Did we already know about the Radiants and spren?

[Llarimar]

When Maya reveals that the Radiants and spren mutually chose to break their oaths, for some reason this was not a surprise to me, but I can't remember why.  I don't know if there is a hint in OB that suggests the spren chose to break their oaths, or if perhaps I stumbled across a forum on this page which made the same suggestion, but either way I felt like I already knew this.  I was, in fact, a little confused throughout the entire Shadesmar sequence and the honorspren trial because I kept thinking, "I thought the Radiants and the spren knew what they were doing, and that it was the right thing to do.  Why is no one saying that?" 

I'm pretty sure the reveal that the Radiants broke their oaths because they feared their powers would lead to disaster (as happened on Ashyn), in other words that breaking their oaths was a chivalrous act, was revealed in OB.  Maybe it didn't explicitly say at the time that the spren were also clued in to the morality of breaking the oaths, but isn't it obvious that they would have been?  I must have just assumed that the spren knew what they were doing, and why they were doing it, because the Radiants knew. 

Does anyone know if it's been stated or strongly suggested before RoW that the Radiant spren were willing participants in the Recreance, and if so was anyone else confused by this being treated like a bombshell reveal?

Edited January 17, 2021 by Llarimar

[LuckyJim]

It was suggested at least that the Radiants broke their bonds because of some fears of their powers, though the details weren't clear. I don't think it was explicitly stated that the spren willingly went along with it, but it was expected that we would just assume that, because it's unlikely that 8 entire populations of sentient beings would choose death, regardless of the reason.

[Llarimar]

1 hour ago, LuckyJim said:

I don't think it was explicitly stated that the spren willingly went along with it, but it was expected that we would just assume that, because it's unlikely that 8 entire populations of sentient beings would choose death, regardless of the reason.

Yeah... and if it was sort of a logical leap to assume that the spren willingly went along with the Recreance, then I don't think it should have been framed as a bombshell moment like it was in RoW.  At the very least Adolin should have said something like, "Don't you know why the Radiants abandoned their oaths?  How do we know the spren didn't agree with them?"  The fact that it was never brought up during the trial made it seem like there was a lack of communication - like Dalinar, for instance, presumably knew why the Radiants abandoned their oaths, but didn't tell Adolin.  

[Frustration]

I've been of the opinion the Spren where in on it from the moment we learned of the recreance. And others also had the idea.

[AquaRegia]

I did NOT know.  I'd been happily riding the "Radiants killed their spren" train with all the in-world characters.  So it was a big reveal for me.

I also just joined the 17th Shard this month, though, so I was protected from all the theorymaking that goes on around here. 

[Llarimar]

7 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

I did NOT know.  I'd been happily riding the "Radiants killed their spren" train with all the in-world characters.  So it was a big reveal for me.

I also just joined the 17th Shard this month, though, so I was protected from all the theorymaking that goes on around here. 

Yeah, my younger brother was also shocked by the reveal, so I'm sure not everyone suspected it. 

Some theories are suspected and then later confirmed, but for some reason I thought that this theory had already been confirmed in OB, which is why the "reveal" confused me.  

[Requiem17]

On 1/16/2021 at 6:22 PM, Llarimar said:

Does anyone know if it's been stated or strongly suggested before RoW that the Radiant spren were willing participants in the Recreance, and if so was anyone else confused by this being treated like a bombshell reveal?

I agree with what some others are saying that it wasn't explicitly stated in the books. Do you perhaps listen to the 17th Shard podcast? I listened to their recent B-A-M episode and they referenced an earlier Recreance episode where they'd all concluded and agreed that the spren were willing participants in the Recreance. Perhaps that's where you heard it, or enough commenters in the forum had heard it for the idea to spread. 

 

[Llarimar]

On 1/22/2021 at 2:05 PM, Requiem17 said:

I agree with what some others are saying that it wasn't explicitly stated in the books. Do you perhaps listen to the 17th Shard podcast? I listened to their recent B-A-M episode and they referenced an earlier Recreance episode where they'd all concluded and agreed that the spren were willing participants in the Recreance. Perhaps that's where you heard it, or enough commenters in the forum had heard it for the idea to spread. 

