theory Some Notes on the Recreance [Discuss]

[+mdross81]

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I'm not sure. It doesn't make much sense for it to be BAM with the timeline we know, but it also pretty much sounds like the state the tower is in when our Radiants find it. So.... zero clue. 

That’s what’s driving me crazy. Because the description in the zircon - the withdrawal and the ceasing of functions, and not “by intent” - sounds exactly like what we heard in RoW when the Sibling described why various aspects of the tower weren’t working. But trapping BAM can’t be the reason if the zircons were recorded before the strike team carried out its mission.

If the falling out was about something else, we get only a few clues:

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So good with words. Humans are like persuasionspren. I can’t speak with one of you without being changed.

Similar is this:

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I hate humans, the Sibling eventually said. Humans twist what is said and always make themselves out to be right. How long until you demand that I bond a human, give up my freedom, and risk my life? I’m sure you’ll have wonderful explanations as to why I should absolutely do that.

In this one there’s a reference to a betrayal:

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In the past I spent years evaluating Bondsmith squires to select one who fit me exactly. Even they eventually betrayed me, though not as badly as other humans.

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Long ago, before I banished men from these halls, my last Bondsmith made me something. A method of protecting me from the dangers I saw in men. He thought it would help me trust again. It did not. But it might stop the Fused from corrupting me further.

This one at least gives a small indication of the Sibling’s beef if Melishi thought that putting up the glass shield around the pillar might restore trust. Presumably the Sibling feared something humans might do to the pillar.

Last one I can think of is this:

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Melishi … I have hated you … but now I bless you. It worked. I am safe, for now.

This one, together with the line above about the betrayal suggests Melishi bore some responsibility for the Sibling’s falling out with humans.

Cant really make much out of these quotes in the end. There’s just a lot we still don’t know.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

11 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

That’s what’s driving me crazy. Because the description in the zircon - the withdrawal and the ceasing of functions, and not “by intent” - sounds exactly like what we heard in RoW when the Sibling described why various aspects of the tower weren’t working. But trapping BAM can’t be the reason if the zircons were recorded before the strike team carried out its mission.

Yeah. All I can think of is I guess that the Radiants at Urithiru did not commit Recreance until later, but that doesn't match with what we're told about how quick it was..... And there's not exactly a ton of random Blades and Plate lying around the Tower.

[Jofwu]

I don't see any issues with the WoB about the timeline on Parshmen enslavement. I imagine there were several years where the humans were still completely afraid of them. Some probably avoided them. Some probably hunted them down and killed any they could find. I can easily see how it would take a decade before people got comfortable with the idea that they weren't immediately dangerous. And I can see how it would take longer still for someone to realize they could be trained to take orders fairly well.

I keep failing to keep track of all the details for the timeline on the Recreance... But my gut feeling always comes back to the idea that the gem archive is all pre-Recreance. It's hard for me to imagine all of this activity described in the gem archive (which clear lasted over the span of weeks... probably months, if not years) without ONE mention of the Recreance. We are obviously just getting a selection of them hand picked by Brandon, but... that omission would be rather odd to me. The easy answer is that they aren't talking about the Recreance because it hasn't happened yet.

But... yeah, then you fall back on the timeline with the Sibling's functionality failing. And they repeatedly attribute their loss of functionality with the loss of Towerlight production... And THAT makes me flip the other direction. Because I don't know how to explain this really well either. And I guess it's easier to imagine Brandon coming along and saying, "Okay, the Recreance is a lot more complicated than you thought. Let's clear it up finally," than to imagine him dropping some random comment about how the Sibling sort of shut off the first time to drive people away... and then... actually lost some of the functionality they were pretending to lose the first time later.

For a while I was toying with the idea that maybe the Sibling's functionality was in decline BEFORE the capture of BAM due to Honor's decline. But this is a bit convoluted and doesn't really solve anything.

