Why the radiance seem a lot stronger than the Fused? Fused's powers possibly scale with radiant ideals

[asterion137 he/him]

4 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmm. Maybe. In a stone age situation I don't know how much rebuilding infrastructure/public order stuff would really be workable. I'm sure they'd try, but all the Radiants of all orders? Even the Skybreakers, Dustbringers, Elsecallers?

(If Jasnah was faced with that situation, I think she'd see the long-term problem of increasingly frequent Desolations as more important than immediate issues. And she seems pretty willing to suggest things like this- e.g. let's kill all the Heralds, in OB. So I don't think Elsecaller oaths would prevent it.)

And if it were tried by even a few Radiants it would probably succeed... eventually. If you started a Desolation with only 5,000 or 10,000 singers left, they'd most all become Forms of Power or Fused and be killed... would enough make it through to preserve the species?

 

Warform has very real advantages ... but they don't really help with the things you need to fight flying Radiants - mobility, a way to get past Radiant healing, and a way to block or survive Shardblades.

Vs normal soldiers, the advantages are major- warform strength is significantly better than un-boosted human, and they have better armor ... but armor is useless against a Shardblade.

No Forms of Power between Desolations (until Ba-ado-Mishram changed things for the False Desolation).

Considering every Radiant order has to swear the first ideal, i doubt genocide was ever really in the cards for them. The Heralds abandoned their oaths and were guilty of desertion at the very least, and probably treason as well, so executing them is justifiable if it serves a greater purpose. Genocide is on a completely different level. I also doubt the Radiants could pull it off, even if they wanted to. There were millions of singers scattered around Roshar, and only a few thousand knights. They could try, but it would be the equivalent of trying to wipe out all life in Asia with a hundred helicopters. It would be brutally violent but I doubt they would make a significant dent in the singer population, and likely would just make the singers fight harder in the next Desolation.

I agree that Fourth Ideal Radiants would have been a nearly unstoppable force. It's pretty clear that the Fused/Regals/thunderclasts/Unmade couldn't beat the Radiants at the height of their power, because they had dozens of chances to do so and failed. What they did do is set human civilization back a thousand years or more, because without the Radiants to protect them humanity would have been at a huge disadvantage even against normal warforms, and the Radiants couldn't be everywhere at once. Victory in a desolation would have required the combat Radiants to blunt major attacks on the Silver Kingdom capitals, then slowly mop up the larger pockets of Fused resistance for years afterward while the singers continued to wreak havoc anywhere a Radiant couldn't be spared. I don't think having Fourth Ideal Radiants could force a win by going on a rampage and assassinating leaders like Szeth did, either. The leader of the Desolations was Odium himself, and sneaking isn't a good option when the singers could rely on voidspren scouts. The Unmade would also have posed a threat to any Radiant, no matter how advanced.

[cometaryorbit]

11 hours ago, asterion137 said:

Considering every Radiant order has to swear the first ideal, i doubt genocide was ever really in the cards for them. The Heralds abandoned their oaths and were guilty of desertion at the very least, and probably treason as well, so executing them is justifiable if it serves a greater purpose. Genocide is on a completely different level.

Didn't Jasnah suggest killing all the parshmen?

I do feel like this should be against "Life before death", but the Oaths are interpreted by each individual human+spren pair. Ivory and Jasnah seem to be ok with several things that would strike me as violating the First Ideal.

But then, so do the Skybreakers - they seem a bit too ready to kill for things that don't really require death to remove the threat; I'd read that as questionable for "Life before death" too.

I think we may be being heavily influenced by what Kaladin and Dalinar see the First Ideal as meaning, especially since that understanding is more sympathetic to the majority of readers than the Skybreakers' perspective or Jasnah's perspective.

---

If there were really millions of Singers post-Desolation, though, yeah then maybe. I would have assumed much less, since humans got knocked back to the stone age repeatedly, and they *won*. That level of knowledge loss implies something really devastating, especially if the culture's starting tech level is pretty limited so the infrastructure is not complex. Europe didn't lose knowledge during the Black Death, for example. I'd expect 90%+ population loss to get that kind of collapse.

