Cracks in the Shattered Plains

[ConfusedCow]

So I've always assumed that the Shattered plain was shattered by some large force directed downards at the center of the plains.  This is alluded to in the books right?  I personally imagined some sort of weapon used by the knights radiants right before the recreance.  Recently, I was reading a paper about crack patterns in plains on mars, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06220-3 .  The paper is well above my level of understanding, but Rapin et al. say that hexagonal crack patterns suggest repeated flooding.  While block like patterns are caused by a one time flood event.  This made me think about the shattered plains.  Could the shattered plains have been caused by repeated flooding and drying cycles?  That seems the most 'natural' explanation exspecially on a world with frequent storms.   Looking at the map makes me think hexagons not square.  Further there aren't any large cracks converging on some central point to like I would expect on a plate struck by a hammer.    Imagine an area of heavy agriculture around Narak, perhaps where humans had imported soil to grow crops.   Now imagine the humans abandon it and it gets flooded like a muddy lake and then dried repeatedly by highstorms, the mud over time forming deeper and deeper cracks and hardening to stone.  Perhaps its a red-herring to assume it was caused by some act of investiture or war.  

 

 

 

 

[alder24]

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

So I've always assumed that the Shattered plain was shattered by some large force directed downards at the center of the plains.  This is alluded to in the books right?  I personally imagined some sort of weapon used by the knights radiants right before the recreance.  Recently, I was reading a paper about crack patterns in plains on mars, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06220-3 .  The paper is well above my level of understanding, but Rapin et al. say that hexagonal crack patterns suggest repeated flooding.  While block like patterns are caused by a one time flood event.  This made me think about the shattered plains.  Could the shattered plains have been caused by repeated flooding and drying cycles?  That seems the most 'natural' explanation exspecially on a world with frequent storms.   Looking at the map makes me think hexagons not square.  Further there aren't any large cracks converging on some central point to like I would expect on a plate struck by a hammer.    Imagine an area of heavy agriculture around Narak, perhaps where humans had imported soil to grow crops.   Now imagine the humans abandon it and it gets flooded like a muddy lake and then dried repeatedly by highstorms, the mud over time forming deeper and deeper cracks and hardening to stone.  Perhaps its a red-herring to assume it was caused by some act of investiture or war.  

I highly doubt so. Highstorms are a repeating, normal phenomena, happening even before the Shattering of Adonalsium - why only the Shattered Plains got flooded and cracked in that way, and nothing else on Roshar where there are multitudes of places susceptible to floods? Why is it not growing when every Highstorm is causing flooding of the entire plains? Why is it so symmetrical? No soil could be brought into the Shattered Plains, that's too far east - the first Highstorm would blow it all away. 

I personally believe that the Shattered Plains were shattered by playing and amplifying the anti-tone of the city of Stormseat, and the symmetrical pattern of the Shattered Plains is the representation of that wave - like in cymatics it's a pattern which is created after playing an anti-tone of Stormseat. The stone that used to be in those cracks was likely turned into sand and was blown away by the first Highstorm.

[ConfusedCow]

I like alder24's theory better than my own.  It fits better with the books.  Still in defense of my theory.  1) The soil could have been created by the surges of transformation and/or destruction.  2) There may be other areas of roshar that are cracked.  Perhaps this area was uniquely flat, or uniquely muddy. 3) Perhaps it is growing, it certainly is still eroding away. 4) If it was destroyed in some energetic event shouldn't we see a pattern that reflects that, cracks shooting out from a central place, a wave pattern where the rocks were thrown up.  Find a way to crack a plate that makes it look even vaguely like the shattered plains.    

[alder24]

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

Still in defense of my theory.

Fair, it's fun to discuss it more. 

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

The soil could have been created by the surges of transformation and/or destruction. 

Transformation yes but it would be complicated, Division no - soil is much more than just dusted rocks. And again, the very first Highstorm would blow it all away. It's impossible for the soil to stick long enough to create an environment like that you're talking about. 

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

2) There may be other areas of roshar that are cracked.  Perhaps this area was uniquely flat, or uniquely muddy.

The only place that comes to my mind is the city of Yeddaw, which was cut by Shardblades, not formed naturally. The Shattered Plains seems to be unique and of greater significance - humans blamed Voidbringers for its destruction, but Listener's songs claims it wasn't them. Some theories also predicts that Plains are related to Honor's death.

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

3) Perhaps it is growing, it certainly is still eroding away.

