Scadrian Tech and the Final Empire Theory

[Ashbringer he/him]

So, this is mostly just a random idea I had. I'm not generally much of a theorizer.

Autonomy is attacking Scadrial because it's a threat to her future plans, but the primary reason she had was aside from Autonomy's primary planet (whether that's Taldain or somewhere else), Scadrial is the most scientifically advanced. TLM shows they've got big guns, electricity, cars, radio, railways, and early motion pictures and missile technologies. And that's not including the Invested technological advancements, which include airships and nuclear weaponry. Autonomy has access to better technology (most likely including her Men of Red and Gold), but Scadrial is close.

The thing is, the Final Empire had halted Scadrial's technological advancements for over a thousand years. 

We know that Scadrial had gunpowder weaponry before the Final Empire from the HoA Epigraphs, and two other benchmarks of advancement from that point - Scadrians advanced to Industrial Revolution-level technology in under 400 years after the Catacendre, and us humans on earth only started using gunpowder for weapons around 700-1000 years ago, and went through our Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.

And depending on the definition of "gunpowder weapons", it could also be a lot more advanced than that. They also had pocket watches, an invention only made about 500 years ago.

 

So if the Final Empire hadn't inhibited technological advancement, then Scadrial wouldn't be at Industrial Revolution era during the time of TLM, they'd be about 400-800 years more technologically advanced than the modern world. That would presumably throw them pretty far into the steampunk Era 3 level. And presumably, a civilization designed to be superior by Autonomy didn't pause technologically for 1000 years to let Scadrial catch back up.

Could it be possible that stagnation had something to do with Autonomy? We know she had a hand in pre-Era-1 Scadrial from Trell showing up there. Any thoughts?

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

11 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Could it be possible that stagnation had something to do with Autonomy? We know she had a hand in pre-Era-1 Scadrial from Trell showing up there. Any thoughts?

I don't think so.

Several Shards have been shown to be loath to get involved in the conflicts between other Shards. I don't think Autonomy is any different or else we'd have seen her interfering on Roshar by now.

As far as I see it Autonomy was likely expecting Ruin's imprisonment to last indefinitely just as every other Shard currently expects Odium's imprisonment to not end just because they don't believe it will.

[therunner he/him]

48 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

So if the Final Empire hadn't inhibited technological advancement, then Scadrial wouldn't be at Industrial Revolution era during the time of TLM, they'd be about 400-800 years more technologically advanced than the modern world. That would presumably throw them pretty far into the steampunk Era 3 level. And presumably, a civilization designed to be superior by Autonomy didn't pause technologically for 1000 years to let Scadrial catch back up.

Could it be possible that stagnation had something to do with Autonomy? We know she had a hand in pre-Era-1 Scadrial from Trell showing up there. Any thoughts?

I think it was stated somewhere that the stagnation was result of Lord Ruler being kind of conservative. He was a simple packman, and seemed to have distate for the technologies and culture of other nations, so it would make sense he would suppress what he did not like.

Also I think Autonomy was not making overt moves earlier because Preservation and Ruin would act against her (while they are opponents when it comes to fate of Scadrial, they would presumably work together against another Shard butting in), whereas Harmony is increasingly impotent and needs to act in indirect ways.

[lacrossedeamon]

1 hour ago, Ashbringer said:

So, this is mostly just a random idea I had. I'm not generally much of a theorizer.

Autonomy is attacking Scadrial because it's a threat to her future plans, but the primary reason she had was aside from Autonomy's primary planet (whether that's Taldain or somewhere else), Scadrial is the most scientifically advanced. TLM shows they've got big guns, electricity, cars, radio, railways, and early motion pictures and missile technologies. And that's not including the Invested technological advancements, which include airships and nuclear weaponry. Autonomy has access to better technology (most likely including her Men of Red and Gold), but Scadrial is close.

The thing is, the Final Empire had halted Scadrial's technological advancements for over a thousand years. 