I didn't hear it from the 17th Shard podcast, though maybe if I absorbed it from commenters in the forum, that's where they heard it.  My assumption was partially based on that scene in OB (I don't have the book with me now), where Dalinar has a vision of the Recreance and he sees the Radiants willingly abandon their oaths.  That whole scene was framed as very dignified and noble, and I remember there being some mention to the fact that the Radiants "feared what their powers could bring" or something.  The fact that the Recreance was depicted a chivalrous, moral act led me to assume that the spren were willing participants, since if the act was moral it seemed obvious they would agree.  

[Guest]

I've always assumed that the Recreance was either done in concert with the Spren, or even initiated by the Spren themselves. I even had a weak theory that the recreance was ordered by Honor (or Odium posing as Honor).

In order for hundreds of people to do something simultaneously, they have to plan. In order to plan, they have to meet, and I refuse to believe that hundreds of people could get their hundreds of Spren to all leave at once so they could have their secret meetings to plot the deaths of what are basically the Knight's best friends.  On the other hand, the Spren could all meet in secret, while (mostly) invisible, while their Knight's slept.  A Spren conspiracy seemed far more likely IMO

[Rushu42]

It was not confirmed, and I think it was intended to be somewhat of a revelation. But for anyone who's been theorizing about the Recreance, it seems pretty obvious that the Spren were complicit in some way. I kept waiting for someone to bring it up as I was reading - the whole time I expected someone to actually say why the Recreance happened, so I was kinda confused up until Maya's reveal, which made me realize that no one actually knew what caused the Recreance. I'd been thinking that people were just dancing around the topic or something, but no - it's still a mystery. Disappointing, in my opinion, that after this whole trial about the Recreance we still don't know why it happened.

[mathiau]

We weren't  supposed to know because it made no sense, and still kind of don't. Honoursprens said before the five oaths it was possible to safely break the bound and Brandon confirmed the spren could unilaterally decide too

Quote

Aradanftw

If you were to use Hemalurgy on a Surgebinder, would it steal the Surge or the actual spren bond?

Brandon Sanderson

It's going to steal the spren bond, but you've got to remember the spren has power over that bond. So what you're doing is (1) incredibly evil, even more evil, but (2) you may not end up with what you want, because that spren has free will in most cases. You may go through all this trouble and then they may break the bond, and you would be left without it. So you would need something else to force them to be unable to break the bond, which would be even more evil, but it is possible in Hemalurgy.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

It's conceivable it wouldn't work for fifth oath radiants, not all windrunners could have been at that level. And even if we assume all knights orders somehow acted coordinated enough that the first who killed their sprens couldn't warn the last, you've seen how easy it was to accidentaly kill a spren post BAM -especially for windrunners, how close to the false desolation must it have been that they didn't know it would kill them? No, the sprens wanted to die, and the radiants wanted to be seen as traitors.

[redsoxu571]

Hi! I just joined, and thought that my take (as someone who has not been involved with any theory discussion and such) might be useful.

To review, here is what the books alone seemed to indicate:
-Everyone seemed to know that the Radiants collectively abandoned their oaths, and because nobody knew why they were largely hated for it
-Our "new" Radiants had the fact that oaths were broken and their spren "killed" as a result confirmed, but the reason why was hidden or withheld
-Eventually, the reason behind their decision was revealed. They found out where humans had come from and such, and in their horror (and out of fear that they could cause a similar calamity) they abandoned their oaths
-It was presumed that knew what their actions would do to their spren (reasonable), and it was further presumed that their spren would not have gone along with this (less justified, but a rational presumption nonetheless)
-The fact that "dead" spren were not as one would expect clouded the circumstances. At first, we readers (and the new Radiants) would figure that dead meant dead, as happens to humans and other beings. Then we found out about deadeyes, still terrible but not quite the same. Then we were given ever-growing hints that "dead" was not even irreversible. Each discovery could have given more reason to question how much the Radiant spren had been unwilling victims or not, but as best as I can tell there was still not a bit of direct evidence pointing to spren having been partners of the decision of the old Radiants. Any thinking that this was possible/probable would, I think, have come from theories, not from deduction
-The trial makes it quite clear that, to at least a good portion of spren, it was firmly assumed to the point of fact that the Radiant spren had been victims. Maya's revelation was, unless I'm missing something, the first direct/tangible evidence of the spren having been partners in what happened...and, of course, her evidence essentially is sufficient and absolute proof, swinging the truth all in one

Regarding the thinking of LabRat above, to my mind (and probably what the reader was intended to think) the most likely way the Recreance went down was that the Radiants discovered the truth, were horrified by what happened, and immediately (perhaps already in a large group, assembled to have the revelation shared or even the place where the revelation happened) elected to turn away from their oaths and bonds. It was suggested that it all went down rather suddenly; it could have been sudden but orderly, as if planned, or sudden and disorganized, but collective. But, of course, just because it is in human nature to be horrified and then to suddenly act on that emotion doesn't mean that's actually how things went down...and now we know that there was more to it than that.

