Theory about the Highstorms and the Planet *Spoilerish*

[tbrickey022]

So, while reading the book, a few thoughts came to me.  I didn't see anything like them posted yet, so I thought I'd see what everyone thinks.  Feel free to merge them, or run with them, to create something a little more cohesive.

1.  Seasons last only a few weeks, but a flashback scene indicates that seasons used to last about 40 days.  This leads me to believe that the planet is actually tilting on it axis back and forth at a much greater rate than it one was.

2.  The Highstorms are vast in size, and come fairly often.  Perhaps the planet is also spinning too fast.  This could mean that the Highstorms are an effect of this spinning, or since they come from the "Origin of Storms", they could be a manufactured way of altering the planets spin to something habitable.

3.  The Shattered Plains, when viewed from above, seem to have a large center, with radiating cracks.  This could be from an enormous impact, which may have some bearing on the previous two points.

4.  (Absolute madness, but a thought)  What if one of the moons was part of the planet at one point, and the loss of mass is what altered the planets motion?  Or, what if some crazy powerful lashings to one of the moons is what shattered the plains and threw the planet off?

I have some other thoughts, but I think this will be a good start.  Let me know what you all think, and maybe it will turn out I'm not all that crazy after all!

[Link Von Kelsier Harvey he/him]

4)  You sir, just blew my mind!

[Emeralis00 she/her]

5) the Tower in the shattered plains is vastly different from the plateaus around it. as you said in point three the shattered plains looks like a crater.  maybe the tower is a meteorite that hit that area?

[Erik Holmes]

Maybe that's how Rayse killed the Almighty, he threw a big rock at him...

[Munin he/him]

Maybe that's how Rayse killed the Almighty, he threw a big rock at him...

Or the Shattered Plains was the impact point for a Shard's arrival on Roshar.

[Deano Stormblessed he/him]

Except the plains don't look like a depressed hole, which occurs when a meteorite strikes the earth. It is a number of plateaus, all with different heights, and no pattern.

But tbrickey002, have brought up some interesting questions. I especially like point 4. I am sure that the three moons will play a part latter on in the story, at least being used to explain the differences in the environment now, and in the past.

[Silus - Shard of Flame he/him]

For 4) you'd pretty much have to be right in the middle of a highstorm to get enough stormlight for that... Which is actually an awesome image.

[Deano Stormblessed he/him]

For 4) you'd pretty much have to be right in the middle of a highstorm to get enough stormlight for that... Which is actually an awesome image.

Inside the eye of the storm, wind picking up and throwing around rocks yet leaving you untouched. Lightning flickering in the sky, thunder shacking the earth, and a man, just standing there glowing. Stormlight leaking from his body, swirling around him like mist, forming strange patterns. Then the ground shakes, as rocks start flying upwards.

One, two, three, four. The man starts lashing to the ground, fixing his lashings to a point far above. Ten, eleven, twelve. Not enough, really not enough.

Fifty, sixty seventy. Will this ever end?

One hundred, Two hundred, three hundred.

A shift and then the ground finally gives way. A giant rock reaching for the sky.

***

It does raise the question to what would he be latching the lashings to? Another moon? If this is true (big if) it could be linked to the person in the storms. (i.e. the person in the storms if the person who put the moon up into the sky, as an aftereffect of using that much stormlight is that his physical body burnt up and he can only live in the storms)

[Ryan he/him]

Lashings don't seem to require a physical anchor. What appears to be happening is that the Lashing creates a point attractor that pulls only the target towards it. A single Lashing is the equivalent of 1G of acceleration, or, in other words, Lashing one time pulls as strongly as the planet's native gravity.

Slightly less certain is how specific is the target of a Lashing. If you try to Lash the planet, how thin is the Stormlight spread? In all of Szeth's Lashings, he targets a discrete object, and this affects the entire object at once, with one possible exception: the balcony.

As for this entire theory: it would make for a plausible explanation of Roshar's weather patterns in the absence of magic, and it's a compelling thought. However, there are several problems with it.

First, variations in axial tilt would also be accompanied by varying day length as well as the positioning of the sun. During wintertime at 40 degrees north (that's where I've lived nearly my entire life), the sun traverses an arc that is about 20 degrees above the southern horizon. It's hardly up! You could predict the onset of the seasons fairly accurately by both the length of the days as well as the inclination of the sun, and I would expect a Stormwarden to have figured this out, but we hear nothing about it.