We know that Scadrial had gunpowder weaponry before the Final Empire from the HoA Epigraphs, and two other benchmarks of advancement from that point - Scadrians advanced to Industrial Revolution-level technology in under 400 years after the Catacendre, and us humans on earth only started using gunpowder for weapons around 700-1000 years ago, and went through our Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.

And depending on the definition of "gunpowder weapons", it could also be a lot more advanced than that. They also had pocket watches, an invention only made about 500 years ago.

 

So if the Final Empire hadn't inhibited technological advancement, then Scadrial wouldn't be at Industrial Revolution era during the time of TLM, they'd be about 400-800 years more technologically advanced than the modern world. That would presumably throw them pretty far into the steampunk Era 3 level. And presumably, a civilization designed to be superior by Autonomy didn't pause technologically for 1000 years to let Scadrial catch back up.

Could it be possible that stagnation had something to do with Autonomy? We know she had a hand in pre-Era-1 Scadrial from Trell showing up there. Any thoughts?

Well you have to think about what resources are available and if Shards have done anything to mitigate that. Harmony thinks he overcoddled the Basin which stagnated them but he also provided them with stuff like petrochemicals which most planets most likely don’t have access to due to age. Taldain was also isolated so it doesn’t get access to new ideas and technology via worldhopping. But we also haven’t seen modern Taldain, so we can’t say what their tech level was during TLM.

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

TLM shows they've got big guns, electricity, cars, radio, railways, and early motion pictures and missile technologies.

Most of those, like radios, motion pictures and missiles, were given only to Set by Autonomy. I'm not sure about radios, as they might be Malwish tech, but Malwish have also airships and medalions, and it was after Malwish met the Basin Autonomy decided that Scadrial needs to be destroyed.

4 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

The thing is, the Final Empire had halted Scadrial's technological advancements for over a thousand years. 

We know that Scadrial had gunpowder weaponry before the Final Empire from the HoA Epigraphs, and two other benchmarks of advancement from that point - Scadrians advanced to Industrial Revolution-level technology in under 400 years after the Catacendre, and us humans on earth only started using gunpowder for weapons around 700-1000 years ago, and went through our Industrial Revolution 200 years ago.

And depending on the definition of "gunpowder weapons", it could also be a lot more advanced than that. They also had pocket watches, an invention only made about 500 years ago.

 

So if the Final Empire hadn't inhibited technological advancement, then Scadrial wouldn't be at Industrial Revolution era during the time of TLM, they'd be about 400-800 years more technologically advanced than the modern world. That would presumably throw them pretty far into the steampunk Era 3 level. And presumably, a civilization designed to be superior by Autonomy didn't pause technologically for 1000 years to let Scadrial catch back up.

Could it be possible that stagnation had something to do with Autonomy? We know she had a hand in pre-Era-1 Scadrial from Trell showing up there. Any thoughts?

I think it was quite the opposite. Trell was one of the gods pre Rashek Ascension. It's possible he was still an Autonomy Avatar, and was actively working to slow down Scadrial's technological progress. And when Rashek came to power, he abandoned techs that was unfamiliar to him and that threatened his powers - like gunpowder, to make sure no rebellion would stand a chance to his army that had to train for years. This tech devolution was all Rashek doing, to secure his position. And Autonomy was most likely satisfy with the outcome and left Scadrial on its own. 

However we know from WoBs that Autonomy was heavily involved with Taldain's technological progress, but at some point she stopped and even started to suppress it. You got me thinking. Could this have happened right after Rashek Ascension? Could this have been because Autonomy lost his main rival and didn’t have to worry that Scadrial will develop better tech than Taldain, so she stopped supporting Taldain? That was a long time ago, around 1400 years ago. Timeline might fit well.

[Ashbringer he/him]

I haven't actually read Arcanum Unbound yet, so I'm not really up to date on the chronology. But I was under the impression Autonomy didn't purposefully stifle technological advancement on Taldain, she just isolated it from the rest of the cosmere and the tech stagnation was a side effect. Why she did that, I'm not sure.