[mathiau]

1 minute ago, Jofwu said:

I keep failing to keep track of all the details for the timeline on the Recreance... But my gut feeling always comes back to the idea that the gem archive is all pre-Recreance. It's hard for me to imagine all of this activity described in the gem archive (which clear lasted over the span of weeks... probably months, if not years) without ONE mention of the Recreance. We are obviously just getting a selection of them hand picked by Brandon, but... that omission would be rather odd to me. The easy answer is that they aren't talking about the Recreance because it hasn't happened yet.

Well the Gemstones archive can only be accesed by radiants so...

Quote

But... yeah, then you fall back on the timeline with the Sibling's functionality failing. And they repeatedly attribute their loss of functionality with the loss of Towerlight production... And THAT makes me flip the other direction. Because I don't know how to explain this really well either. And I guess it's easier to imagine Brandon coming along and saying, "Okay, the Recreance is a lot more complicated than you thought. Let's clear it up finally," than to imagine him dropping some random comment about how the Sibling sort of shut off the first time to drive people away... and then... actually lost some of the functionality they were pretending to lose the first time later.

How about just "there was a small amount of time between BAM getting trapped and the Recreance"? The fact the archive mention both the operation to trap BAM and the tower being abandoned seems to imply there was.

[Jofwu]

Just now, mathiau said:

Well the Gemstones archive can only be accesed by radiants so...

I mean ENTIRELY pre-Recreance. The alternate theory is that some of the records were made after it began. (and before it ended, obviously)

2 minutes ago, mathiau said:

How about just "there was a small amount of time between BAM getting trapped and the Recreance"? The fact the archive mention both the operation to trap BAM and the tower being abandoned seems to imply there was.

I don't agree with that. For all we know they made these records over the course of a century. Doubt it. My point is just that everything being in one archive doesn't give us any clues about how much time the archive covers.

If anything I tend to think the entries suggest many weeks or months going by. Abandoning the tower can't have been a decision that was made lightly. Even if it was, the entries suggest they spanned the course of residents being evacuated, and I don't imagine that happened in just a few days.

[+mdross81]

1 hour ago, Jofwu said:

I keep failing to keep track of all the details for the timeline on the Recreance... But my gut feeling always comes back to the idea that the gem archive is all pre-Recreance. It's hard for me to imagine all of this activity described in the gem archive (which clear lasted over the span of weeks... probably months, if not years) without ONE mention of the Recreance. We are obviously just getting a selection of them hand picked by Brandon, but... that omission would be rather odd to me. The easy answer is that they aren't talking about the Recreance because it hasn't happened yet.

But... yeah, then you fall back on the timeline with the Sibling's functionality failing. And they repeatedly attribute their loss of functionality with the loss of Towerlight production... And THAT makes me flip the other direction.

I've begun to wonder if it's possible that the capture, alone, of BAM wasn't what ultimately caused the Singers to be lobotomized and the Sibling to begin to fail. Maybe BAM had been captured, but some additional step - a step that was debated over for a while - was taken once she was captured that resulted in all of the negative consequences. This is in part based on the quote from WoR about Melishi's role in all of this:

Quote

So Melishi retired to his tent, and resolved to destroy the Voidbringers upon the next day, but that night did present a different stratagem, related to the unique abilities of the Bondsmiths; and being hurried, he could make no specific account of his process; it was related to the very nature of the Heralds and their divine duties, an attribute the Bondsmiths alone could address.

If the different strategem was presented just the night before, does it suggest that maybe they already had access to BAM, but just hadn't decided what to do with her yet?

[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 hour ago, Jofwu said:

If anything I tend to think the entries suggest many weeks or months going by. Abandoning the tower can't have been a decision that was made lightly. Even if it was, the entries suggest they spanned the course of residents being evacuated, and I don't imagine that happened in just a few days.

I know someone (Grey, I think?) has suggested that perhaps they were starting to abandon the Tower even before it failed, due to the conflict between the Radiants and the Sibling, and that the failure merely rushed it (in which case the Tower Radiants might not yet know about the Recreance, in the chaos following, with no spanreeds and possibly all the Windrunners out on the battlefield having abandoned their Ideals, and the Skybreakers doing whatever it was they did at the time, leaving no flying Radiants), but even that feels kind of weird, and it doesn't really answer why there was no mention of a mass abandonment of Ideals later on when they would have found out.

