decided that mads murder is a fun time waster. 

A bunch of reasons come to mind.  For one the Parshe are easy to manipulate as they are both angry and capable of bonding spren.  Because of this he can use the minimum amount of his investiture helping them killing humans insuring that Honor and Cultivation have to exert themselves running interference protecting them. 

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His goal is to escape from Roshar and Splinter Cultivation, plus perhaps further Splinter the Stormfather and the bits of Honor floating around. The singers' with their gemhearts allowing them to get possessed and heavily influenced by Odium makes them better pawns, but he is also trying to subvert humans, as we saw in Kholinar and Jah Keved and the Battle of Thaylen Fields. Whatever pawns come to hand are okay with him.

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Right. But how does a bunch of parshmen help him kill cultivation? Not like enough pasrhmen bumrushing a shard would work. Presumably whatever he is working towards is still ultimately his escape, but I wonder if we have anything hinting at a direction? Assuming he 100% wins and all humans die and theres only parshmen on Roshar. Then what? Does he maybe need to kill all the heralds? And why cant that be accomplished via getting some top tier fused to stealthily do them in? They arent unkillable. They are separated. And some too mad to even resist much. Why start a noticeable desolation? 

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1 hour ago, Renen said:

Right. But how does a bunch of parshmen help him kill cultivation? Not like enough pasrhmen bumrushing a shard would work. Presumably whatever he is working towards is still ultimately his escape, but I wonder if we have anything hinting at a direction? Assuming he 100% wins and all humans die and theres only parshmen on Roshar. Then what? Does he maybe need to kill all the heralds? And why cant that be accomplished via getting some top tier fused to stealthily do them in? They arent unkillable. They are separated. And some too mad to even resist much. Why start a noticeable desolation? 

He's bound to the system by Honor's power and apparently he can only escape in one of two ways: Dalinar intentionally releases him (which is a new thing owing to what the Stormfather has become since the last time there were Radiants) or he has to win according to the rules of whatever agreement he and Honor came up with. Just killing all the humans apparently won't accomplish this (Dalinar percieves this in the confrontation at Thaylen City) and just killing the Heralds definitely won't do it. What they're doing is keeping Odium's full force from coming to bear since they're part of the Oathpact that keeps the Fused trapped on Braize, they're not what's keeping him trapped in the system. Killing all of them would help Odium's cause by increasing the resources he can send against Roshar but it's not the win condition.

On that note, killing the Heralds only became an option recently because the Oathpact is still in force (however strained) and until Taln finally broke his ability to influence Roshar was extremely limited because all the Fused and most of the voidspren were stuck on Braize and the Unmade can't do everything on their own, especially when only some of them can truly think. The situation is also different now because Honor has been splintered so Odium only has one opposing Shard to worry about.

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Of course, there is also the fact that while killing everyone might not necessarily free him, it definitely causes them to become way more desperate, leading to a contest of champions where he has a strong chance of winning and finally escaping the Rosharan system. If the quickest and most effective way of killing the Rosharans involved the Parsh, then that's what he's going with. Spoiler for Mistborn below

It kind of reminds me of how Ruin used the Koloss in Mistborn to try and find the atium, Odium in the same manner is using the easily influenced Parsh to accomplish his goals. Hope the Parsh realize this soon. 

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I would say that he doesn't care one whit about the Parshmen, but he sees them as a tool that can change things. Maybe there needs to be a Dalinar / Radiants among the Sons of Honor (aka humans) for him to be able to win the contest to escape? Probably the Fused are angry and insane and that makes them vulnerable to his influence. Plus there's the unmade like the Thrill that he's probably leveraging to move things... Did he create the Unmade? Everyone says they're "of Him". Anyway I'm getting on tangents. 

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Two reasons occur to me. First, something about the war may be capable of breaking Odium's bindings. Maybe Honor challenged Odium to an official duel of some kind, and Odium has specific goals he needs to accomplish to escape. Or maybe he can wield the parshmen, as opposed to his own power, to attack sources of Honor and Cultivation's investiture in the physical realm. Dunno if this is possible, but perhaps he can use them to hurt the other shards in some fashion.

The second reason is that they may be something to fill his time while he's bound. There is a quote that says Odium has a secondary interest in mortals, although his primary focus is on the shards. He is still a shard and is bound to his nature, so without any means of pursuing his primary goal, maybe he is compelled to drive the humans and parshmen to hatred. Or maybe not even compelled, might just be something to do for enjoyment.

