The Elephant in the Room

[Wyndleblade]

In reading through the prequel chapters of RoW, the Radiant's are avoiding a key issue. They are fighting a losing battle. As long the fused keep returning, there is no way Odium does not win. Everything they are doing are stop-gap measures. Evacuating hearthstone and organizing the war are all aimed at giving humans a little more time but does not effect the real problem. Even the Oathpact was temporary solution, albeit a long one. The Radiant's need to focus on doing something to break the cycle.

One way did come up in Oathbringer, a contest of champions. Which Odium has accepted. But no one has talked about it, it seems like the war went on as if the agreement never happened. Someone needs to work on keeping Odium to his promise, they need to stop ignoring the fact that if the war continues as it does they are all going to die. Or they need to find another solution. In my opinion that is more important than taking a trip to gather more Honorspren for a losing battle, or other possible missions.

As much as I hate to say it, Taravangian seems to be the only one working towards a future where some part of humanity lives. Not that I agree at all with his way.

 

[Schneeente]

Kill all the Singers or convince them to stop the sacrificing is also a winning-strategy.  

[Karger]

The human battle is necessarily reactive because their goal is fundamentally to not die.  Also the humans are growing steadily more capable while the fused are limited basically to what they can already do and will be for at least a decade.

[Master Silver]

1 hour ago, Karger said:

The human battle is necessarily reactive because their goal is fundamentally to not die.  Also the humans are growing steadily more capable while the fused are limited basically to what they can already do and will be for at least a decade.

Not only that, but with this long reprieve. If you got a new set of Heralds, lots of the Fused are on the brink of going insane. If you keep killing them, eventually most of them will be comatose. It is another long, maybe 5,000 year war of attrition but theoretically, if you can keep winning that would work. Then Odium would need to make more fused I suppose, and then back to square one. 

[Zedseayou]

What confuses me to some extent is that it is not clear how each Desolation ended. Presumably they should be trying to do that? I'm a little rusty on Desolation mechanics:

If it was one/all of the Heralds dying and returning to Braize, why did they have to go through the whole Desolation before that could happen? The answer is the torture, but it doesn't make a ton of sense to me that the Heralds would break through torture, come back to Roshar for a short period of time (like <10 years I think) and then just be ready to get back to Braize. Was it that Fused could come to Roshar once, but would not be able to after one death until the next Desolation?

The other thing that is different this time is the Everstorm, right? Which makes it so that the Fused don't have to go back to Braize and return but can get new bodies in the storm.

 

On topic: I'd guess that they are still actively trying to figure out a permanent solution. That's what the investigations into the tower look like to me. In the meantime they still have to hold borders where possible.

[Diomedes]

8 hours ago, Wyndleblade said:

As long the fused keep returning, there is no way Odium does not win

I disagree, the Fused are going insane,

The spren can change from a dead Radiant to an alive one, therby they also replenish their numbers.

Besides this war is more than about Radiants vs. Fused. The Radiants could manage to win the war by retaking all the territory and then only have to deal with some rogue Fused, who would be powerless without their armies and be hunted down time and time again by the Radiants and their supporters,

The Fused seemed pretty desperate last chapter, there has to be a reason for that. You might like my theory. 

 

[Stark]

It may not be as hopeless for the humans as you think.  Zahel has given us this - 

Quote

The longer one of us exists, the more like a spren we become. Consumed by a singular purpose, our minds bound and chained by our Intent.

And the fused have been around much longer than Zahel has.  So rather than seeing it as the Fused going mad over time, I think it may be more accurate to describe it as their will being subsumed by their Intent.  And as they are cognitive shadows bound by Odium, Odium's Intent has to factor into theirs.  We also saw in Venli's chapter that certain Singers no longer return, because they are not stable enough.

 

So yes, the fused are reborn endlessly, but the toll of all those deaths is not negligible.  And every fused that is lost to madness is irreplaceable.  The attrition goes both ways - eventually the human will run out of trained soldiers, but the fused sanity has a limit as well.  The question should not be 'How long can the humans survive without changing the face of this war?' but rather 'How long can this war persist before irretrievable damage is done to both sides?'

[+Harrycrapper]

22 hours ago, Zedseayou said:

What confuses me to some extent is that it is not clear how each Desolation ended. Presumably they should be trying to do that? I'm a little rusty on Desolation mechanics:

If it was one/all of the Heralds dying and returning to Braize, why did they have to go through the whole Desolation before that could happen? The answer is the torture, but it doesn't make a ton of sense to me that the Heralds would break through torture, come back to Roshar for a short period of time (like <10 years I think) and then just be ready to get back to Braize. Was it that Fused could come to Roshar once, but would not be able to after one death until the next Desolation?

The other thing that is different this time is the Everstorm, right? Which makes it so that the Fused don't have to go back to Braize and return but can get new bodies in the storm.

 

On topic: I'd guess that they are still actively trying to figure out a permanent solution. That's what the investigations into the tower look like to me. In the meantime they still have to hold borders where possible.

They kind of explained how each Desolation ended in the most recent Venli chapter. Basically, the Heralds could resume the Oathpact and stop new Fused from leaving Braize at any point by either dying or some sort of suicide(I think putting their Blades in that stone from the prelude is how they did it before they changed the Oathpact to only apply to Taln). But if humanity couldn't stand against whatever Fused and Singer forces were arrayed against them, the Heralds had to stay until a point in time that they believed humanity could wipe out whatever Fused remained after the Heralds resumed the Oathpact. That, or once all the Heralds died they would also return and the Desolation would be over until one of them was found and broken again. Jasnah actually proposed hunting down all the Heralds and killing them back in OB when the Stormfather gave his infodump in the vision. Though if the Oathpact only includes Taln now they'd have to kill him and with the state he's in, there's no guarantee he could withstand torture for very long or if the Fused will even go back to Braize instead of just returning to the Everstorm like you said. 