So if singers were *worse off*...

(But that whole thing is weird. The late Desolations when civilization was really collapsing were not that far apart; knowledge loss shouldn't have been that easy, since some individuals would have lived through the whole cycle. And how was there enough continuity to preserve kingdom names like Alethela if stuff like bronze making was lost? I don't know... the whole thing is super weird.)

Edited January 28, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[cometaryorbit]

16 hours ago, Karger said:

The problem isn't ruthlessness the problem is practicality.  When the survival of the human race is still in question due to food shortages, disease, refugees, and more you don't have leeway to worry about other problems.

That doesn't strike me as Jasnah level cold logic. Those things are not really going to threaten the survival of the species (especially in a world like Roshar where infectious disease is *not* a major threat). Cause lots of death, yes, but food isn't going to go away completely to the point the species won't survive. The cycle of Desolations *is* a survival of the species threat.

 

[Karger he/him]

18 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

That doesn't strike me as Jasnah level cold logic. Those things are not really going to threaten the survival of the species (especially in a world like Roshar where infectious disease is *not* a major threat). Cause lots of death, yes, but food isn't going to go away completely to the point the species won't survive. The cycle of Desolations *is* a survival of the species threat.

You forget that the closer both sides are to destruction the more the parsh have the advantage.  Since a small population can't maintain a high level of technology keeping enough people around is critical for humankind or they will end up destroyed by the unmade and parsh remnants.

Edited January 28, 2022 by Karger

[cometaryorbit]

4 minutes ago, Karger said:

You forget that the closer both sides are to destruction the more the parsh have the advantage.

Eh, maybe. I kind of disagree ...if both sides are stone age it's a direct magic vs magic conflict where the Radiants have the advantage, and there is less chance to disadvantage the Radiants by forcing them to try to protect fixed targets e.g. cities, towns & farmlands... but the more we discuss this the more I think we don't know enough about how things worked during the era of Desolations.

Maybe we'll learn more in book 5. If we find out how the whole Ba-ado-Mishram/False Desolation thing worked, maybe that will tell us more.

(Do we know if the Listeners split off from the other singers during the real Desolations or the False Desolation?)

[Karger he/him]

8 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Eh, maybe. I kind of disagree ...if both sides are stone age it's a direct magic vs magic conflict where the Radiants have the advantage, and there is less chance to disadvantage the Radiants by forcing them to try to protect fixed targets e.g. cities, towns & farmlands... but the more we discuss this the more I think we don't know enough about how things worked during the era of Desolations.

I think you are focusing too much on combat.  Flashy battles are obvious but most of human history is really effected by smaller things.  Ultimately the fate of a culture or nation is more dependent on its ability to acquire sufficient food and shelter to support itself.  Military might only matters afterwards.

[cometaryorbit]

13 minutes ago, Karger said:

I think you are focusing too much on combat.  Flashy battles are obvious but most of human history is really effected by smaller things.  Ultimately the fate of a culture or nation is more dependent on its ability to acquire sufficient food and shelter to support itself.  Military might only matters afterwards.

Again, perhaps; we don't know enough. In general I agree with you but in a stone age situation there would not be a lot of infrastructure/fixed settlements to defend, so one would expect the Radiants' strategy to be immediately seeking out the Fused & those with Forms of Power and attack immediately, to give them as little time as possible to hunt down non-Radiant humans.

Yet we know some of the Desolations started at stone age, yet were still super destructive, so... yeah we don't know enough. Maybe there's some thunderclast style threats we haven't seen yet that would make immediately attacking all Odium's forces less of an easy win.

EDIT: another "we don't know enough" point- how did civilization slide back so far if even a few Radiants able to Soulcast survived? The logistical power of Soulcasting is incredibly impressive - the Alethi warcamps in WOK are insanely huge by RL pre-modern standards, and in a super barren landscape. But Soulcasting can just make stone buildings out of air and food out of rocks. You almost don't need infrastructure or logistics any more.