Then there's the idea the Highstorms are somehow a natural meteorological phenomenon caused by a rapidly rotating planet. Putting aside that there's no indication in the text of shorter days and nights, the Highstorms are anything but natural. They are the source of magical energy that powers most of the magic we've seen thus far. They follow a pattern in their frequency of occurrence with only slight deviations therefrom.

And then there's the Weepings that happen every year like clockwork. Notably, there are no Highstorms during a Weeping.

So here's an alternate explanation. The Highstorms are magical in origin, and we've yet to see how they come about, but the screwy weather is all their fault. The atmosphere is so chaotic in their wake that they throw the seasons way off. Have you ever had a 70-degree day in the middle of December, or a 60-degree day in September? Even on our planet, the seasons sometimes take a break due to the vagaries of the winds.

Weepings, then, probably are the same thing as Highstorms, only more spread out. The same amount of energy that powers a mighty highstorm to pass in a matter of hours is diffused over days or weeks (I forget how long weepings are), resulting in a planet-wide perpetual drizzle.

And I don't think any human could contain enough Stormlight to create a moon through Lashing. I could be wrong, but it sounds excessive based on the scale of magic use we've seen.

Cool ideas though. They'd be neat if they turn out to be true.

[Deano Stormblessed he/him]

What would happen, is that while you where making the lashings, you were being recharged by the highstorm (or at least the spheres are being recharged, then you use them, and they are recharged again so on and so forth. I don't know if this is possible, but in theory from what we know it may be.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

a) You would have to have SO many spheres for this to work, even with them constantly recharging. Like covering like a decent portion of the planet.

You would have to be standing outside in the middle of a frikking highstorm in order to access the spheres while they recharge.

I just don't see getting the amount of Stormlight necessary to coat a large portion of the planet in it.

The theory itself is really cool, but I can't see a way for it to work.

[Morderkaine he/him]

a) You would have to have SO many spheres for this to work, even with them constantly recharging. Like covering like a decent portion of the planet.

You would have to be standing outside in the middle of a frikking highstorm in order to access the spheres while they recharge.

I just don't see getting the amount of Stormlight necessary to coat a large portion of the planet in it.

The theory itself is really cool, but I can't see a way for it to work.

What if it was done by a Voidbringer, or a group of Voidbringers? They can hold Stormlight in perfectly and could therefor spend months, or even years gathering enough Stormlight and then just let 'r 'rip, so to speak, at any time.

[Emeralis00 she/her]

a) You would have to have SO many spheres for this to work, even with them constantly recharging. Like covering like a decent portion of the planet.

You would have to be standing outside in the middle of a frikking highstorm in order to access the spheres while they recharge.

I just don't see getting the amount of Stormlight necessary to coat a large portion of the planet in it.

The theory itself is really cool, but I can't see a way for it to work.

What if it was done by a Voidbringer, or a group of Voidbringers? They can hold Stormlight in perfectly and could therefor spend months, or even years gathering enough Stormlight and then just let 'r 'rip, so to speak, at any time.

I would think there would be a limit to how much stormlight a voidbringer could hold, and does the amount of stormlight needed increase over distance?

[Andrew the Great he/him]

We don't know if the amount necessary increases over distance, but if I had to guess, no. It's just that it's hard to lash to things that you can't see.  This is all just me speculating, though.

Now the voidbringers....that's an interesting idea. You'd still have to have a whole lot of Voidbringers to do it (like between several hundred to a couple thousand) but you could very possibly do it if they were in sync enough with each other (which if the Parshendi and their singing is any indication, isn't a problem) and if they were spread out enough with enough stormlight between them to do it.

Hmmm.. I don't know why this would be relevant to the plot in any way except that it screws up the weather, but it's a pretty awesome theory.

[Morderkaine he/him]

Maybe it wasn't to done to change the weather. This is a BIG if but, what if the Chasmfiends pupate into Thunderclasts theory is right. Then maybe the Voidbringers created the Shattered Plains specifically as a habitat for Chasmfiends and Thunderclasts and any changes to the weather were just side effects. Also nobody knows what, if anything, exists in the centre of The Plains. We do know, however, that the Tower has a very different landscape than the rest of the plains. Perhaps this is because it is topped by a massive pile equally massive gems, or maybe just one

[Zas678 he/him]

1. The '40 day' season is the Weeping which is kind of the sign of a passing from one year to another. Now maybe in a Dalinar uber-flashback the seasons were longer, but the 40 day one still happens.