Perhaps.

1 hour ago, ConfusedCow said:

4) If it was destroyed in some energetic event shouldn't we see a pattern that reflects that, cracks shooting out from a central place, a wave pattern where the rocks were thrown up.  Find a way to crack a plate that makes it look even vaguely like the shattered plains.   

The Shattered Plains are symmetrical. There is a pattern: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Shattered_Plains/Gallery#/media/File:Shattered_Plains_WoR_map.jpeg

WoK ch 46:

Quote

He roared past the Shattered Plains. They looked as if something very large had hit them at the center, sending rippling breaks outward. They too were larger than he’d expected; no wonder nobody had been able to nd their way through the chasms.

[...]

He did see that the eastern side of the plains was very dierent from the western side, marked by tall, spindly pillars, plateaus that had nearly been worn away. Despite that, he could see a symmetry to the Shattered Plains. From high above, the plains resembled a work of art.

WoR ch 71:

Quote

“The Plains are symmetrical,” Kaladin said.
She froze. “How do you know that?”
“I . . . it was a dream. I saw the plateaus arrayed in a wide symmetrical formation.” She looked back at her map, then gasped. She began scribbling notes on the side. Cymatics.”
“What?”
“I know where the Parshendi are.” Her eyes widened. “And the Oathgate. The center of the Shattered Plains. I can see it all—I can map almost the entire thing.” He shivered.
“You . . . what?”
She looked up sharply, meeting his eyes. “We have to get back.”
“Yes, I know. The highstorm.”
“More than that,” she said, standing. “I know too much now to die out here. The Shattered Plains are a pattern. This isn’t a natural rock formation.” Her eyes widened further. “At the center of these Plains was a city. Something broke it apart. A weapon . . . Vibrations? Like sand on a plate? An earthquake that could break rock . . . Stone became sand, and at the blowing of the highstorms, the cracks full of sand were hollowed out.”

 

Natural phenomena making a symmetrical pattern? No way.

[ConfusedCow]

I quite like the idea of a Shallan being misled to believe the explanation had to do with ancient mysteries and high sorcery when instead it was some ordinary boring thing.  It must be hard for people like Jasnah not to see everything as the design of some shard and to differentiate between science and 'religion/supernatural' realms. 

Find a cymatic pattern or a cracked plate that looks more like the map of the shattered planes than this stock photo of mud.  

 https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.sciencephoto.com%2Fe1%2F47%2F01%2F58%2Fe1470158-800px-wm.jpg&tbnid=W2lnB3rMTukJSM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencephoto.com%2Fmedia%2F163198%2Fview%2Fcracked-mud&docid=mN4BAMZsNsZodM&w=533&h=800&itg=1&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2&shem=canimge#imgrc=trwofe4WCbN4ZM&imgdii=W2lnB3rMTukJSM

[Argenti he/him]

29 minutes ago, ConfusedCow said:

I quite like the idea of a Shallan being misled to believe the explanation had to do with ancient mysteries and high sorcery when instead it was some ordinary boring thing.  It must be hard for people like Jasnah not to see everything as the design of some shard and to differentiate between science and 'religion/supernatural' realms. 

Find a cymatic pattern or a cracked plate that looks more like the map of the shattered planes than this stock photo of mud.  

 https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.sciencephoto.com%2Fe1%2F47%2F01%2F58%2Fe1470158-800px-wm.jpg&tbnid=W2lnB3rMTukJSM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencephoto.com%2Fmedia%2F163198%2Fview%2Fcracked-mud&docid=mN4BAMZsNsZodM&w=533&h=800&itg=1&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm4%2F2&shem=canimge#imgrc=trwofe4WCbN4ZM&imgdii=W2lnB3rMTukJSM

Mud cracks are like upside-down triangles and, as I understand it, don't get that deep. And the listeners say 

Quote

“They blame our people
For the loss of that land
The city that once covered it
Did range the eastern strand.
The power made known in the tomes of our clan
Our gods were not who shattered these plains. ”

~Song of wars, 55th stanza

Why would they feel this is necessary to mention in the history of wars if it was mud formation?

[Letryx13]

19 hours ago, alder24 said:

The only place that comes to my mind is the city of Yeddaw, which was cut by Shardblades, not formed naturally. The Shattered Plains seems to be unique and of greater significance - humans blamed Voidbringers for its destruction, but Listener's songs claims it wasn't them. Some theories also predicts that Plains are related to Honor's death.