Edited January 28, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[bmcclure7]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:03 AM, ILIYA said:

Long post, TLDR on the bottom. 

I've been thinking about Fused's combat wars and I was surprised when they were struggling to win against the new radiance who are currently much weaker than old radiance. I realized while their surge binding powers are kinda even. E.g Windrunners have faster acceleration and another surge but Fused have better maneuverability and more experience. The power gap becomes huge once you factor in Shard-blade and Shard plate, I do not see how the Fused could even hurt the radiance of the 4th ideal let alone fight them. I do not see how the pursuer used to fight the strongest of the enemy, any radiance of the 4th ideal with plate could easily crush him let alone the strongest.  

So first I will list all the advantages and disadvantages of both old and new radiance compared to each other then come up with possible theories why there is such a huge power gap. 

 

Main Advantages for new radiance have in the new war: 

1- Odium's vessel (Rayse) is a lot weaker than before which made him a terrible commander compared to the past so he mispositioned his forces

2- Fused are a bit less in number and more insane now than start of the war in roshar though they are now more experienced. 

3- The fused mention radiance have learned a few innovative tricks now since they weren't indoctrinated into Urithiru ranks from the start. Still, I don't see how innovative tricks on WW2 fighter planes could be a huge problem for you if you are used to fighting F-35s...  

4- There is modern fabrial technology and military tactics now which should favor radiance slightly though Szeth showed compared to even the most basic surge binding, both new tech and old shard plate and blades are meaningless. The side with superior surge binders can easily assassinate the enemy's leadership and win the war.

5- The interference from cosmere groups like ghostbloods, 17th shard, Vasher etc could have benefited radiance more.  

 

Main disadvantages for new radiance have in the new war: 

1- Honor's vessel is fully dead and heralds are mad or straight-up traitors which is a far worse than the case on Odium's side since 5 of the unmade are fully functional, unlike the heralds.

2- The radiance are missing 3 orders with Skybreakers and dustbringers straight up joining the enemy. 

3-  No training or passing on of the most effective tactics and knowledge from the old radiance to the new

4- No radiance (just one) of 4th and 5th ideals which is a huge deal compared to 200-300 from before. 

5- Fused seem to have access to new fabrials that shutdown radiant powers

6- Odium has his own Storm now which according to fused and Heralds is a huge deal. Makes sense since a few days is now all it takes for Fused to be reborn. 

 

As you can see the disadvantages seem to be far bigger than the advantages of the new radiance so the question is how could the Fused cause so much trouble during past desolations and even kill heralds in combat during them. We saw how strong Ishar and Nale were in combat, meanwhile, we saw how pathetic the pursuer was. How were these guys even? Through the pursuer is quite mad compared to before but as Ishar and Nale showed us madness hinders decision making mostly not their innate power which was the pursuer lacked. His innate power was why he couldn't kill kaladin though in the end, it was his madness that got him killed. 

Just imagine if Kaladin has shardplate in most of his fights in ROW, Leshwi would needs to land hundreds of blows on him while Kaladin just needs to strike her once or twice. Kaladin could overpower the pursuer grips easily then and the pursuer would need several strikes which is unlikely. Overall there are few things on Odium's side that can challenge a radiant of the 4th ideal:

 

- Thunderclasts could pose a serious threat to the radiance, though they make easy targets for dustbringers and skybreakers. 

- The unmade Yelig-nar. The combat one Yelig-nar seems to give a strong enough carapace to deflect non shard-plate enhanced strikes from shard-blades and act as good as shard-plate in general though Yelig-nar has no substitution for shard-blade. Overall an experienced yelignar could take on few radiance of 4th ideal though I don't know if Yelignar will let a user control it long enough to become experienced in combat. 