The timeline's just kind of confusing to me and I'm very curious what Book 5 will say to clear it up.

[Jofwu]

2 hours ago, mdross81 said:

I've begun to wonder if it's possible that the capture, alone, of BAM wasn't what ultimately caused the Singers to be lobotomized and the Sibling to begin to fail.

You know, I started wondering this too, but that idea is so ingrained in my head that it's hard to wipe away the slate and theorize on those lines.

The thing that stuck out to me was actually the chapter numbers of in-world WoR. There's a structure to the book, if you read it in order so those aren't meaningless. And if you look, I believe ALL of the epigraphs clearly related to the Recreance are from chapter 38... But that one you cited about Melishi is chapter 30! There's two other epigraphs from chapters between 30 and 38 which have no strong relation with the Recreance.

I really like this idea... So they capture BAM, and that does something to the Sibling and the spren. Tower stops working right. Fighting apparently continues as they decide to abandon Urithiru. And then SOMETHING flips the switch and triggers the Recreance.

The problem is, the whole point of capturing BAM was to deprive the singers of forms and Voidlight. Everything seems to indicate that the capture is all it took. Even the Kalak epigraphs suggest the capture one was what messed everything up. Maybe there's a way to reconcile it, but if so I'm having a hard time seeing it. Would love to see someone take this idea and run with it though, just to see if they work out something that makes sense.

[Jofwu]

Alright, I sketched all of this out and I feel like it all clicked for me. I'm sure others have thought it through this way already. Curious if there's some hole that I'm missing...

Let's set the scene...

The False Desolation is ongoing. There's some friction between Radiants and the rest of the world. Lots of infighting between the Radiants. The Sibling is increasingly frustrated with humans. Melishi begins working on the node defenses to help them... But it's too little too late. The Sibling has a falling-out with humans (RoW-69) in general and "banishes" them (RoW-40). That wording is a bit strong, because they don't seem to have kicked the Radiants out the door... But they were able to get the ball rolling. Some humans thought it was a bad idea, but the Radiants went through with it anyways. The tower began to be slowly abandoned... Somewhere amidst that setting, the Radiants began recording the gem archive. Note how MOST of the records seem rather trivial. The Recreance hasn't started yet.

Then a group of scholars works out the idea of ending the war by capturing Ba-Ado-Mishram. This gets recorded in the gem archive, and they head off to do it. The moment BAM is imprisoned, the singers bonded to BAM lose their Identity and Connection; they become the Parshmen. The spren of Roshar are also impacted however, as an unintended consequence. It's unclear if all spren could immediately tell, but they probably at least felt something? In the Sibling's case, they lost the ability to produce Towerlight.

At this point, several things happen in a relatively short period of time, though it's hard to say how short.

Foremost is the start of the Recreance. Something that we don't entirely understand drove a large group of Windrunners to break their oaths at Feverstone Keep immediately after BAM was captured. They and their spren believed that this was necessary to present some terrible thing from happening. They left their spren behind and walked away. It's unclear why they did it this way... But they had reasons, and those are ultimately irrelevant for my purposes here. The important thing though, noted by Weiry on Shardcast, is that the spren were locked as Shardblades and thus didn't appear as deadeyes in Shadesmar. (until the dismissal trick was discovered at some later date) So nobody realized that these unbonded spren were "dead" in an unanticipated way.

Meanwhile, over in Urithiru, the tower suddenly fails to work right. Now, the Sibling has been withdrawn from humans for quite some time and the exodus from the tower is probably mostly complete at this point. At first the stragglers assume this is the Sibling trying to shut the door on their way out, but then one of them does some research and has reason to believe there's something else going on. The Recreance has begun, but it's very recent. A few days have passed, maybe a few weeks? They still haven't realized that something is wrong. The Sibling is maybe the only one who could have told them, but she is withdrawn from the humans. (and may have been going into a sort of hibernation, per RoW-40. Not clear what Melishi knew and what was going on with him)

Those were some of the final entries in the gemstone archive, so it's not surprising that the Recreance is mostly unaddressed. The Radiants had practically abandoned the tower at that point after all. It's not clear how long the Recreance may have gone on. To make educated guesses on this I think we need to know more about WHY they were making that decision. Was it some conclusion that they all individually but inevitably came to? Were the Heralds and/or Skybreakers slowly convincing people to do it? Did it happen as a trickle or in big waves? Hard to say.