Honor's death was my guess ever since we found out the plains weren't a natural formation.  Given how we now know that the Shard's power can relate to tones, and a couple of examples about how sounds can shape things (like Kabsal shows in WoK), l think it's the most likely explanation.

[alder24]

7 hours ago, ConfusedCow said:

Find a cymatic pattern or a cracked plate that looks more like the map of the shattered planes than this stock photo of mud.  

Here it is, last column, middle raw, not exactly the same but it looks like the Shattered Plains (a quick google search):

Spoiler

Truthfully every cymatics pattern is closer to the Shattered Plains because they are symmetrical (which nature can't reproduce on that scale), just like the Plains. Dry dirt isn't because it's dirt. Your photo is in no way similar to the Shattered Plains - no symmetry, scale is incomparably different, and it's a dirt, cracks are made because wet clay when dried shrinks, forming cracks. The Shattered Plains are made entirely out of solid rock, not dry dirt. Rocks can't crack like dirt just like that naturally, Erosion doesn't work on Roshar the same way as it works on Earth - Highstorm bring rain and winds, which cause erosion, but also the crem, which accumulate over years more than what erosion can degrade - it’s another reason why the Shattered Plains couldn't form naturally from erosion because the accumulation of crem would prevent it, and seal cracks. Not to mention erosion would need millions of years to make cracks that big, the Plains has existed for around 4000 years, Roshar didn't exist millions of years ago, most likely just around 12000 years (created by Adonalsium pre-Shattering). 

Spoiler

Jason

How does Roshar keep its rocky terrains? Wouldn't corrosion and vegetation break down the rocks outside of [Shinovar]?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes! Good question. This is why I built the crem from the beginning. That was my first question to myself, and you will actually find that on a geological timescale, that Roshar has drifted! Meaning been worn off on one end and is shrinking a little bit, and then different pieces are growing that way off of different parts. Very slow-scale. The existence of Roshar is not so long that you'd be able to tell much, but you know there've been inches if not feet lost from the eastern portion of Roshar but the dumping of the crem is my perhaps-fantastical science answer to "what happens to erosion". Plants grow, they do crack the stone, they do start to break it down, even Rosharan plants whose roots aren't meant to go deep or things like this, and then crem gets in those cracks, fills it in, sticks the broken pieces back together, and you end up with stone, still. That was my devised answer to having a world that is hit by storms but is also stony. 

This is the same reason coral reefs continue to exist. There's got to be a growth mechanism after things are being weathered a way to make sure that they continue to perpetuate. An above-water coral reef was one of my touchstones for Roshar.

YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)

 

Spoiler

Overlord Jebus

Was just the continent of Roshar created by Adonalsium or was the whole system created?

Brandon Sanderson

Whole system was created.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 (March 1, 2018)

 

[ConfusedCow]

I don't get the arguments about scale or symmetry.   There are symmetric swirls on Jupiter that you could toss Roshar through.  For each force there is an equal and opposite whatever.  Newton thinks symmetry is a fundamental natural law.  Though I recently read about how he tried squishing his eyeball to see if it changed the way he saw color so...  I like the cymatic patterns but I'm not sure they are a better fit.  I suppose I simply don't have Shallan's eye for symmetry.  I would point out that, to me atleast, Shallan is a very suspicious source of any observation or idea, a fundamentally unreliable narrator.  Let us assume her observations about the shattered planes, made after being almost killed, losing her mentor, smitten with a bridgeman, fighting with a bridgeman, being hunted and on the verge of drowning, were among her more lucid, rational thoughts.  Still Shallan knows nothing about geology.  She may be interested and even gifted in natural sciences, but she has no education in the matter and may be prone to leaping to exciting conclusions.  Consider how quickly people were taken in by things like Oumuamua or Homo Naledi.  Still I agree your suggestion about an anti-tonal investiture weapon has been alluded to in the books and seems more likely.  

[Nyght]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the scope of the shattered plains. I thought we were meant to assume that the plateaus were the buildings of natan natan with thousands of years of crem buildup.

[alder24]

24 minutes ago, Nyght said:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the scope of the shattered plains. I thought we were meant to assume that the plateaus were the buildings of natan natan with thousands of years of crem buildup.

No, they were not. On top of plateaus there are buildings covered with crem, which now look like some rock mounds on top of plateaus, most visible on Narak, where Parshendi are living in those buildings. The crem buildup was only big enough to raise the ground level only to the second floor of buildings.