Also if any Shard is going to be interfering on other planets, I'm confident in saying it would most likely be Autonomy. Maybe an argument for Endowment, but mostly Autonomy. I could pretty easily see her interfering with things on Scadrial when all in her way was a tunnel-visioned Ruin and a half-dead Preservation. She doesn't seem scared of Harmony's power at all, although that's leveled by his inexperience.

[HSuperLee]

While this speculation would require more examples of Autonomous invested arts, I have to wonder if its possible that Scadrial is developing as fast as they are because they don't have any society changing magics. Allow me to explain; most of the magic on Scadrial is personally empowering, but doesn't transform the way of life of those around the Invested (yet). Compare this to places like Sel, Nalthis, or Roshar where the presence of magic changes the very early history of technological development. We've barely seen what Sellish magics are capable of, yet Elantrians can make virtually any resource from any other. They can heal nearly any injury. Agricultural and medical research is to stagnate as a result. Similarly, on Nalthis, better health can be purchased or inherited. Yeah, most people have only one Breath, but the fact you can theoretically buy better health is going to discourage (though by no means stop) medical innovation. Beyond that, Awakening has an absurd amount of military innovation, which, regardless of what you think of military operations, sends it down a different path from the technological development of military technologies. In real world history, military developments have been essential to the discovery of civilian applications, and I can only imagine it would be similar on other worlds. Meanwhile, on Roshar, they have almost no incentive to develop technologically, because stromlight and spren will focus them almost exclusively on fabrial, rather than technological, innovation. Understanding of the mundane sciences on Roshar are almost guaranteed to lag behind understanding of magical sciences.

Meanwhile, on Scardrial, and possibly some of Autonomy's many planets, there aren't really magical shortcuts to technology. This is going to change fairly soon on Scadrial, as Ettmetal and medallions allow for the mechanization of the metallic arts, but that's only after they've already gotten a substantial head-start on understanding the workings, and more importantly the value, of mundane science and technology. Many planets in the Cosmere might not even see a need for dedicated scientific research since they have magic to provide faster and more reliable solutions for many of their problems. But Scadrian magical knowledge is developing alongside their mundane knowledge, allowing the two to compliment one another rather than magic overshadowing science. This idea is essentially Sazed regretting how much he's given the Basin on a much grander scale, magic as a whole may be acting as a disincentive to mundane technology on many Cosmere worlds.

We have not seen enough of Autonomy's magic systems to be certain of their society shaping capacity, but it seems likely to me that she's not likely to encourage independent growth and development, due to her strange relationship with her Shard's Intent.

All that to say, I doubt that Autonomy had something to do with the millennium of stagnation on Scadrial. Its possible she wouldn't even see interference as necessary considering their local Shards wanted to 1. freeze everything in place and 2. destroy everything, and she just figured the whole situation would work itself out. Yeah, classical Scadrial might have been developing at an alarming rate (though perhaps it was not and that's a modern Scadrian trait) but is that really a concern with two anti-societal Shards in residence? And for a thousand years, it must have seemed like the problem did work itself out. Technology was stagnating and one of those Shards was dying. Neat. Problem solved. Who could have expected both Shards to die simultaneously and for the perfect vessel to appear and be capable of using both Shards without being torn apart by their opposing Intents? As far as most of the Cosmere was concerned, Scadrial was a doomed world, of course Autonomy didn't need to worry about it. But then it revived, and started getting dangerously close to its fabrial threshold*, which must have seemed out of reach in the days of classical Scadrial. 

note* by "fabrial threshold" I mean the point at which mundane science is developed enough to allow the creation of magictech (fabrials). This point is going to vary for different worlds, with places like Roshar and Nalthis having extremely low fabrial thresholds, while Scadrial's is unusually high. 

[Frustration]

11 hours ago, alder24 said:

However we know from WoBs that Autonomy was heavily involved with Taldain's technological progress, but at some point she stopped and even started to suppress it.