The only real limit on how long it lasted, as far as I can think, would be the issue of non-bonded spren finding out the truth, which they seemingly never did. The fact that their friends and family weren't popping up as deadeyes helped. But I have to think they would have found out the truth before long. I can't help but assume there was fairly regular communication between the realms at this point. In any case, a few weeks seems plenty reasonable to me.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

8 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

It's not clear how long the Recreance may have gone on.

The fact that every single Windrunner, the largest order (iirc they were largest, anyway; I could be wrong) abandoned their Ideals on the same day does indicate it was a pretty fast event overall. That to me would indicate either some inciting event so terrible and so widespread every single group came to the same conclusion independently and very rapidly (side effects of BAM's capture is the top candidate here, I think), or some kind of pre-arranged thing. Based on what happened with the Tower, I'd assume that it was the former, and that news of this inciting event didn't reach the Radiants left in Urithiru for a while.

8 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

Those were some of the final entries in the gemstone archive, so it's not surprising that the Recreance is mostly unaddressed. The Radiants had practically abandoned the tower at that point after all.

Good point.

8 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

The important thing though, noted by Weiry on Shardcast, is that the spren were locked as Shardblades and thus didn't appear as deadeyes in Shadesmar. (until the dismissal trick was discovered at some later date) So nobody realized that these unbonded spren were "dead" in an unanticipated way.

Yeah, this is definitely a very big point.

Edited April 29, 2021 by LewsTherinTelescope

[Jofwu]

The main thing that clicked for me, was the timeline of the gem archive. I think I've been assuming all this time that the tower was abandoned because it was failing. If it was mostly abandoned BEFORE the failure (before BAM's capture) then we're left with a pretty solid excuse for why the archive makes no mention of the Recreance.

19 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The fact that every single Windrunner, the largest order (iirc they were largest, anyway; I could be wrong) abandoned their Ideals on the same day does indicate it was a pretty fast event overall. That to me would indicate either some inciting event so terrible and so widespread every single group came to the same conclusion independently and very rapidly (side effects of BAM's capture is the top candidate here, I think), or some kind of pre-arranged thing. Based on what happened with the Tower, I'd assume that it was the former, and that news of this inciting event didn't reach the Radiants left in Urithiru for a while.

There's essentially two things that could have slowed the Recreance down.

1. News about BAM (and whatever else was involved) needed to spread
2. People/spren needed to be convinced that breaking bonds was necessary

In a pre-spanreed world I suppose I would think that #1 took at least a few weeks? Probably most Radiants would have found out swiftly, with it taking longer to reach the Radiants who were more isolated. Though I do wonder if the Oathgates may have already been closed off at the time? You still had the Skybreakers, so the loss of the Windrunners isn't soooo prohibitive. But active Oathgates definitely would have helped. If they were closed it would have made things harder, and it would explain why any Radiants at Urithiru weren't among the first to find out...

Point #2 is hard to say. I do tend to think it must have been pretty compelling though, for EVERYONE to ultimately agree. (And in so timely a manner that NONE of the unbonded spren in Shadesmar ever found out what was going on. Even without deadeyes they'd be interested in news about all the Radiants in the world breaking their bonds.)

BUT there are clearly SOME gems that post-date the beginning of the Recreance. The observations about the Sibling, in particular, don't seem like observations that were made within just a couple of days of BAM's capture. So if there's not a great reason to explain why they didn't find out for (at least) a few weeks, then I have to assume that not EVERYONE was immediately convinced to join in.

[ScadrianTank]

32 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The fact that every single Windrunner, the largest order (iirc they were largest, anyway; I could be wrong) abandoned their Ideals on the same day does indicate it was a pretty fast event overall.