- The rest of the unmade. While they won't be a threat in combat they could cause chaos through their psychological attacks through I think radiance of 4th ideal are invested enough to mostly resist them. Still massive spren like the unmade and the sibling seem to need combat protection as experinced surge binders can break them when they get to their core as we saw with Dalinar, Shallan and raboniel

That's it unless the radiant of the 4th ideal is absolutely clueless or is severely lacking stormlight they could theoretically beat anything else on Odium's forces with ease due to the advantages that plate offers. 

 

 Theories that could explain why the past fights were even despite the Fused seeming much weaker than old radiance.

 

1- Old radiance had lower access to stormlight compared to the enemy's access to void-light. This doesn't make much sense as they didn't have access their own storm. This could mean Fused would only attack at the end of the weeping though there is no proof for it and it's unlikely the old radiance had no way of not being out of stormlight during the weeping. 

2- Most of the powerful fused are still sleeping, This one is unlikely as well as from the Fused accounts we know most of their superiors and best are already awake and active such as the nine and the pursuer etc. Only ones that seem to be away the ones that were never meant to be awaken such as Raboniel formerly and El currently.

 

  

3- This is the most likely one and that's that Fused's powers scale with the radiance as in once the radiance advance in their ideals. For example, once there will be more radiance of higher ideals, the more powerful the fused become! This potentially explains a lot of things as well. 

- It explains why in the past the fused wouldn't just get a huge lead once they'd kill high-level radiance as they couldn't simply overpower radiance of lower ideals with investiture

- It explains why they seem to be on the same level of current radiance in power

- It explains why their top leaders especially the ones that were first summoned by Venli in Oathbringer haven't been active much at all as they may be used to higher levels of power in fighting and are waiting for radiance to advance their ideals first before they get involved. 

- It explains why the most powerful active Fused in words of radiance being Roboniel and Lezian were using the surges of transformation and transportation both being Jasnah's else-caller surges as she has advanced into the 4th ideal. 

- It explains why Leshwi also mentions to Venli with certainty that she would know if Stormblessed has spoken the 4th ideal. 

- Could explain part of recreance as the radiance may have realized the further they advance in their ideals and more is added to their numbers the stronger the fused also become with their surges which results in possible destruction of Roshar. 

- Could explain why the 9 were worried as should the new radiance not have advanced in their ideals and instead have advanced technologically faster it would result in Odium's forces losing their advantage as the fused would have to fight with the weaker versions of their surges and forms which they would be less experienced with it as they had fought with stronger surges and forms. Meanwhile, this would allow technological warfare, especially regarding fabrials to catch and even be superior to surge-binding. 

- Could explain why in a lot of situations the Fused are lenient about not killing the radiance as they might want them to advance their ideals. 

 

 

Or it could be just Brandon not having that much attention to power discrepancies as they aren't a huge part of the story but I find it odd if that's the case. He goes as far as giving asymmetrical powers to the heavenly ones and Windrunners (heavenly ones being more maneuverable while the windrunners accelerate faster). Meanwhile, the fused have to counter against shard-blade and shard-plate? It seems odd to me.   

 

 

TLDR:

There is a huge gap as the radiance seem a lot more powerful than fused when reaching 4th and 5th ideal. It doesn't make sense why the fused that fought the old radiance who were in a far better position and of higher ideals are struggling to easily wipe out the new radiance. My most plausible theory is that Fused's power scales with radiant ideals. 

 

Let me know what you think on this as I'm quite interested for answers. 

 

I think you underestimate forms of power and more importantly the unmade remember that the singers were able to keep fighting against the knights radiance with only forms of power and unmade. 

Remember that this time around humanity knows how to capture unmade but before this that was not the case. I suspect that the reason humanity is win even with less Spren bonded knights because Odium is afraid of losing another unmade. 

[DiePie]

8 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

EDIT: another "we don't know enough" point- how did civilization slide back so far if even a few Radiants able to Soulcast survived? The logistical power of Soulcasting is incredibly impressive - the Alethi warcamps in WOK are insanely huge by RL pre-modern standards, and in a super barren landscape. But Soulcasting can just make stone buildings out of air and food out of rocks. You almost don't need infrastructure or logistics any more.

