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RoW Chapter 10 Discussion


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On 9/8/2020 at 7:19 AM, Nathrangking said:

Am I the only one who who chuckles on imagining Kaladin the diplomat? 

Nope. I do not think that that would be such a good idea. I mean, yes, Kaladin is my favorite character in the Cosmere by far, but diplomacy is not one of his strong suites.

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40 minutes ago, Person said:

Nope. I do not think that that would be such a good idea. I mean, yes, Kaladin is my favorite character in the Cosmere by far, but diplomacy is not one of his strong suites.

He would probably end up as Azir's new monarch anyway.

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Speaking of heroic story formulas, where is Hoid when you really need him?

shouldn’t the universe tell him to head to Urithiru stat and ply some of his patented parabolic prose therapy at a perpetually petulant Protagonist?

 

sorry for letting the alliteration run away with me.:rolleyes:

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Well I think this is the best chapter so far, Kalladin starting to move in meaningful ways and Dalinar being both a good friend and a powerful leader.

On Yunfa, that's the name of the spren right(?), I feel Kalladins approach is the right one. Many places today have laws against discrimination that would make it a crime to not hire someone for being parsh for example.

Now I do not necessarily feel that it would be right for Rlain to become a Windrunner after this order but it is the right order all the same. I think the best would be for Yunfa to observe Rlain and talk to him and come to the understanding that Rlain is just no Windrunner material but rather something else. " Hey high Marshall I did as you demanded and I can't in good conscienceake the bond with Rlain." Kal might get agry by this, the deadline coinciding with his own making it just one storm after another with drama to follow, or just hear the follow-up that he would be a perfect candidate for whatever order.

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14 hours ago, Cheat Commando said:

I am also surprised Navani didn't get at all curious about the lift generated from the wings of the pod.

Why would she? She proposed wings precisely because she wanted lift. This shows that she does not understand how the Surge of Gravitation works, not that she is ignorant about lift.

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2 hours ago, Karger said:

I would argue that his goal was being a radiant which he is.  It is not an accident that seizing the sword comes at the climax of the ordeal.  It can take any amount of time for a hero to do any of these things really.  Some also go through it multiple times.

shardblade.

Dueling scene?

His confrontation was with himself.  He was missing compassion for his enemies. 

Becoming a Radiant is way too small scope for his goal in the entire series.  If Kaladin's story can be fit into the Hero's Journey template, then the template should match up to his entire story.  If we're thinking of an overall Kaladin arc as a hero's journey those milestones you listed don't make sense.  The shardblade was not a gift, it was something he created himself through personal growth and advancement in his Radiant oaths.  I guess you could say Moash tempted him to leave the journey and join the Elhokar assassination plot, but then he is still missing other steps that should precede the temptation.  If his confrontation was with himself, it means his primary adversary was also himself, which makes no sense and is way too small scope for the story being told in the Stormlight Archive.  

I guess you could say he already had a small scope hero's journey in each of tWoK and WoR.  WoK was the journey to escape slavery.  WoR was the journey to become a Radiant.  Maybe he started a new journey in OB to defeat the forces of Odium which is still ongoing.  But that's my whole point - to say that every story is a hero's journey is fundamentally flawed.  The entire concept of the hero's journey is so overly broad that you can twist it to say anything is a hero's journey.  Kaladin's story is much more complex than that (if it wasn't, he would have rode off into the sunset already) and we only know part of it so far.  The only way to make it fit is to twist the idea of a hero's journey to say that Kaladin now has multiple hero's journeys.

The point is - it's so broad and generic and open to interpretation that it can't be used as a way to predict Kaladin's future plot.  It's something that can only be assigned afterward.

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1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

Why would she? She proposed wings precisely because she wanted lift. This shows that she does not understand how the Surge of Gravitation works, not that she is ignorant about lift.

Ah, I was reading too fast the first time. I see what you're talking about.