Personally, I wonder whether at least part of the reason the Radiant spren were partners in the Recreance is because they knew what life would be like if they avoided being "killed" and broke their bonds instead, never to make new ones. If the example of Syl would have applied to all, their Radiants may have asked them to break their bonds first (and they perhaps equally agreed that the bonds should not continue) but they preferred "death" to losing themselves.

[AquaRegia]

I agree with everything @redsoxu571 said.  Well stated, and welcome!

It's clearly Brandon's intention 1) to be mysterious, and 2) for us to learn a lot more about the Recreance - and the history of Roshar in general - going forward (six more novels' worth!).  As he did (is doing) with Shallan's personal history... as he did in Mistborn Era 1, he's a master at making a backstory with MANY layers, and then peeling them back, deliciously, one by one.  There is always another secret.

[Storyspren]

I have trouble with:

1) That no other spren besides the bonded knew the oath breaking was deliberate. Because why?

2) That the bond somehow had to be broken by the human, killing the spren.

3) That until this nobody cognitive-side knew about what broken bonds would do. The recreance was quite late. Nobody ever broke a bond before? These were the first dead eyes? Please.

So yeah. Still confused here.

 

[xinoehp512]

1 minute ago, Storyspren said:

I have trouble with:

1) That no other spren besides the bonded knew the oath breaking was deliberate. Because why?

2) That the bond somehow had to be broken by the human, killing the spren.

3) That until this nobody cognitive-side knew about what broken bonds would do. The recreance was quite late. Nobody ever broke a bond before? These were the first dead eyes? Please.

So yeah. Still confused here.

 

We know that the nature of deadeyes has something to do with Ba-Ado-Mishram's imprisonment. So likely the Recreance was close to that chronologically.

[Jack33210]

I suspected it because of how complete it was. I had a hard time prior assuming it wasn’t the case because of simple human nature. While the vast majority of Radiants are people who want to help, if it mean sacrificing their own lives to save everyone, they would 100% do it. 
 

But in this case, it’s the potential life of a being they basically see as family. I figured they both agreed to it knowing the cost, or like it was mentioned, they didn’t know it would kill the spren given how complete it was. 

[Eggdogg]

I never really entertained theories on the Recreance until I finished RoW. There was not enough info and it was clear that it was supposed to be unclear. Reminded me of the lore of Wheel of Time in that it was mysterious but static. When lore was uncovered in the Wheel of Time it didn't really change the past just shed more light. RoW changed that. Clearly this period of time where BAM is trapped and oaths are broken must be shown, solved and or understood for current events to climax. 

[+Harrycrapper]

There was a forum post on here at some point that theorized that a majority of the spren had to of known about the Knights intending to end their bonds. Maya's moment confirmed that they were complicit in the plans to end 9/10 of the orders, but did not know that they would become deadeyes as a result of the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram. There is also the fact that Nalan was tasked with or tasked himself with suppressing any attempts by new spren to form bonds with people which he thought for reasons unknown to us, would stop a new desolation from happening. 

[mathiau]

8 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

There was a forum post on here at some point that theorized that a majority of the spren had to of known about the Knights intending to end their bonds. Maya's moment confirmed that they were complicit in the plans to end 9/10 of the orders, but did not know that they would become deadeyes as a result of the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram. There is also the fact that Nalan was tasked with or tasked himself with suppressing any attempts by new spren to form bonds with people which he thought for reasons unknown to us, would stop a new desolation from happening. 

8 order out of 10, neither Skybreakers nor Boundsmiths participated. The reason Nalan killed new radiants is "because Ishar told him too", now why Ishar thought it would prevent a Desolation? Maybe just because he's mad.