@Ashbringer is right, she didn't stop or suppress it, she just cut the world off.

As of TLM she is giving new technology

[alder24]

14 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

I haven't actually read Arcanum Unbound yet, so I'm not really up to date on the chronology. But I was under the impression Autonomy didn't purposefully stifle technological advancement on Taldain, she just isolated it from the rest of the cosmere and the tech stagnation was a side effect. Why she did that, I'm not sure.

TLM epiloge 4:

Quote

“Lead us into a new technological age,” Kelsier said. “Help us find waysto defend ourselves, and perhaps accomplish even more. Autonomy consistently shares with her people the things they can accomplish withelectricity and industry. You don’t.”

Spoiler

DrogaKrolow

Technological progress. So Scadrial is going all the way to cyberpunk.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

DrogaKrolow

But do you plan to do it anywhere else?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, with an asterisk, right? Roshar has a very different technological path but they have access to so much more Investiture in an easy to use format. Roshar is really heading toward what we call magicpunk, or things like this, magepunk, where you are using a magical power source and things like this. So their technology is going to go weird but it's going to go fast once they start figuring things out because they have easy access to Investiture resources.

Scadrial: slower for various reasons and things like that, but it's ahead.

And then there was Taldain, which was really far ahead but then froze when it got-- Offworld travel was stopped and it became isolationist.

So most everybody is kind of heading that direction but, yeah.

DrogaKrolow.pl interview (March 17, 2017)

So yes, I was mistaken with Autonomy suppressing tech, but she is, and most likely was in the past, helping progress Taldain's tech, and at some point she closed off the planet and it's likely she also stop helping them with tech. The effect would be technological stagnation - the same happened with the Basin - Sazed helped them initially but he stopped and let them develop technology themself - which resulted in perhaps even 300 years of technological stagnation.

14 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

While this speculation would require more examples of Autonomous invested arts, I have to wonder if its possible that Scadrial is developing as fast as they are because they don't have any society changing magics. Allow me to explain; most of the magic on Scadrial is personally empowering, but doesn't transform the way of life of those around the Invested (yet). Compare this to places like Sel, Nalthis, or Roshar where the presence of magic changes the very early history of technological development. We've barely seen what Sellish magics are capable of, yet Elantrians can make virtually any resource from any other. They can heal nearly any injury. Agricultural and medical research is to stagnate as a result. Similarly, on Nalthis, better health can be purchased or inherited. Yeah, most people have only one Breath, but the fact you can theoretically buy better health is going to discourage (though by no means stop) medical innovation. Beyond that, Awakening has an absurd amount of military innovation, which, regardless of what you think of military operations, sends it down a different path from the technological development of military technologies. In real world history, military developments have been essential to the discovery of civilian applications, and I can only imagine it would be similar on other worlds. Meanwhile, on Roshar, they have almost no incentive to develop technologically, because stromlight and spren will focus them almost exclusively on fabrial, rather than technological, innovation. Understanding of the mundane sciences on Roshar are almost guaranteed to lag behind understanding of magical sciences.

That's a great way to explain it, I fully agree. The best example of it is Roshar. They had Radiants for thousands of years and they didn't have a need to develop, as Surges could just do anything better. Only when Radiants disappeared, 1500 years before WoK, they had to start developing on their own. Recently they've made a huge progress in fabrial technology, and with discovery of Urithiru they've realized that ancient Radiants, who have been held as technologically superior, were less developed than modern day Rosharians. Everything, except for Shards and Soulcasters, is now better than it used to be - even fabrials, as Fused noted they develop fabrials unknown to them, with a different method, like Bridge 4.

Just to give perspective on how slowly Roshar was advancing technology, 4500 years ago in Rosharian history Last Desolation ended, since then they still use steel and iron. 4500 years ago on Earth Great Pyramids of Giza were built with the use of copper and stone tools. Now we have lasers, and planes. 