Edited by Cheat Commando
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So I gotta day I feel like dalinar is definitely doing what’s best for kaladin but he was way way way off base with how he started talking to kaladin about it. He should not have wild with the questioning about why kaladin is letting wounded fused go before removing him form combat since it feels accusatory to kal. On top of that kaladin is right in that situation it’s better to spare heavenly ones so they don’t have to train new radiants.

 

one thing I don’t like about this or at the very least something I hope is addressed or at least referenced is leshwi. Because her and kaladins fights really stuck out to me. I really feel like they have a connection or at least in an understanding(I’m not saying that like shipping it, I just think there is definitely mutual respect and understanding there). I really am gonna miss their interactions and I’d like to see if that is ever addressed. Especially because it seems weird to create a connection between her and kaladin before pulling him out of a situation where he will interact with her.

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1 hour ago, agrabes said:

Becoming a Radiant is way too small scope for his goal in the entire series

Respectfully I find that statement untrue.  I was working on this anyway.

2 hours ago, agrabes said:

The point is - it's so broad and generic and open to interpretation that it can't be used as a way to predict Kaladin's future plot.  It's something that can only be assigned afterward.

It does not tell me anything about Kaladin's plot only what what he needs in order to progress.  How this will happen is entirely up to Brandon.

 

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4 hours ago, Zea mays said:

Speaking of heroic story formulas, where is Hoid when you really need him?

shouldn’t the universe tell him to head to Urithiru stat and ply some of his patented parabolic prose therapy at a perpetually petulant Protagonist?

You're acribing to Hoid an altruistic goal he does not have. He wants to trap Odium. Having a Surgebinder who will go to irrational lengths to protect everybody is quite likely an asset to him.

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On 9/8/2020 at 9:20 AM, agrabes said:

I think Dalinar's point to Kaladin that he should consider being an ambassador is interesting.  We know of one confirmed ambassador mission and one suspected one that will happen in this book:

 

1) Confirmed Ambassador mission to the Honor Spren in Shadesmar.  Could Kaladin join Shallan and Adolin on that mission?  The Amazon blurb mentions an "envoy", so it's possible Kaladin will go on this mission.  Then again - do you really want to send a depressed, recently stripped of command, Windrunner to see the honor spren?

 

 

On 9/8/2020 at 11:14 AM, Kuram said:

I doubt Kaladin is going to be on the expedition.  I don't think Dalinar, having just pulled him from frontline duty, is going to send him off on an expedition when he clearly sees the turmoil Kaladin is experiencing.  He will want to keep him close.

10 days is two weeks in Roshar calendar, I don't think it's anything more than that.

I actually think that if Kaladin goes on the Shadesmar mission the "envoy" will be Syl not Kal.  For once she will be the one "in the lead".

On 9/8/2020 at 4:58 PM, Karger said:

The consequences of his choices are manifesting and he is not sure if he like the result.  Generally this stage ends with our hero dying or becoming a villain.  If the story ends here we just saw a tragedy.  The death of the hero however leaves room for hope.  If the hero is able to keep going he will journey through the underworld, resurrect, and return with the answer to his questions thus completing the cycle. 

 

On 9/8/2020 at 9:31 PM, sprocket said:

People keep pointing to Dalinar's reference to the God Beyond as evidence that he's becoming more cosmere aware, but I really don't think that's it. Wayne refers to the God Beyond and I don't think he's been talking to the Heralds. Same goes for the character who mentions it in Shadows for Silence (I can't remember who it was but I remember it happened).

It's also worth noting that any extra connection to the Spiritual Realm would give no extra information about the God Beyond, as the "beyond" part means beyond the three realms, to the place where the dead go, where not even Shards can see.

The God Beyond seems to be something that people on many different shardworlds developed independently, probably for the exact same reasons as Dalinar. Dalinar came to believe that Honor wasn't god because he was mortal and fallible, but that a god did exist beyond Honor.      

It is difficult for me to justify that this is a natural independent concept, when we know there are World Hoppers throughout the Cosmere, that have interacted with the worlds, and that there were also migrations that brought concepts like "The One" . 

20 hours ago, Chiberty said:

It's not the only story, just a common one, since it works well narratively.