By the way, anyone think Ishar is far too mad for the other Heralds not too have noticed it? Something weird's going on here, I don't believe he's been mad for very long, a few years before the Everstorm maximum.

[Guest]

On 1/30/2021 at 0:46 AM, mathiau said:

By the way, anyone think Ishar is far too mad for the other Heralds not too have noticed it? Something weird's going on here, I don't believe he's been mad for very long, a few years before the Everstorm maximum.

 

Maybe "going to meet with" doesn't mean physically, but rather some form of meditation allowing them to communicate Spiritually? His spiritual communication seemed far more sane.

Or it could be that the presence of Fused on Roshar completely broke his mind, leaps and bounds beyond how he was even a year prior.

[DSCrankshaw]

From what we can guess, things happened in this order:

1. Bo-Ado-Mishram was imprisoned

2. The singers became dull parshmen

3. The Radiants discovered the truth about where humans came from

4. Honor was pretty crazy at this point, and couldn't talk them down

5. Recreance

6. Deadeyes

You can see why the first four might have led to the fifth, and that's what the Radiants conclude at the end of Oathbringer, but there was something else. Deadeyes did not exist before BAM's imprisonment, suggesting that she altered the bond, corrupting it in some way. My theory is that the old Radiants and their spren destroyed their bonds because they feared BAM's corruption of them. That also explains why their response was to destroy their bonds rather than release BAM, which seems like the obvious solution to guilt over lobotomizing the singers. But if the drive to destroy their bonds is their fear of BAM, then releasing BAM is the opposite of a solution. This leads me to wonder whether Maya would be on board with releasing BAM, like Kalak wants. 

[vonnegut]

On 4/19/2021 at 4:57 PM, DSCrankshaw said:

From what we can guess, things happened in this order:

1. Bo-Ado-Mishram was imprisoned

2. The singers became dull parshmen

3. The Radiants discovered the truth about where humans came from

4. Honor was pretty crazy at this point, and couldn't talk them down

5. Recreance

6. Deadeyes

You can see why the first four might have led to the fifth, and that's what the Radiants conclude at the end of Oathbringer, but there was something else. Deadeyes did not exist before BAM's imprisonment, suggesting that she altered the bond, corrupting it in some way. My theory is that the old Radiants and their spren destroyed their bonds because they feared BAM's corruption of them. That also explains why their response was to destroy their bonds rather than release BAM, which seems like the obvious solution to guilt over lobotomizing the singers. But if the drive to destroy their bonds is their fear of BAM, then releasing BAM is the opposite of a solution. This leads me to wonder whether Maya would be on board with releasing BAM, like Kalak wants. 

Are we sure that the singers became Parshmen *before* the Recreance?  I thought that they were fighting singers in Dalinar's vision about the Recreance, and then everyone abandoned the front line and came back to Feverstone... but wait, that doesn't make sense either.

Because if they did the Recreance first, then they wouldn't have the abilities to do the B-A-M prison.  

But if they did the B-A-M prison first, who were they fighting when they left the front lines to do the Recreance?

 

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:57 PM, DSCrankshaw said:

That also explains why their response was to destroy their bonds rather than release BAM, which seems like the obvious solution to guilt over lobotomizing the singers.

As much as they didn't like what happened, they also probably didn't want to start the war back up.

3 hours ago, vonnegut said:

Are we sure that the singers became Parshmen *before* the Recreance?  I thought that they were fighting singers in Dalinar's vision about the Recreance, and then everyone abandoned the front line and came back to Feverstone... but wait, that doesn't make sense either.

Because if they did the Recreance first, then they wouldn't have the abilities to do the B-A-M prison.  

But if they did the B-A-M prison first, who were they fighting when they left the front lines to do the Recreance?

I've generally been of the opinion that the vision happens very shortly after BAM's capture. They fight the singers, then the singers all get lobotomized (but the Radiants probably don't realize this instantly, and a Radiant can do a lot of damage in a short time, so I imagine a lot of now-helpless singers were slaughtered when the Radiants saw their enemies falter and before they understood what was actually the case), and after some debate, go to Feverstone. This would probably require the debate over the continued existence of the orders to have been already ongoing, which from what we've heard it probably was, and this was more the last straw of "okay we really are too dangerous, we're done here".

[AquaRegia]

My head hurts when I try to wrap it around the history of Roshar... but what @LewsTherinTelescope says here makes sense to me.