First of all I think you might be underestimating the sheer numbers of people, if there are 10mil people and 9 out of every 10 of them die then that's still 1mil, and trying to aid that many as a group most likely numbering<1000 is... difficult to say the least.

But also, I think the 9 out of 10 is more so for the Desolations before the Radiants, and once the Radiants came around for the last few casualty rates began to drop, and civilization stopped sliding back so far every desolation... Except that they weren't given as much time to rebuild since the heralds began breaking more often, which is I think the answer to your question, 2 years between the final 2 Desolations is not nearly enough time to rebuild.

[cometaryorbit]

1 hour ago, DiePie said:

First of all I think you might be underestimating the sheer numbers of people, if there are 10mil people and 9 out of every 10 of them die then that's still 1mil, and trying to aid that many as a group most likely numbering<1000 is... difficult to say the least.

I don't know about that. The scale of Soulcasting is pretty crazy, we see buildings made out of air in moments and Jasnah turning a huge boulder to smoke- if she'd turned it to meat instead that's probably dozens of cows worth of beef.

But I am not talking about necessarily supplying the entire human population. The issue is that knowledge generally gets lost when it's not generally used, stuff like metalsmithing should be in continuous use even during a total war and thus shouldn't get lost unless either *literally every metalsmith dies* or people are driven to be completely nomadic so access to ores is lost. But with the "build and feed a town on the spot" ability of soulcasting, it basically should never get to that point.

It might actually be the opposite problem. Maybe during the Desolations humanity was on a total war footing and "inefficient" normal metalsmithing was abandoned in favor of just Soulcasting everything, so the knowledge was *not* in continuous use.

[bmcclure7]

On 1/21/2022 at 10:39 AM, Nameless said:

Another factor you may not be considering is the Parshmen's forms. Even ignoring forms of power, regular warforms are physically and maybe even mentally superior to human soldiers. The Parshendi, despite their lack of tactical knowledge, survived and even won against human armies that used modern tactics and had better equipment. Warforms don't need to be equipped with armor, give them a weapon and food and they're good to go. Humans need to be equipped with armor, which, when you lose the knowledge of metalworking, becomes a big problem compared to your enemy who just needs to give their soldiers weapons. Not to mention that their soldiers are stronger than you, get a soldier's mentality more quickly than you, and probably learn quicker than you. Then you add in regals, and suddenly radiants have to not only fight fused and thunderclasts, but also regals. And they have to make up for the average human soldier being inferior to the average parsh soldier. And humans will almost always have a disadvantage in equipment, as warforms get armor that is "Nearly as hard as steel, but half the weight" according to Leyten (ch. 63 page 878 tWoK), basically for free, while humans are stuck with bronze or leather armor.

In addition to this, I think you might be underestimating the fused. Kaladin is the only third ideal windrunner that we see able to fight evenly with Leshwi. The only other windrunner that we saw fighting Leshwi, Sigzil, lost. Sure, having shardplate is a huge advantage, but it would probably also ruin the honor system that the modern day fused and radiants have. I imagine that if Kaladin entered a battle with his plate, multiple heavenly ones would attack him. And considering that after over a year has past since the radiants began to return, and there are only two fourth ideal radiants, one of which bonded a spren years ago, it will take a while before a dead fourth ideal radiant is replaced.

Let's not forget the unmade we haven't seen all they can do probably because Odium is afraid to loose another,  but even what we see so far could be extremely effective if used strategicly and remember that before this there was no weapon that could stop them.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

2 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

It might actually be the opposite problem. Maybe during the Desolations humanity was on a total war footing and "inefficient" normal metalsmithing was abandoned in favor of just Soulcasting everything, so the knowledge was *not* in continuous use.

It is basicly still the problem on Roshar. They probably have mines, but are still relying too much on Soulcasting to the point they dont actualy understands mechanics of making alloys - they use many alloys, but they dont actualy know that they are alloys, because they always make them throu Soulcasting. This is some advantage, because you can have alloy unavailable with conventional methods, but if you forget (or never knew) how to make it, you can only recreat it, and cant try shift its properties.