No it is not the only story, but when you look at the key 17 stages of the momomyth, and identify them metaphorically not literally it is difficult to find many that do not fit in some ways. Other stories that do not exactly follow the Heroes Journey, still encompass some or many of the stages, or sometimes are built of individual mini journeys.

17 hours ago, Zea mays said:

Speaking of heroic story formulas, where is Hoid when you really need him?

shouldn’t the universe tell him to head to Urithiru stat and ply some of his patented parabolic prose therapy at a perpetually petulant Protagonist?

 

sorry for letting the alliteration run away with me.:rolleyes:

I am hoping that Hoid shows up in Urithiru to be Queen Jasnah's Wit  :) 

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17 hours ago, agrabes said:

Kaladin's story is much more complex than that (if it wasn't, he would have rode off into the sunset already) and we only know part of it so far.  The only way to make it fit is to twist the idea of a hero's journey to say that Kaladin now has multiple hero's journeys.

The heroes journey has been simplified in many stories and especially in the movies we are familiar with. If you look at many of the foundation Myths and stories the hero's journey is convoluted, complex, and the stories contain multiple journeys within a journey. With Sanderson we can expect him to twist or turn the journey and various metaphorical stages on their head to be interpreted differently or arrived at in new ways, but so far in all of the first 3 books the journey has been there for all of the characters both main POV and minor POV, we see it too in some of the non POV characters like Roshone. 

I tend to think that Kaladin will follow the full Journey and we will see his return to the Surgeon, the focus has been on the battles and fighting, but it was his saving bridgemen as a Surgeon, that also gained him respect, along with how they came to follow his lead, it was in saving with the scalpel that they first started taking his orders.

Edited by FollowYourMuse
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Oh yeah, one more thing I realized was subtly dropped on us in Chapter 10.

Dalinar was concerned about the paired dueling that the Windrunners have taken to doing with the Heavenly Ones:

Quote

Dalinar studied him, taking note of his burned and bloodied uniform. Finally, he spoke. “I have multiple reports of you and your soldiers letting enemy Fused go once you’ve wounded them.”

Kaladin relaxed immediately. That was what Dalinar wanted to talk about?

“I think we’re starting to reach a kind of understanding with them, sir,” Kaladin said. “The Heavenly Ones fight with honor. I let one of them go today. In turn, their leader—Leshwi—released one of my men instead of killing him.

“This isn’t a game, son,” Dalinar said. “This isn’t about who gets first blood. We’re literally fighting for the existence of our people.”

So... Not only does Kaladin recognize Leshwi as his counterpart as the leader of the Heavenly Ones, even being "frenemies" enough to realize (at the end of Chapter 6) that he was "letting her get too close" while still in a fight where they both had bloodied the other because they appeared to share outrage at the "Teleporting Fused" brutalizing non-combatant civilians on the ground below, he also knows her on a first name basis?

We know Leshwi speaks Alethi, so she must have introduced herself to him at some point. I would really love to read that flashback!

As far as the Heavenly Ones "having honor" - it's implied by that scene at the end of Chapter 6 that Leshwi disapproved of the Teleporting Fused brutalizing non-combatants, to the point of halting her fight with Kaladin and indicating that he should go stop it; and yet Vyre, the last we saw in Oathbringer when Moash was given the Honorblade to "join [the Heavenly Ones] in the sky", is under her command. And he was already in the burning manor house, having killed shackled two civilian prisoners with his Blade, not to mention Roshone.

OK, killing Roshone may be a personal vendetta thing with Moash, but killing Jeber and the other man doesn't seem like something that fits with that picture of the Heavenly Ones being against brutalizing civilians. Did he do that entirely on his own, or was he acting on orders from, or at least a common plan with, Leshwi?

It certainly seems possible that Leshwi is lulling Kaladin, leading him on with a false idea of "we are counterparts to the Windrunners!", towards some kind of long game trap?

