What happens to the Singers between Desolations ?

[fievelgoespostal]

Maybe this has been discussed before, but I have been wondering about this for a while.

 

After each Desolation ,  the Fused and Heralds go back to Damnation, and the humans prevail and rebuild civilization .  What happens to the surviving singers?  Do they just retreat  to some remote area and regroup for the next Desolation ?  You would think that after "ending" a Desolation you wouldnt just leave the enemy to go regroup for the next one in a few hundred years?

[Chandlerhimself]

They just went back and lived their lives. Also the Humans don't really win, persay, they just stop the desolation. There are still tons of singers and humans left. If the humans continued to attack afterwards, the humans might lose. In general it seems that both sides pretty much destroy their civilization each time and after the desolation is over both of them just want to go back and try to rebuild. I don't know if the humans could defeat the singers after the desolation ended. 

 

Also because of certain oaths, I don't think many Radients could help them commit genocide. There are also practical reasons. After the desolations there is free land and resources, so if someone leaves to fight the singers, the other humans will just steal their kingdom. In some desolations, there was so much damage that the humans went back to the stone age, so rebuilding and perhaps even getting free resources is a better use of time than trying to go after the singers with sticks and stones. The final reason is that the humans don't know where they are. Roshar is large and the technological level is still low. In WOK the humans are at peak technology for Roshar and they still can't find/defeat the singers on the shattered plains. In previous desolations they would have had even more trouble. 

[alder24]

14 hours ago, fievelgoespostal said:

Maybe this has been discussed before, but I have been wondering about this for a while.

 

After each Desolation ,  the Fused and Heralds go back to Damnation, and the humans prevail and rebuild civilization .  What happens to the surviving singers?  Do they just retreat  to some remote area and regroup for the next Desolation ?  You would think that after "ending" a Desolation you wouldnt just leave the enemy to go regroup for the next one in a few hundred years?

I think a peace treaty was signed and Singers returned to their settlements. Keep in mind, Desolations were devastating to Rosharan population, destroying their technology and one, during which Nohadon lived, killed 9 out of 10 Alethi. Later Desolations were so frequent that humanity had no time to reinvent and had to rely on Soulcasting or bronze weapons. That's horrific. They had no resources to continue fighting, to manpower to try to exterminate the entire race - and Radiants would oppose that for sure. The best outcome is to sign a peace treaty and focus on rebuilding before the next Desolation comes. 

They were able to self-govern but they didn't have their own state, they lived within borders of Silver Kingdoms - no Singer state was shown on map. Moreover there would be many Singers who lived among humans - I think that's the case because  they've started intermixing at some point and Herdazians and Horneaters are descendants of those relations. This suggests that at least some Singers lived among humans peacefully. There were also humans fighting on Odium's side, those would be more willing to accept Singers in their cities.

We know that before or during the False Desolation Singers started to call themselves Parsh and Radiants heard about it. It seems there was some contact between them at least. There was some presence of Parsh around Iri, because they were pushing in the direction of its capital, but I think they were spread across the whole Roshar.

Spoiler

HorseCannon

I didn't realize Horneaters had parshmen blood, didn't even realize that was possible. How closely are humans and parshmen related, do they have a common ancestor? Or is one an artificially created version of the other?

Brandon Sanderson

There was intermixing long ago. Horneaters and Herdazians are both a result. (Signs of this are the stone carapace on Herdazian fingernails and the Horneater extra jaw pieces--in the back of the mouth--for breaking shells.)

[...]

General Reddit 2015 (Nov. 16, 2015)

[fievelgoespostal]

This all makes sense! Thanks for the responses!