[Karger he/him]

On 1/28/2022 at 3:57 PM, cometaryorbit said:

In general I agree with you but in a stone age situation there would not be a lot of infrastructure/fixed settlements to defend, so one would expect the Radiants' strategy to be immediately seeking out the Fused & those with Forms of Power and attack immediately, to give them as little time as possible to hunt down non-Radiant humans.

According to Jasnah only around a quarter of radiants were directly involved in combat.  Remember as well that humans were not a monolith.  Radiants were also needed to help prevent conflicts between groups of humans.  How exactly are these radiants supposed to find fused that spend all day hovering a mile off the ground or a full hundred meters under it?  Some fused look like rocks when motionless and other can disguise themselves as human.  A suicide mission by any of these can result in catastrophic damage so radiants would be needed to guard against attacks at all times.  Genocide might have been debated at times but it is simply too difficult, dangerous, time consuming, and expensive even ignoring that it is morally reprehensible.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Karger

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 1/28/2022 at 1:46 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Didn't Jasnah suggest killing all the parshmen?

I do feel like this should be against "Life before death", but the Oaths are interpreted by each individual human+spren pair. Ivory and Jasnah seem to be ok with several things that would strike me as violating the First Ideal.

But then, so do the Skybreakers - they seem a bit too ready to kill for things that don't really require death to remove the threat; I'd read that as questionable for "Life before death" too.

I think we may be being heavily influenced by what Kaladin and Dalinar see the First Ideal as meaning, especially since that understanding is more sympathetic to the majority of readers than the Skybreakers' perspective or Jasnah's perspective.

Hell, even Taravangian cites the First Ideal and seems to believe it, though as he's obviously not bonded to a spren we can't really use that as evidence of what a Radiant bond specifically permits. But it shows how differently people themselves can take it, at any rate.

19 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

I think you underestimate forms of power and more importantly the unmade remember that the singers were able to keep fighting against the knights radiance with only forms of power and unmade. 

To be fair, from the sound of it almost every singer may have been in a Regal form during the False Desolation, so that doesn't seem to be the normal state of things.

17 minutes ago, Karger said:

According to Jasnah only around a quarter of radiants were directly involved in combat. 

Interesting, do you remember where she said that?

[Karger he/him]

1 minute ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Interesting, do you remember where she said that?

WoR when explaining them to Shallan.

[CryoZenith he/him]

There's that whole WoB where Brandon says that some orders have more machiavellian interpretations of the First Ideal, and that Elsecallers are one of them. So I think this is less a case of individual human + spren interpretation and more a case of "because we're talking about members of this and that order". The First Ideal is probably relative, but not subjective.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

8 minutes ago, Karger said:

WoR when explaining them to Shallan.

Ah, found it, thanks!

Quote

“But don’t fear that you will soon find yourself swinging a sword, child. The archetype of Radiants on the battlefield is an exaggeration. From what I’ve read—though records are, unfortunately, untrustworthy—for every Radiant dedicated to battle, there were another three who spent their time on diplomacy, scholarship, or other ways to aid society.”

So yeah, lot of non-combatant ones.

[bmcclure7]

On 1/27/2022 at 8:30 PM, cometaryorbit said:

Hmm. Maybe. In a stone age situation I don't know how much rebuilding infrastructure/public order stuff would really be workable. I'm sure they'd try, but all the Radiants of all orders? Even the Skybreakers, Dustbringers, Elsecallers?

(If Jasnah was faced with that situation, I think she'd see the long-term problem of increasingly frequent Desolations as more important than immediate issues. And she seems pretty willing to suggest things like this- e.g. let's kill all the Heralds, in OB. So I don't think Elsecaller oaths would prevent it.)

And if it were tried by even a few Radiants it would probably succeed... eventually. If you started a Desolation with only 5,000 or 10,000 singers left, they'd most all become Forms of Power or Fused and be killed... would enough make it through to preserve the species?