EDIT to add: furthering my suspicion as to the supposed "Windrunner ethos" of the Heavenly Ones: when we first hear from Leshwi firsthand, talking to Moash in the sky in Oathbringer Ch. 54 (a detail that also puzzles me and I raised as a separate topic in the main SA forum):

Quote

Moash took a deep breath. "Can you tell me, then, why you treat your own so poorly?"

"Poorly?" she said, sounding amused. "They are fed, clothed, and trained."

"Not all of them," Moash said. "You had those poor parshmen working as slaves, like humans. And now, you're going to throw them at the city walls."

"Sacrifice," she said. "Do you think an empire is built without sacrifice?"

Sacrificing her own people as expendable slaves, just like Sadeas did with his bridge crews... That is very, very un-Windrunner, isn't it?

Edited by robardin
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On 9/8/2020 at 11:26 PM, Eluvianii said:

Also, about the sphere with wings. Yeah, it is really strange that the Windrunners just dismissed it but I'm even more surprised about Navani dismissing it. She sees this really efficient way of making things fly and just goes "Welp, failure. Anyway, how's my flying table doing?" 

Let me give you a mechanical engineers perspective on this. Wings work because they provide an upward force that counteracts gravity's downward force. Windrunner powers work by literally changing the direction of gravity. There is no downward force to counteract under a horizontal gravitation lashing, so wings are actually a detriment. As you would now need to change the direction of lashing to oppose the force of the wings in order to maintain horizontal flight.

So in the context of windrunner powers it makes perfect sense to dismiss wings as bad ideas.

In other contexts wings could actually help. I am not 100% clear on how the huge ship works, but it is not altering the direction of gravity but instead mimicing the movements of paired fabrials right? And the force needed to move it is mathematically linked to the force needed to move the paired fabrial at the other end. So at speed wings could help reduce the force needed to keep the ship in the air.

 

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2 hours ago, robardin said:

Sacrificing her own people as expendable slaves, just like Sadeas did with his bridge crews... That is very, very un-Windrunner, isn't it?

You are not wrong.  However to be fair the survivors were promoted.  I doubt they will have to do that kind of thing again.  They were also permitted basic protection.

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37 minutes ago, Karger said:

You are not wrong.  However to be fair the survivors were promoted.  I doubt they will have to do that kind of thing again.  They were also permitted basic protection.

Yes, the Fused do have some kind of concern for their people, though they do view them very much as "resources" (I mean, they reincarnate into their bodies...!). And I'd say what Kaladin sees of the Heavenly Ones' conduct in battle echoes more of the kind of honor that he saw from the pre-Everstorm Parshendi on the Shattered Plains.

But that whole encounter Kaladin had in Hearthstone, with Leshwi going after - and then releasing - Sigzil, pulling back from fighting Kaladin and gesturing for him to go and stop another Fused from what he was doing, which in turn resulted in him being inside the Hearthstone manor to encounter Vyre the way that he did when Vyre should be under her command... It feels very much like Leshwi, who let's not forget is incredibly ancient, crafty, skilled, and filled with purpose to triumph over humankind, is playing a very deep or long game with Kaladin, for reasons we have yet to see.

Anyone who goes "maybe the Heavenly Ones will realize they have more in common with the Windrunners than the other Fused and switch sides, or join up with Venli for Team Third Way for a Better Roshar!" I think is reading a little too much on the surface with her.

Let's not forget that unlike the Heralds, it seems that Odium could and would simply "reclaim that which gives [a Fused] persistent life" if one displeases or goes against him, as he threatened Turash with at Thaylen Fields. It's not like the Herald Nale breaking the Oathpact and ultimately full on going over to Team Odium, yet still being immortal. The sane Fused like Leshwi are probably the most committed to the cause; the insane ones may have gone insane after so many Desolations exactly because they could no longer fully go along with the program, but Odium hasn't released them, so back into the spin cycle they go!