[cometaryorbit]

I think a vast amount of knowledge was lost on Roshar at and around the Recreance. The loss of Urithiru as a travel/trade hub and the loss of its libraries just before, the destruction of the False Desolation, the Recreance itself and the loss of contact with intelligent spren, the deaths of most former Radiants and many other deaths in the bloody conflicts over Shardblades just afterward... I think this was effectively a collapse of civilization for at least most of Roshar. Likely not as bad as a full Desolation, but probably more complete than, say, the fall of the Roman Empire on Earth (because Roshar's all one continent and was all culturally connected by Urithiru and the Radiants -- there were no areas unaffected, the way China and Mesoamerica were untouched by the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.)

Scadrial was early-1800s tech, with steam but pre-railroad, at the time of Alendi. They've only really advanced about 100 years, or a bit less, from that at the time of Era 2, but in addition to what TLR suppressed they had to build from zero in terms of physical infrastructure after the Catacendre (though knowledge was preserved). Also, the Basin population is quite tiny for an industrial society even currently, and was much smaller in early post-Catacendre times... there were just a lot fewer minds working on ideas, and everyone was close together, making it easier for wrong ideas to become accepted and limit progress.

Another factor limiting a lot of Cosmere planets' advancement is going to be limited resources. @lacrossedeamonis right that many worlds may lack fossil fuels, and it seems to go a lot farther than that. Lumar and First of the Sun (and apparently the other inhabited worlds in its system) are basically worlds of islands, thus likely have either limited quantities of or outright inability to access many metal/mineral resources... they might also lack critical biological materials used in our technological history, like (natural) rubber. Lumar may not use zephyr aether spores instead of gunpowder just because they're better or safer - there's no guarantee they have access to good sulfur deposits. They might also have the same low-population issue of Era 2 Scadrial since their habitable area is likely relatively small.

Roshar likely also has poor access to many metals and mineral resources due to its very weird geology (that's fixable with Soulcasting, of course, but access to that was pretty limited and constrained by ritual until very recently).

Nalthis is an oddity, it seems well set up for advancement... but its known history is all quite recent, and the area that Hallandren seems to know about/have trade with appears weirdly small given their technological and economic level. I'm not sure if it was recently settled by humans (Roshar style), or if some kind of disaster occurred there, or if the continent is quite small and the Idris/Hallandren civilization just isn't interested in events before their rise, or what. The appearance of Returned ~600 years before Warbreaker is strange; was Endowment not around till then?

I also wonder about Taldain being cut off for a while stopping or greatly slowing its tech advancement. We didn't need contact with other planets to develop our tech, and I think the point they're at before being cut off is enough for their science/tech revolution to be self sustaining (as opposed to, say, how Greco-Roman civilization invented steam engines but never did anything with them). So Taldain's resources may be more limited than we'd at first think - is there a map of Darkside in the Omnibus? I can see Dayside being super limited because of the geology being poor for mining and the biology likely lacking a lot of resources, but if Darkside is more Earthlike... but is it?

On the other hand, we only really have one example in RL. We don't really know what makes a tech revolution take off like 1600+ or stagnate like Greco-Roman civilization.

Edited February 16, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[lacrossedeamon]

6 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

I think a vast amount of knowledge was lost on Roshar at and around the Recreance. The loss of Urithiru as a travel/trade hub and the loss of its libraries just before, the destruction of the False Desolation, the Recreance itself and the loss of contact with intelligent spren, the deaths of most former Radiants and many other deaths in the bloody conflicts over Shardblades just afterward... I think this was effectively a collapse of civilization for at least most of Roshar. Likely not as bad as a full Desolation, but probably more complete than, say, the fall of the Roman Empire on Earth (because Roshar's all one continent and was all culturally connected by Urithiru and the Radiants -- there were no areas unaffected, the way China and Mesoamerica were untouched by the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.)

Would you say a Desolation is less, just as, or more devastating than the Bronze Age collapse?

Sel  is also kinda weird. We only see so much of the map and while Teod and Arelon have good contact with the various nations of the Fjordell Empire they seem to have barely any contact with the Rose Empire to the north and we know nothing of the south.