 

Warform has very real advantages ... but they don't really help with the things you need to fight flying Radiants - mobility, a way to get past Radiant healing, and a way to block or survive Shardblades.

Vs normal soldiers, the advantages are major- warform strength is significantly better than un-boosted human, and they have better armor ... but armor is useless against a Shardblade.

No Forms of Power between Desolations (until Ba-ado-Mishram changed things for the False Desolation).

 

 I think you're forgetting that

 

1.  The nights radiant as an organization Didn't exist Until late in  Cycle of desolations.  Before that You had surge binders that were just as likely to start fighting each other as the enemy (we see this in the vision)

 

2.   Limited number of Knights  Radiant. We see hundreds of 4th ideal nights radiant In the 4th desolation, After their organization had been around for over a 1000 years of relative piece,  But that's not what we see from Is any of the flashbacks from the time of the true desolations.  The visions show armies of primarily regular humans with here and there a 4th ideal nights radiant.  For all we know we could be looking at at best a couple dozen in each order.   This means the fuse would have them severely outnumbered.

 

3.  Humanity is not a United front.  In the last desolation division shows primarily human soldiers on both sides. That means at least half of humanity sided with the void brings  That's gives a serious advantage to seriously the fused. 

 

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by bmcclure7

[bmcclure7]

On 1/24/2022 at 9:16 AM, ILIYA said:

Haha not sure what's going on haha, I'll try to reply regarding this though. As I said I don't have much faith in theory but rather my issue is with the huge power gap that is present based on what we know. 

Kaladin compares to Leshwi in using the surge of gravitation for fighting, not combat, thing is if you have shard-plate and blade it doesn't matter if you are far less skilled than Leshwi in combat, She has to land multiple hits on you, mostly in the same area just to break your plate then finally start to deplete stormlight. Meanwhile you just need one hit, doesn't even have to be with your blade as a plate-enchanced strike is more than enough and considering that Fused's voidhealing is pathethic compared to stormlight she is pretty much dead from a single punch. Any windrunner of the 4th ideal has a huge advantage over the strongest heavenly one.

Wait how do we know the Fused and singers greatly outnumbered humanity in the past? possible at the start of the war but close to end as well?? Also shardbearers can't hold ground but surge-binders can destroy an entire nations leadership. We saw Szeth with a sinlge honor-blade throw entire nations into chaos. Despite them having shards and advanced fabrials they possessed little threat to Szeth.  It doesn't matter if your army is stronger if the enemy agents can just fly into your leaders palace and massacre everyone there and walk out. A nation or an army is nothing without leadership. Now imagine how destructive a skybreaker of the 5th ideal can be compared to Szeth with an honor-blade. We saw Nale deal with dalinar's squad like a soldier toying with children. 

 

But from what we know so far all the fused at least the strongest ones have been transferred and there is no reason for any to stay behind in Braize now that Odium has his new storm. The only ones in Braize are the banned ones like El. Odium did go all out in RoW as we know his plans heavily dependend on getting Kalain and the tower. As for regals the humans also have radiant squires to deal with them. 

 

I know the popular theory now is that the Fused have a weapon to counter plate but just have not decided to use it as they wanted to save it for when it matters. This doesn't make much sense as it would assume that theoretical weapon is somehow can only be used to counter plate but a weapon of that caliber should be effective against non-plate radiance as well. Aluminum might remove investiture effects but plate without investiture is still metal that can't be easily broken.   

Another reason this doesn't make sense is that humans already have access to hundreds of dead spren plate that are being used against the Fused. The first thing fused did after awaking was go after these plates which wouldn't make sense if they could just easily counter it. Also wouldn't make sense to not deploy such theoretical weapons in Oathbringer and RoW considering how important victories then were to Odium and the fact that time is against Fused. 

As for humanity "winning against the Fused" in the past, I wouldn't call not getting wiped out a victory. Each desolation they lost many and regressed technologically. The oath-pact was broken cause Heralds knew they will lose eventually.    