Edited by robardin
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4 hours ago, FollowYourMuse said:

The heroes journey has been simplified in many stories and especially in the movies we are familiar with. If you look at many of the foundation Myths and stories the hero's journey is convoluted, complex, and the stories contain multiple journeys within a journey. With Sanderson we can expect him to twist or turn the journey and various metaphorical stages on their head to be interpreted differently or arrived at in new ways, but so far in all of the first 3 books the journey has been there for all of the characters both main POV and minor POV, we see it too in some of the non POV characters like Roshone. 

I tend to think that Kaladin will follow the full Journey and we will see his return to the Surgeon, the focus has been on the battles and fighting, but it was his saving bridgemen as a Surgeon, that also gained him respect, along with how they came to follow his lead, it was in saving with the scalpel that they first started taking his orders.

This kind of illustrates my point and why I dislike the Hero's Journey.  There are plenty of examples of stories and legends which fit the Hero's Journey template well.  Enough that someone got the idea that -all- stories must fit the template.  But not all stories do fit the template if you read them start to finish.  So how do you explain that not all stories actually fit the template of the Hero's Journey?  Well, the easy answer is to redefine what it means to fit the template.  Instead of saying the whole story must fit the template, you say that one hero may have multiple journeys.  If you break apart stories into random components that match the Hero's Journey template but not the actual storytelling and get creative and extra broad with how you apply the Hero's Journey template (death isn't really death, except when it is, traveling through the underworld must happen in every story, but we get to be creative about what it means to travel through the underworld, etc), everything fits again.  We can now say every story matches the Hero's Journey!

Instead, we should just say many stories fit the Hero's Journey, many are similar to the Hero's Journey but different in key ways, and some don't fit at all.

18 hours ago, Karger said:

Respectfully I find that statement untrue.  I was working on this anyway.

It does not tell me anything about Kaladin's plot only what what he needs in order to progress.  How this will happen is entirely up to Brandon.

 

No offense taken!  I'll navigate to your other thread and continue any discussion there.

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2 minutes ago, agrabes said:

Instead, we should just say many stories fit the Hero's Journey, many are similar to the Hero's Journey but different in key ways, and some don't fit at all.

It is not so much that every story matches the hero's journey.  Rather the Hero's journey is good way of understanding the progression of any character who can be identified as the hero.

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46 minutes ago, Karger said:

It is not so much that every story matches the hero's journey.  Rather the Hero's journey is good way of understanding the progression of any character who can be identified as the hero.

Not every hero's story is THE hero's journey; but it is still a journey! (Before Destination!)

Edited by robardin
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On 9/9/2020 at 3:00 PM, Oltux72 said:

Why would she? She proposed wings precisely because she wanted lift. This shows that she does not understand how the Surge of Gravitation works, not that she is ignorant about lift.

My understanding was that they tried added wings for stability, but it created lift. So instead they added fins. (Emphasis on difference between wings and fins).

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2 hours ago, dionysus said:

Let me give you a mechanical engineers perspective on this. Wings work because they provide an upward force that counteracts gravity's downward force. Windrunner powers work by literally changing the direction of gravity. There is no downward force to counteract under a horizontal gravitation lashing, so wings are actually a detriment. As you would now need to change the direction of lashing to oppose the force of the wings in order to maintain horizontal flight.

So in the context of windrunner powers it makes perfect sense to dismiss wings as bad ideas.

In other contexts wings could actually help. I am not 100% clear on how the huge ship works, but it is not altering the direction of gravity but instead mimicing the movements of paired fabrials right? And the force needed to move it is mathematically linked to the force needed to move the paired fabrial at the other end. So at speed wings could help reduce the force needed to keep the ship in the air.

 

But, from what they saw, the thing lifted uncontrollably. So yes, that is a detriment to their current objective but it would only take a little experimentation to find a way to make it stable and useful. If they can make small ships applying gravitation horizontally in small quantities they'd have a functional plane with little to no Stormlight consumption compared to the Fourth Bridge. We already know the Stormlight waste to be one of its flaws. 

Also, we got an entire PoV from her describing how much she hates lacking understanding about anything, so after she saw this either she has every reason on Roshar to be intrigued or she already understands lift but just doesn't see it as useful, but I would find that very odd. You already pointed out how useful it would be for the big ship. 