I don't understand why you would think that all Windrunners abandoned their oaths on the same day. If we assume that all Windrunners were fighting, in one way or another, during the False Desolation, some would be on a different front or relaying messages back to the Tower, or one of a dozen other things they might be doing. 

[+mdross81]

7 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

BUT there are clearly SOME gems that post-date the beginning of the Recreance. The observations about the Sibling, in particular, don't seem like observations that were made within just a couple of days of BAM's capture. So if there's not a great reason to explain why they didn't find out for (at least) a few weeks, then I have to assume that not EVERYONE was immediately convinced to join in.

This was the point I was going to make. I think your timeline makes sense so long the zircons discussing the Sibling's failing systems take place after the imprisonment of BAM. Seems a little odd they'd be number drawer 1 if they were some of the later ones in time, but that's not a super big problem. Maybe the drawer numbers were assigned earlier but the gems were not placed in the drawer until later.

But I think it does make sense that some folks would attribute the failing systems to the pre-imprisonment falling-out/banishment of humans as opposed to the imprisonment of BAM as author of the zircons later learns by investigating the cognitive reflections of the spren at the tower. I wonder if there are any others that have to have been recorded after the imprisonment. Will have to look at them all again.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

3 minutes ago, ScadrianTank said:

I don't understand why you would think that all Windrunners abandoned their oaths on the same day.

Because we were explicitly told they did. RoW 87:

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“The Ancient Daughter was in a catatonic state,” Amuna said, “and was spared. But every other honorspren—every single one—had answered the call of the Radiants during the False Desolation. Can you understand the magnitude of that tragedy, Highprince Adolin? The murder of an entire species, all in one day? Absolute extermination, performed by the most intimate of friends?”

[ScadrianTank]

1 minute ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Because we were explicitly told they did. RoW 87:

I stand corrected. I suppose that lobotomy of the singers was so graphic that two entire orders decided that there is nothing they can do to fix it.

[ElMonoEstupendo]

19 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

"The Ancient Daughter was in a catatonic state,” Amuna said, “and was spared. But every other honorspren—every single one—had answered the call of the Radiants during the False Desolation. Can you understand the magnitude of that tragedy, Highprince Adolin? The murder of an entire species, all in one day? Absolute extermination, performed by the most intimate of friends?”

Another question just sprang out at me from that passage.

It kinda implies that the honorspren only bonded Knights when a Desolation was happening. Before, they had the Heralds to mediate the process and Honor to accept the Words. But if the Heralds were officially AWOL and Honor was going mad, perhaps the bonds were not formed the right way?

Do we know how numerous the Knights Radiant were between Desolations? I get the impression that the Heralds basically rebuilt society from scratch every time.

[Jofwu]

1 hour ago, mdross81 said:

Seems a little odd they'd be number drawer 1 if they were some of the later ones in time, but that's not a super big problem. Maybe the drawer numbers were assigned earlier but the gems were not placed in the drawer until later.

It does feel awkward to disregard the drawer numbers, but of all the epigraphs with "labels" like that it really does make sense for these.

It's possible that the drawers were numbered and the records deposited in the order they were created... But it's also possible they were placed in some other order, or in no order whatsoever. And even more than that, it seems reasonably likely that the numbers were assigned by the modern humans, who may not have had a sense for any prior organization.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

35 minutes ago, ElMonoEstupendo said:

It kinda implies that the honorspren only bonded Knights when a Desolation was happening.

I don't see how it implies that at all? I don't think they all bonded outside Desolations like happened in that case, but like, Syl's old Knight spent most of his life going around to small villages and using her to cut aqueducts and stuff, and only went to battle when he was old. It'd be odd if there was a Desolation going on that entire time. (Also, we see a Windrunner in the Starfalls vision, iirc, which was explicitly prior to a Desolation.)

38 minutes ago, ElMonoEstupendo said:

Do we know how numerous the Knights Radiant were between Desolations? I get the impression that the Heralds basically rebuilt society from scratch every time.

Unclear. During the early Desolations, they pretty much had to, yeah. But the Silver Kigndoms lasted multiple Desolations, and the Radiants were hoped to be able to keep information between Desolations. So once the Radiants were founded, society may have ended up lasting more whole than prior.