  

 They go after the plate to use them themselves not because they want to keep them away from the humans. 

 

 Personally I think that Sja-anat Is probably what the fused used to counter plate.  We see her  with the ability to control lesser Spren that she corrupts.  Plate is created by lesser Spren,   Theoretically then she can corrupt it  And just tell The Shard plate to turn into something else. 

 

 This would also explain why we don't see this power in this desolation.  Odium is afraid to lose more unmade and besides he doesn't trust Sja-anat 

Edited January 30, 2022 by bmcclure7

[bmcclure7]

On 1/21/2022 at 10:54 PM, Frustration said:

A point on this

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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)

 

 They were at their height during the false desolation. A 1000 years after the last true desolation.  That's a long time for the organization to grow Bill numbers And advance in their ideal.  I doubt they had even close to that during the true desolations. 

[Frustration he/him]

9 minutes ago, bmcclure7 said:

 They were at their height during the false desolation. A 1000 years after the last true desolation.  That's a long time for the organization to grow Bill numbers And advance in their ideal.  I doubt they had even close to that during the true desolations. 

During the false desolation windrunners(the largest order) and stonewards combined had only around 200 members, and while these were all of fourth or higher, that's still too small to have been in the low thousands.

Additionally during that time there was only one Bondsmith, I doubt that bondsmiths alone had fewer members than before. The radiants had started going downhill before the false Desolation

[bmcclure7]

14 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Hell, even Taravangian cites the First Ideal and seems to believe it, though as he's obviously not bonded to a spren we can't really use that as evidence of what a Radiant bond specifically permits. But it shows how differently people themselves can take it, at any rate.

To be fair, from the sound of it almost every singer may have been in a Regal form during the False Desolation, so that doesn't seem to be the normal state of things.

Interesting, do you remember where she said that?

True but even without unmade involvement the unmade the listeners had a literal army in a form of power 

[bmcclure7]

9 hours ago, Frustration said:

During the false desolation windrunners(the largest order) and stonewards combined had only around 200 members, and while these were all of fourth or higher, that's still too small to have been in the low thousands.

Additionally during that time there was only one Bondsmith, I doubt that bondsmiths alone had fewer members than before. The radiants had started going downhill before the false Desolation

 No that's wrong  The wind runners and stonewards  Had around 200 4th ideal radiance near one fort.  There's no reason to assume that was the entire force  And even if it was The ignores 1st 2nd ideal radiance, Not to mention the Squires. Even if the wind runners had 10  Squires to every 1  knight there Then that would be a 1000.  Kalidon had a lot more than 10.  So with the added mind let's say 20 Squires per every 4th ideal knight ( Is still on the conservative side)  That makes it up to 2000 there's your low thousand. 

 

 I said the knights radiant at its height  Not The bond Smith order. Besides the most likely reason why there was only one bondsmith was because they only needed 1. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by bmcclure7

[bmcclure7]

On 1/22/2022 at 11:01 AM, Frustration said:

So While yes their peak was likely after Aharietarm during the desolations they likely still had mid to low hundreds in each order, and close to 600-800 for some of the larger orders.

   I find those numbers very doubtful the visions we see of the true desolation show mainly regular humais the regular human soldiers with here and there somewhere someone in plate. More likely I think the large orders had a few dozen( Not counting Squires) at best slightly a little more than they do now.

[cometaryorbit]

I don't see the numbers of Radiants or the fact that the majority were basically noncombatants as being that relevant, because I don't think numbers would let "normal" form singers (including warform, but not Forms of Power*) win against combat-heavy Radiants (like Skybreakers) as long as they had Stormlight. Given (Mistborn spoilers)

Spoiler

how trivially Vin and Zane deal with normal soldiers in a fortified keep

and that the more combative Radiant orders, by 3rd Ideal, are almost certainly deadlier than Mistborn...

*The False Desolation was an exception, when Ba-Ado-Mishram did weird Connection things; I don't think Forms of Power were available between Desolations otherwise.

But the rest of the points are valid.