The true culprits behind the Scouring [No RoW]

[gremlin303]

PLEASE NO ROW SPOILERS
 

TLDR; The Sleepless caused the Scouring to protect the Dawnshard.

Dawnshard revealed many things about topics long debated. But one event that I thought would get explained to us in this book but wasn’t stands out to me. The Scouring of Aimia. I thought we would get answers as to who/what caused the event that left the islands of Aimia lifeless. The only nugget of information we get on the event is a story told by Nikli while he is still hiding his true nature.

Quote

“Well, the people who attacked Aimia quickly realized that destroying these devices would catastrophically undermine the place.” He shrugged. “That’s really all I know. Without these . . . fabrials, I guess they were? Without them, the island couldn’t sustain a nation.” Dawnshard, pg191

So this whole story told by Nikli has to be taken with a grain of salt as at the time he was lying to Rysn about his true nature, but I feel in this instance he has no reason to lie, and the emotion he shows at recounting the story supports that. 
 

My theory is that it wasn’t invaders or treasure hunters who destroyed the fabrials that supported life on Aimia, but the Sleepless themselves. It is quite clear that they will go to extreme lengths to protect the Dawnshard. I believe that at some point (personally I think this was when the Larkin died out and the sleepless took over protection of the Dawnshard) they decided that a whole population of people living on the island above the Dawnshard was too much of a risk, so they forced the inhabitants off the island by sabotaging the fabrials. 
 

I also think that maybe the sleepless spread rumours of a terrible ‘Scouring’ to make the event sound a lot more catastrophic than it was to further keep people away from the place. 
 

Nikli’s strong emotion when talking about it could be because he is sad about what happened there, or it could be similar to Taravangian’s sorrow whenever he speaks of the terrible things he has done. Maybe the Sleepless also encouraged attacks on Aimia to further isolate the place and scatter the populace? Or maybe they drew the attackers there by accident? Or maybe those are lies to augment the tragedy myth surrounding the place? I am not sure. 

Obviously this theory has lots of holes (most of the rest of Nikli’s story doesn’t really line up with this but as I said, he isn’t really the most trustworthy of characters at that point) but it was just something I was thinking about so I thought I would open it up for discussion.

 

Thanks for reading. And please don’t put any RoW spoilers in the replies, I haven’t read the previews.

[Jorr]

I was also slightly bummed that despite all the goodness in Dawnshard, it didn't actually spill much beans on either the Scouring or the Aimians. The Siah got barely a mention by Cord and of the Dysians we did learn some motivation, minor history (i think they were confirmed to be non-native to Roshar quite some time ago) and minor biology details. The relationships between the two kinds of Aimians are still super unclear. We learnt here that people used to live on Aimia, which stands to reason since it was one of the Silver Kingdoms but what was the relationship between the people and the Aimians - still unclear.

As to your actual theory - it is possible but I fail to see the exact reasoning... what made them change the plan in the first place? Was the Dawnshard employed before the Scouring and it was only necessry because the owner died/relinquished it? Doesnt necessarily add up.

[gremlin303]

47 minutes ago, Jorr said:

I was also slightly bummed that despite all the goodness in Dawnshard, it didn't actually spill much beans on either the Scouring or the Aimians. The Siah got barely a mention by Cord and of the Dysians we did learn some motivation, minor history (i think they were confirmed to be non-native to Roshar quite some time ago) and minor biology details. The relationships between the two kinds of Aimians are still super unclear. We learnt here that people used to live on Aimia, which stands to reason since it was one of the Silver Kingdoms but what was the relationship between the people and the Aimians - still unclear.

As to your actual theory - it is possible but I fail to see the exact reasoning... what made them change the plan in the first place? Was the Dawnshard employed before the Scouring and it was only necessry because the owner died/relinquished it? Doesnt necessarily add up.

Well that’s why I think maybe they decided to do this after taking over guardianship of the Dawnshard, maybe when the Larkin were dying out and the Sleepless took over in the duty, they decided that it was too dangerous to be kept in a populated area.

Or another thought that just came to me, do we know when the destruction Stormseat happened? Maybe the Dawnshard was used to shatter the Shattered Plains and then the Sleepless decided on these new measures.

[Honorless]

I think that we need more info on why the Unmade, Dai-Gonarthis the Black Fisher was thought to be the one behind the Scouring of Aimia as per Hessi's Mythica before removing them as a suspect. 

[gremlin303]

On 13/11/2020 at 2:43 PM, Honorless said:

I think that we need more info on why the Unmade, Dai-Gonarthis the Black Fisher was thought to be the one behind the Scouring of Aimia as per Hessi's Mythica before removing them as a suspect. 

Oh yeah good shout, I forgot about that, I’m not ruling anything out to be honest.

There’s a chance he influenced the Sleepless all this time to keep the Dawnshard out of the hands of humans, so in a way he would be responsible. But the issue with that is surely if Odium knew about it he would want control of it.