WoR I-1:

Quote

That stone spire ahead, that had probably once been a tower. Over the centuries, it had grown a thick coating of crem from the raging storms. The soft crem had seeped into cracks and filled windows, then slowly hardened. The tower now looked like an enormous stalagmite, rounded point toward the sky, side knobbed with rock that looked as if it had been melted.
The spire must have had a strong core to survive the winds so long. Other examples of ancient engineering had not fared so well. Eshonai passed lumps and mounds, remnants of fallen buildings that had slowly been consumed by the Shattered Plains. The storms were unpredictable. Sometimes huge sections of rock would break free from formations, leaving gouges and jagged edges. Other times, spires would stand for centuries, growing—not shrinking—as the winds both weathered and augmented them.
[...]
She passed into the shadow of a big lump of rock that she always imagined might have been a city gate. From what little they’d learned from their spies over the years, she knew that the Alethi did not understand. They marched over the uneven surface of the plateaus and saw only natural rock, never knowing that they traversed the bones of a city long dead.

WoR ch 68:

Quote

Kaladin frowned, narrowing his eyes. The cross section of rock was normal cremstone on the outside, some strata visible as different shades of brown. The center of the stone, though, was white. You didn’t see white rock like that often; it had to be quarried. Which meant this was either a very strange occurrence, or . . .
“There was a structure here once,” Kaladin said. “A long time ago. It must have taken centuries for the crem to get that thick on something sticking out of the ground.”

WoR ch 83:

Quote

Where would the portal be? Most likely at the center, so that was the direction she went. There she found a large stone mound.
“This is all?” Rock asked. “He is just more rock.”
“That is exactly what I was hoping to find,” Shallan said. “Anything exposed to the air would have weathered away or become immured with crem. If we’re to discover anything useful, it will have to be inside.”
“Inside?” asked one of the bridgemen. “Inside what?”
“The buildings,” Shallan said, feeling at the wall until she found a ripple in the back of the rock. She turned to Renarin. “Prince Renarin, would you kindly slay this rock for me?”
[...]
“How did you know, sir?” asked Skar, the bridgeman. “How’d you guess that this rock mound would be hollow?”
“Because a clever woman,” Adolin said, “once asked me to attack a boulder for her.”
Together, he and these men had circled to the other side of the large rock formation that the chanting Parshendi were using to guard their backs. With a few twists of the Shardblade, Adolin had cut an entrance into the mound, which had proven to be hollow as he’d hoped.
[...]
The men nodded. Adolin took a deep breath, then closed his faceplate and stepped up to the wall. They were on the second floor of the building, but he estimated the buildup of crem outside would place that at about ground level. Indeed, from outside he heard a faint sound. Humming, resonating through the wall.

 

[Firesong she/her]

Watsonian:

I feel it would have been from tones due to the fact that the Listener's songs implied that it was broken by humans, and explicitly stated that they were broken by someone. The way they said it implies they are aware of a time when they were not broken. We also have had several characters notice the symmetry in the plains, Kaladin, Shallan, Nazh, and Khrissalla, to name a few. 

Quote

“They blame our people
For the loss of that land
The city that once covered it
Did range the eastern strand.
The power made known in the tomes of our clan
Our gods were not who shattered these plains. ”

~Song of wars, 55th stanza

The "Loss of the land, the city that once covered it", it implies a singular and quick event that left it uninhabitable. If it were Erosion, I feel it would have been like that long before humanity came to Roshar. It also would be substantially slower than the song implies, and also wouldn't make such a symmetrical formation. 

Spoiler

 

We also know about the relation of tones, cymatics, and Dawncities, and the Shattered Plains are the location of a Dawncity. i feel it marks some connection that we are supposed to make. 

Spoiler

 

Doylist: 

I also don't know why they would put so much focus on the symmetry of the plains from multiple narrators, imply they were broken by supernatural means, talk about cymatics and symmetry's relation to the Oathgate Cities, and have the Shattered Plains contain one of said cities, if there was not an explanation that related back to those things. It all is really building up the idea that the Shattered Plains were broken by some kind of Tone. 

Also, it would be a good reflection of the destruction of Ashyn due to Surges. To show that humanity never actually learned and just wound up doing it again. Albeit on a smaller scale. 

Also, would be a really bad twist for it to turn out to literally just be natural erosion and nothing else, given all the foreshadowing and statements to the contrary. It would be just extraordinarily underwhelming. 

Due to this, I still stand by my own theory.