[Could Be Fire]

On 2/16/2023 at 11:52 AM, cometaryorbit said:

Nalthis is an oddity, it seems well set up for advancement... but its known history is all quite recent, and the area that Hallandren seems to know about/have trade with appears weirdly small given their technological and economic level. I'm not sure if it was recently settled by humans (Roshar style), or if some kind of disaster occurred there, or if the continent is quite small and the Idris/Hallandren civilization just isn't interested in events before their rise, or what. The appearance of Returned ~600 years before Warbreaker is strange; was Endowment not around till then?

I think the Hallandren/Idris jungle area is just super super remote. There's some comments about trade with other kingdoms so my vibe was more Sel/Scandrial (there's other civilizations in the world that our protags just don't really care about b/c they're far away) than Theorndy (spooky mystery lost civilizations).

Possibly also enforced stagnation? Last time they had an explosion of research it lead to the Manywar and everyone's favorite super nuke equivalent Nightblood. The Idrian govt at least is canonically? And we don't don't really see any "cosmere researchers" as we know existed pre-Manywar

The first Returned was also one of the colonists. The Returned are dependent on Awakening, not the reverse, so Endowment could have existed before.

It's interesting, both Nalthis and Roshar seem to be more cosmere-aware in their past than their narrative present. It would really interesting to know how the Manywar lines up with the Desolations.

[cometaryorbit]

On 2/16/2023 at 8:45 PM, lacrossedeamon said:

Would you say a Desolation is less, just as, or more devastating than the Bronze Age collapse?

Sel  is also kinda weird. We only see so much of the map and while Teod and Arelon have good contact with the various nations of the Fjordell Empire they seem to have barely any contact with the Rose Empire to the north and we know nothing of the south.

A full Desolation was way worse, both in terms of mortality and in terms of technological regression. The Bronze Age collapse destroyed/toppled civilizations, but I don't think people generally forgot about metalworking completely - the Heralds had to teach it from scratch on Roshar. 90% death rate is worse than anything in our history except maybe some of the most vulnerable Native American and Polynesian societies getting hit by foreign diseases - and this was species-wide.

Sel is larger than Earth, and as of Elantris I think their shipbuilding tech is not *that* advanced - not enough to make large scale trade practical. There is some contact (there's a gyorn in Emperor's Soul) but it's very limited. I think it's like China and the Roman Empire - both sides knew the other existed, but trade was indirect, and so they had little reliable knowledge.

On 3/2/2023 at 1:38 AM, Could Be Fire said:

I think the Hallandren/Idris jungle area is just super super remote. There's some comments about trade with other kingdoms so my vibe was more Sel/Scandrial (there's other civilizations in the world that our protags just don't really care about b/c they're far away) than Theorndy (spooky mystery lost civilizations).

Possibly also enforced stagnation? Last time they had an explosion of research it lead to the Manywar and everyone's favorite super nuke equivalent Nightblood. The Idrian govt at least is canonically? And we don't don't really see any "cosmere researchers" as we know existed pre-Manywar

The first Returned was also one of the colonists. The Returned are dependent on Awakening, not the reverse, so Endowment could have existed before.

It's interesting, both Nalthis and Roshar seem to be more cosmere-aware in their past than their narrative present. It would really interesting to know how the Manywar lines up with the Desolations.

There's definitely discussion of trade with other kingdoms, but I think they're relatively local (on a planetary scale). The Bright Sea is an inland sea. (The continent might just be relatively small, though.)

Enforced stagnation is totally possible, but I don't think it entirely explains the lack of references to either ancient history or truly distant lands.

Awakening as an art is fairly recent, but giving away Breath to Returned might have been known before.

The Manywar is way later than the Desolations.

The Manywar was 300 years before Warbreaker, which is between Mistborn Era 1 and Stormlight. The Last Desolation was 4500 years (~5000 Earth years) before WoK.

Edited March 14, 2023 by cometaryorbit