So Many Radiants

[BrightlordKelsier]

The title really should be Too Many Radiants.  I'm sure this doesn't bother a lot of you, but I really can't get behind how many radiants there are. (I've only read part 1 of ROW so far)  I was never even really a fan of the squires, but grew to be okay with it thinking they would remain squires.  Nearly all of Bridge 4 has their own spren? To me that takes away how epic Kal's journey bonding Syl was.  Gaz has his own spren? Really??  I understand you need to be broken to form the Nahel bond, but what made me love these books was the incredible abilities of the Knights Radiant and how rare I thought that feat was.  As an Adolin fan I was always looking forward to him potentially saying the words or reviving Maya.  Unfortunately that excitement is gone.  It's become commonplace to be a Radiant which I really can't get behind.  Started part 2, but am struggling now.  My "dark brain" as Syl would call it is thinking my favorite series is no more  

[jamesbondsmith]

I don't mind the fact that there were so many, but I was a little miffed that the stories of so many Radiants bonding their spren just got glossed over.

[Tacitus]

I also was surprised by the amount of radiants, but then, the only radiant orders that are shown to have large amounts are the windrunners (Which is explainable by their Resonance) and edgedancers. There are three known truthwatchers, only one known elsecaller, and no human willshapers at all. So yes, their were a lot of radiants, but that can be explained pretty easily by the attitudes of the spren of those orders.

[Kingsdaughter613]

48 minutes ago, Omi the Counselor said:

I also was surprised by the amount of radiants, but then, the only radiant orders that are shown to have large amounts are the windrunners (Which is explainable by their Resonance) and edgedancers. There are three known truthwatchers, only one known elsecaller, and no human willshapers at all. So yes, their were a lot of radiants, but that can be explained pretty easily by the attitudes of the spren of those orders.

There are a fair number of Lightweavers too, quite a number of Dustbringers, and an unknown number of Stonewards.

[Elegy]

Tread this part of the forum with care, there's full-book spoilers here!

This development was foreseeable from the end of Oathbringer. Before the Recreance, there was a whole society of Radiants, and Urithiru was full of them. It's not like there was only ten or twenty Radiants during the Desolations. There's entire cities of Radiant spren in Shadesmar and whenever one of them decides to bond a human, a new Radiant is created. Also, Lopen speaking ideals showed that it wasn't improbable for squires to become Radiants.

I definitely see where you're coming from, regarding Radiants not being that special anymore. But I personally thought it would be way more extreme after that one year. I guess 300 Windrunners (well, only 50 legit ones) are a lot, but I thought there would be more of the other Orders, given that Brandon decided to release the Knight Radiant Quiz before this book's release.

[Honorless]

Yeah, it's a bit difficult to swallow as we've been following Kaladin's journey, which has been very arduous and with well-earned rewards, it feels like you have to prove yourself and be a good person to get access to the magic... but that isn't completely accurate. Other sentient beings decide to form magical contract with you, that gives you powers... isn't completely accurate either, but it's certainly an important component of what makes a Knight Radiant, and that is the reason why we have so many Radiants now. It's more realistic in a way, I suppose. Even magic gets political, and war is always on the horizon. They need more Radiants and so that's exactly what they're trying to do: get more Radiants.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Honorless

[Halyo_Alex]

Personally I attribute the vast number of Radiants to the fact that the stakes are so storming high at this point. It's the True Desolation, for Damnation's sake. This is the final battle for the safety of Roshar. Humanity needs all the Radiants they can get, so the Spren might not be quite as picky as they would be normally.

[WasingtheWhy]

I think the numbers aren't really surprising, myself. I mean, think about it. You think that only a small number of the population of any country isn't broken emotionally in some way? We are all broken, at least a little bit. Not to get too philosophical here, but aren't we all searching for something? Trying to fill a hole in our hearts? I think that is the point that Brandon is trying to make, if he is even trying to make one at all.

Everyone has gaps. We are all Radiant. Nobody is perfect.

[BrightlordKelsier]

1 hour ago, Elegy said:

Tread this part of the forum with care, there's full-book spoilers here!

This development was foreseeable from the end of Oathbringer. Before the Recreance, there was a whole society of Radiants, and Urithiru was full of them. It's not like there was only ten or twenty Radiants during the Desolations. There's entire cities of Radiant spren in Shadesmar and whenever one of them decides to bond a human, a new Radiant is created. Also, Lopen speaking ideals showed that it wasn't improbable for squires to become Radiants.

I definitely see where you're coming from, regarding Radiants not being that special anymore. But I personally thought it would be way more extreme after that one year. I guess 300 Windrunners (well, only 50 legit ones) are a lot, but I thought there would be more of the other Orders, given that Brandon decided to release the Knight Radiant Quiz before this book's release.

I agree, and I am definitely overreacting.  Not to just deflect to something else, but I think maybe I'm more upset at the fact that becoming a squire nearly guarantees you being one of few(ish) chosen radiants.  If there were 50 windrunners, all from different parts of Roshar, all with as difficult a road as Kaladin had I wouldn't be as irritated.  Windrunners may be a bad example because Bridge 4 had so much trauma.  But taking someone as a squire should, for the most part, be just that.  You remain a squire, not nearly guaranteed to become something more.