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4 hours ago, robardin said:

Oh yeah, one more thing I realized was subtly dropped on us in Chapter 10.

Dalinar was concerned about the paired dueling that the Windrunners have taken to doing with the Heavenly Ones:

So... Not only does Kaladin recognize Leshwi as his counterpart as the leader of the Heavenly Ones, even being "frenemies" enough to realize (at the end of Chapter 6) that he was "letting her get too close" while still in a fight where they both had bloodied the other because they appeared to share outrage at the "Teleporting Fused" brutalizing non-combatant civilians on the ground below, he also knows her on a first name basis?

We know Leshwi speaks Alethi, so she must have introduced herself to him at some point. I would really love to read that flashback!

As far as the Heavenly Ones "having honor" - it's implied by that scene at the end of Chapter 6 that Leshwi disapproved of the Teleporting Fused brutalizing non-combatants, to the point of halting her fight with Kaladin and indicating that he should go stop it; and yet Vyre, the last we saw in Oathbringer when Moash was given the Honorblade to "join [the Heavenly Ones] in the sky", is under her command. And he was already in the burning manor house, having killed shackled two civilian prisoners with his Blade, not to mention Roshone.

OK, killing Roshone may be a personal vendetta thing with Moash, but killing Jeber and the other man doesn't seem like something that fits with that picture of the Heavenly Ones being against brutalizing civilians. Did he do that entirely on his own, or was he acting on orders from, or at least a common plan with, Leshwi?

It certainly seems possible that Leshwi is lulling Kaladin, leading him on with a false idea of "we are counterparts to the Windrunners!", towards some kind of long game trap?

EDIT to add: furthering my suspicion as to the supposed "Windrunner ethos" of the Heavenly Ones: when we first hear from Leshwi firsthand, talking to Moash in the sky in Oathbringer Ch. 54 (a detail that also puzzles me and I raised as a separate topic in the main SA forum):

Sacrificing her own people as expendable slaves, just like Sadeas did with his bridge crews... That is very, very un-Windrunner, isn't it?

I don't think it's quite as simple as you're making it.  It's not either "The Heavenly Ones" are totally good guys or totally evil treacherous snakes.  It's that the Heavenly Ones are "Lawful Evil" moral alignment.  They're both good in some ways and bad in others.  In my view:

Paired Dueling = Sincerely preferred fighting style, but used to their advantage whenever possible.  It has pros and cons for both sides.  On the one hand, the Windrunners put themselves in 1:1 duels even if they have a numbers advantage, which is a net advantage for the Fused.  On the other, if the Heavenly Ones were willing to just go kill people they easily could and would gain an upper hand by killing enemy officers and other VIPS and killing the innocents would cause huge psychological stress to Windrunners.  So the Heavenly Ones are also giving something up by choosing this fighting style.

Having "Honor" = Sincerely held values, not out of a sense of "good" as our heroes would see it but out of a sense of what is right.  Even villains have a moral system and see themselves as doing what they think is right.  It doesn't mean the Heavenly Ones are nice people, it just means they think the best way of fighting is to challenge tough enemies in single combat.

Moash/Vyre's Involvement/Association = Unknown.  We have no idea if Leshwi or the other Heavenly Ones agree with Moash's methods.  It's possible that they may object to him being assigned to work with them, but aren't willing or able to challenge their own leadership.  We don't know how Leshwi feels about any of this.

Sacrificing her Own People as Slaves = Subjective.  First, it's reasonable that the Fused may not view the former Parshmen as being of their own people since for one they are thousands of years younger and two have only had their minds freed very recently so they are in some ways like children.  The Heavenly Ones also may believe that sending less qualified troops out to die may be the overall strategy that would save the most lives in the end.

 

Overall, I think there's enough there to say we should be suspicious, but not enough to say we should definitely believe that everything the Heavenly Ones are doing is an elaborate ruse designed to break the Windrunners.  I think there's also plenty of evidence to say that there is at least some parallel between the Windrunners and Heavenly Ones.

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