WOB:

Quote

CaptainRyan

Did Odium intentionally cause direct harm to the inhabitants of Sel or was his sole focus taking down Devotion and Dominion? (Context: I'd like to know if Odium cares/has any interest in mortals or if he only has designs/plans for Shards)

Brandon Sanderson

It was all side effect. He is focused on Shards... But he does have secondary interest in mortals.

Oathbringer release party (Nov. 13, 2017)

 

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  • 2 months later...

Perhaps Odium plans on utilizing the parsh to attack other planets. They hate humanity so I could see it happening. They also have access to shadesmar now. I'm surprised the Parsh weren't exterminated before they could be awakened by the Everstorm. Would have been very easy and could have saved thousands of human lives.

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It occurs to me that we don't know what Odium's win condition actually is. Like, okay, he wants to be free from the bonds Honor placed on him so he can kill Cultivation and leave Roshar, but how does that happen? Surely he can't have been gunning for the 'Dalinar chooses to set him free' outcome all along, and surely he's not just going to throw in the towel now that that seems unlikely to happen. 

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2 hours ago, Gilphon said:

It occurs to me that we don't know what Odium's win condition actually is. Like, okay, he wants to be free from the bonds Honor placed on him so he can kill Cultivation and leave Roshar, but how does that happen? Surely he can't have been gunning for the 'Dalinar chooses to set him free' outcome all along, and surely he's not just going to throw in the towel now that that seems unlikely to happen. 

This has been bothering me as well. The Eila Stele informs us that Odium arrived to Roshar with the first humans as their god, who came from Ashyn using Surges “forbidden" to them, forbidden by the gods the Dawnsingers already had at the time on Roshar - who also told them to allow the humans to stay. Which gods sound like Honor and Cultivation.

Now the mortals (human and singers both) have switched gods. But it seems the Oathpact was formed in reaction to the Dawnsingers going to Odium, and getting Fused, Thunderclasts, and Voidlight-driven Surgebinding. So why would Odium switch pawns? What would be in it for him? Or H&C? Were both sides just game pieces being exchanged on a board to the gods ("OK, this time you take black?")

Odium is only after one thing: release from whatever bonds Honor and Cultivation managed to place on him, freeing him to splinter Cultivation and the remnants of Honor, change Roshar "substantially" in so doing, and then continue about his plans to be the Last Shard Standing.

Dalinar guessed that destroying humanity on Roshar wouldn't free Odium from his bonds, and Odium didn't challenge that - but neither did he confirm it. His actions speak louder: the Final Desolation has a reason to be called that, and he has a reason to want to destroy the human kingdoms, led by Heralds and Radiants, in that conflict.

I guessed in another post about the Dawnshards that the vision Dalinar had where he was instructed to try to get Odium to agree to a contest of champions was in fact a vision tampered with by Odium - that a CvC is, or was, the easiest victory condition he could get (especially with his idea of coopting a Thrilled Dalinar).

The same vision where the god bemoaned that Dalinar would be "without the Dawnshards"... Even as the Stormfather said that Honor raved while dying about them, and how the Radiants would destroy Roshar as they had Ashyn, in response to that generation of Radiants learning of humanity's origin and the dispossession of the Dawnsingers.

And what did shatter the Shattered Plains, anyway?

I think the Final Desolation is the equivalent of the shot clock running down.

I think Dalinar does indeed have the Dawnshards available to use at some point, but that using them would be massively dangerous.

Hoid, who may know the victory conditions in play, and is terrified of Odium, once told Dalinar that their goals "do not completely align", that "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.” Not "watch humanity get eliminated from Roshar", but watching the very world crumbling and burning.  Is that a Dawnsharding? And that would get Hoid what he wants, the hard way?

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On 9/23/2019 at 4:56 AM, robardin said:

Dalinar guessed that destroying humanity on Roshar wouldn't free Odium from his bonds, and Odium didn't challenge that - but neither did he confirm it. His actions speak louder: the Final Desolation has a reason to be called that, and he has a reason to want to destroy the human kingdoms, led by Heralds and Radiants, in that conflict.

His deal with Taravangian is hard to explain if killing most people were unimportant. In fact, he would have made the offer to Dalinar.

It looks to me like (near)eradication of man on Roshar is a necessary but by itself insufficient condition for his success. Possibly he intends to cause so much destruction that Cultivation has no choice but to come out and fight in person.

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