The likely solution the humans will come to was also in that chapter; imprison the Fused in gemstones. 

[+Oltux72]

2 hours ago, Stark said:

So yes, the fused are reborn endlessly, but the toll of all those deaths is not negligible.  And every fused that is lost to madness is irreplaceable.

That is an open question. Can Odium make new Fused?

21 minutes ago, Harrycrapper said:

They kind of explained how each Desolation ended in the most recent Venli chapter. Basically, the Heralds could resume the Oathpact and stop new Fused from leaving Braize at any point by either dying or some sort of suicide(I think putting their Blades in that stone from the prelude is how they did it before they changed the Oathpact to only apply to Taln).

And that is extremely confusing and even inconsistent. After Aharietiam Taln alone was enough. But by chance alone there must have been Desolations where one of the Heralds died pretty early. Why did they not notice that Fused stopped coming back?

[+Harrycrapper]

8 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

That is an open question. Can Odium make new Fused?

And that is extremely confusing and even inconsistent. After Aharietiam Taln alone was enough. But by chance alone there must have been Desolations where one of the Heralds died pretty early. Why did they not notice that Fused stopped coming back?

I mean he made them once, the question is more if he's willing or feels he would need to.

In all the Desolations before Aharietiam, it had to be all the Heralds either die or sacrifice themselves and the Desolation ends. The Fused wouldn't be trapped until all the Heralds were back on Braize. The Singers said they somehow found a way to shift the entire thing onto Taln so after that it was only him. 

[+Bliev]

Also, when the process began, the Heralds had to feel confident that the humans could continue without them. which is why they trained them. Because while the fused couldn’t be reborn when the locking began; they had to still be killed first. That’s probably why they preferred to go back after a battle where they killed a bunch, so they couldn’t be reborn. If one was killed, then the process began whether they liked it or not...but then the rest of them would have to purposefully return, in theory. Which we know they didn’t.
 

 

[Zedseayou]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That is an open question. Can Odium make new Fused?

2 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

I mean he made them once, the question is more if he's willing or feels he would need to.

If the Fused are Shadows made when the singers died, then my guesses as to why Odium would hesitate to make more are basically

1. They cost Investiture that he doesn't want to expend (and this is finite in some sense)
2. The current singers do not have military experience or experience with the Surges, so their Shadows wouldn't either. I suppose that raises the question of how he went about training the Fused to begin with...

Open questions - did he make more in the intervening Desolations? My guess is no because they all seem to have a lot of history, and he wouldn't bring back mad ones if he could readily create more. Why does it take time for them to exit slumber and produce the trickle of Fused onto Roshar that we're seeing?

3 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

They kind of explained how each Desolation ended in the most recent Venli chapter. Basically, the Heralds could resume the Oathpact and stop new Fused from leaving Braize at any point by either dying or some sort of suicide(I think putting their Blades in that stone from the prelude is how they did it before they changed the Oathpact to only apply to Taln). But if humanity couldn't stand against whatever Fused and Singer forces were arrayed against them, the Heralds had to stay until a point in time that they believed humanity could wipe out whatever Fused remained after the Heralds resumed the Oathpact. That, or once all the Heralds died they would also return and the Desolation would be over until one of them was found and broken again. Jasnah actually proposed hunting down all the Heralds and killing them back in OB when the Stormfather gave his infodump in the vision. Though if the Oathpact only includes Taln now they'd have to kill him and with the state he's in, there's no guarantee he could withstand torture for very long or if the Fused will even go back to Braize instead of just returning to the Everstorm like you said. 

The likely solution the humans will come to was also in that chapter; imprison the Fused in gemstones. 

Ok, that makes some sense to me. If they think that they can handle the remaining singer armies then they can reinstate the Oathpact and let the war play out. Unfortunately I did look through and find this:

Quote

Dalinar leaped to his feet. “It’s him!” he shouted. “The madman. He really is a Herald!” HE FINALLY BROKE, the Stormfather said. HE HAS JOINED THE NINE, WHO STILL LIVE. IN THESE MILLENNIA NONE HAVE EVER DIED AND RETURNED TO DAMNATION, BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER AS IT ONCE DID. THE OATHPACT HAS BEEN WEAKENED ALMOST TO ANNIHILATION, AND ODIUM HAS CREATED HIS OWN STORM. THE FUSED DO NOT RETURN TO DAMNATION WHEN KILLED. THEY ARE REBORN IN THE NEXT EVERSTORM.

Sanderson, Brandon. Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive) (p. 408). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

so reinstating the Oathpact is basically pointless now. Looks like the trapping in gems is where this is headed?

[StormFather!]

I have a theory about how they could do that:

1. We know that the Fused’s spear can forcibly remove stormlight (Investiture).

2. The Fused are cognitive shadows/spren (self aware Investiture)

3. Spren can be trapped in gems

So could you capture a Fused in a gem by stabbing them in the gemheart, which would break it, releasing their spren/cognitive shadow. Then, the spear sucks up the Investiture and captures them in a gem.