[Jofwu]

Whatever was "normal" for Desolations feels irrelevant to me in this case regardless, considering we're dealing with the False Desolation. There hadn't been a prior Desolation in millennia.

[Andy92]

Wasn’t the big thing that caused them all to walk away finding out humans were the foreign invaders? I’m assuming this is what they learned after BAM had been captured. This made what they did less of a necessary evil to defeat an invading army and more of a genocide of an indigenous people group. 

[+mdross81]

19 minutes ago, Andy92 said:

Wasn’t the big thing that caused them all to walk away finding out humans were the foreign invaders? I’m assuming this is what they learned after BAM had been captured. This made what they did less of a necessary evil to defeat an invading army and more of a genocide of an indigenous people group. 

Not just that they were invaders, but the reason why they were in a position to become invaders - that humans had destroyed Ashyn using Surges. 

[Andy92]

4 minutes ago, mdross81 said:

Not just that they were invaders, but the reason why they were in a position to become invaders - that humans had destroyed Ashyn using Surges. 

True. I was just going off of some of the discussion above. Think the reason for the Recreance was largely laid out in Oathbringer. Sure we don’t know the whole story but we seem to know a big part of it. 

[Jofwu]

RoW showed that there's definitely something more about it that we don't understand fully:

Quote

Adolin sat beside her, letting her lean against him. “Why, Maya? Why were you willing to do it?”

“To save … save…” She sagged and shook her head.

“To save us from something worse,” Adolin said, then looked to Blended. “What does it mean?”

“It means we’ve had all of this terribly wrong for much time, Highprince Adolin,” she said. “And my own stupidity is. I have always thought myself smart.” She shook her head as she stood before them, arms folded. 

[...]

“I do not know if making new Radiants is a good idea—but I must admit that your ancestors were not traitors. Something did frighten them enormously, to cause humans and spren to destroy their bonds. And if the spren did not know they would die … then pieces of this puzzle are still missing. The questions are more complicated, and more dangerous, than we ever knew.”

I assume there's some kind of significant supporting evidence to the "they destroyed their planet and will do it again" thing.

[ElMonoEstupendo]

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I don't see how it implies that at all?

 

3 hours ago, ElMonoEstupendo said:

But every other honorspren—every single one—had answered the call of the Radiants during the False Desolation

On another reading I doubt it's the intention of the line, but I first read it as most of the honorspren weren't bonded before the False Desolation. If they'd been bonded before the call, they wouldn't be called. BS probably just meant that they were all involved and nothing more.

It also brings some attention to Syl's predicament at the time - she was catatonic because her Knight died, right? Are we to believe that no other Windrunner died during the False Desolation? Or was her bond somehow flawed?

[LewsTherinTelescope]

11 minutes ago, Jofwu said:

I assume there's some kind of significant supporting evidence to the "they destroyed their planet and will do it again" thing.

I mean.... accidentally destroying the minds of an entire sapient species isn't a pretty big sign they're screwing things up?

(I also think that the "changes" in Honor, which we now know to be his death, are probably also part of it. If they realized the reason Melishi could do things no other Bondsmith had been able to was because limits on potentially all of their powers were failing....)

2 minutes ago, ElMonoEstupendo said:

Are we to believe that no other Windrunner died during the False Desolation? Or was her bond somehow flawed?

From what Syl says, it's mainly that she wasn't ready for the loss, due to how young she was, and couldn't handle it. OB 95:

Quote

“I bonded a Knight Radiant. Haven’t I told you of him? I remember…” She closed her eyes as she walked, chin up, as if basking in a wind he could not feel. “I bonded him soon after I was born. He was an elderly man, kindly, but he did fight. In one battle. And he died.…”

She blinked open her eyes. “That was a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t ready though for the bond. Spren normally weather the death of their Radiant, but I … I lost myself when I lost him. It all turned out to be morbidly fortuitous, because soon after, the Recreance happened. Men forsook their oaths, which killed my siblings. I survived, for I didn’t have a bond then.”