[NameIess]

25 minutes ago, BrightlordKelsier said:

I agree, and I am definitely overreacting.  Not to just deflect to something else, but I think maybe I'm more upset at the fact that becoming a squire nearly guarantees you being one of few(ish) chosen radiants.  If there were 50 windrunners, all from different parts of Roshar, all with as difficult a road as Kaladin had I wouldn't be as irritated.  Windrunners may be a bad example because Bridge 4 had so much trauma.  But taking someone as a squire should, for the most part, be just that.  You remain a squire, not nearly guaranteed to become something more.

Well, if it makes you feel better (or worse), some orders of Radiants in the old days had thousands of members:

Quote

VindicationKnight

Do you mind telling us what the average number of Knights for a Knight Radiant Order were (barring Bondmiths) and possibly how close the different orders worked together?

Brandon Sanderson

It varied very widely, and depended on many factors. At their highest, some orders had members in the low thousands.

/r/books AMA 2015 (June 24, 2015)

 

[teknopathetic]

Remember that people like Khaladin and Shallan were the original tethers. Once those had been connected, other spren of those orders had a much easier time making the transition to the physical realm and therefor could be more direct about bonding people near the original tethers.

[Aspiring Writer]

On 1/8/2021 at 11:32 AM, BrightlordKelsier said:

I agree, and I am definitely overreacting.  Not to just deflect to something else, but I think maybe I'm more upset at the fact that becoming a squire nearly guarantees you being one of few(ish) chosen radiants.  If there were 50 windrunners, all from different parts of Roshar, all with as difficult a road as Kaladin had I wouldn't be as irritated.  Windrunners may be a bad example because Bridge 4 had so much trauma.  But taking someone as a squire should, for the most part, be just that.  You remain a squire, not nearly guaranteed to become something more.

It's not guaranteed. There are people who just remain a squire. Some will advance, others will not. We see a lot of squires becoming radiants because that is why you would become a squire, to hopefully become a radiant, and being a squire is inferior to being a radiant; you don't have a spren, you can't get a blade or plate, your powers are weaker in general (I believe Squires are like honorblade wielders if not worse and require lots of stormlight and worse healing).

And I think everyone is looking at those too binary. It's not that becoming a radiant is impressive, it is how far you progress with oaths. Squires is not impressive, becoming a radiant on the first and second oath is a tad more, but nothing amazing, the third oath is fairly common, but is worth something, the fourth oath is difficult and is impressive and will probably be very few in number (maybe in the tens at most), and the fifth and final out, which are main characters we follow like Kal seem to be going towards, is 100% impressive and they will stand out. It's a scale. You still have something to be excited about, it's just not the becoming of a radiant, it's the progression of oaths for that radiant.

[Blackhoof]

I didn't really see an issue with the amount of Radiants, it was natural for them to spring up once a bit of time had passed, and once it was safe for them to come out of hiding.

Being a Radiant was basically a crime punishable by death for centuries. There were certainly hidden Radiants, just like Kaladin, Shallan and Jasnah. Our heroes are unique, but not THAT unique. Nale was going around killing them of course (clear evidence of the existence of hidden Radiants), but those Spren would have found new people to bond.

Once it was acceptable for Radiants to emerge from hiding, they began popping out of the shadows. Individual Spren had already felt the coming danger and had been searching for people to bond for decades (see Shallan finding a bond over 10 years ago). When the Everstorm came that would have hastened the urgency for Spren and so they went out looking for people to bond, and squires are a good fit to bond because they've already proven themselves to some degree. The timeskip was a good way to get over the time-wasting of telling 200 separate stories of how each and every Radiant came into service with their individual stories.

[coolsnow7]

On 1/8/2021 at 11:08 AM, BrightlordKelsier said:

The title really should be Too Many Radiants.  I'm sure this doesn't bother a lot of you, but I really can't get behind how many radiants there are. (I've only read part 1 of ROW so far)  I was never even really a fan of the squires, but grew to be okay with it thinking they would remain squires.  Nearly all of Bridge 4 has their own spren? To me that takes away how epic Kal's journey bonding Syl was.  Gaz has his own spren? Really??  I understand you need to be broken to form the Nahel bond, but what made me love these books was the incredible abilities of the Knights Radiant and how rare I thought that feat was.  As an Adolin fan I was always looking forward to him potentially saying the words or reviving Maya.  Unfortunately that excitement is gone.  It's become commonplace to be a Radiant which I really can't get behind.  Started part 2, but am struggling now.  My "dark brain" as Syl would call it is thinking my favorite series is no more  

I think you’re just underestimating the size of Roshar. Bridge 4 is like 30 people. The Recreance itself consisted of <400 Radiants.

Ok, now Roshar is a planet that easily has 10’s of millions of people. Is it really that different if a Radiant is one-in-a-million versus one-in-a-hundred-thousand? 

[dionysus]

It is fairly easy to learn calculus once someone is teaching you the way. But it took 1 or really 2 extraordinary individuals to build on the math that came before and frame the rules of Calculus. If those individuals don't make those discoveries, society could have waited generations before someone else made the leap. Now you learn calculus in High School and College.

As you get higher in math the less people that can fully master the concepts.

I see it the same for Radiants. The person who is first has to be exceptional, but if the guide for how to do it already exists a lot more people can do it. And at the higher levels, everyone will have to be exceptional. Just like you have to be pretty mathematically inclined to be able to fully understand linear algebra, partial differential equations, and beyond.

[trav]

and the spren are reluctant...

imagine if they were willing.
idk how the Singers ever stood a chance.