Are the singers older than the Stormfather?

[Dostaglou]

I was doing a re-read of the WoR and something struck me this time through: the singers have a Stormform but everyone claims the EverStorm is brand new. Perhaps this could be ignored a bit given that the form also gives them other attributes but the listener's songs talk about the form bringing on the storms. 

Quote

Stormform is said to cause
A tempest of wind and showers
Beware its powers, beware its powers.
Though its coming brings the gods their night,
It obliges a bloodred spren.
Beware its end, beware its end.

It is also noted that the listeners think of him as a "traitor". This implies some kind of connection, bond being broken. 

In Eila Steele and WaT seem to say the original gods were Wind, Stone and Spren. There is also mention that people used to worship the Wind until it was usurped or forgotten in place of the Storm. 
 

Quote

I have read that in the ancient days, the Wind often spoke to both human and singer. It would then mean that the Wind stopped talking not because of Odium, but because of people who began to fear her…

Or to worship the Storm instead.

All this makes me wonder: did the singers create the Stormfather and through some act of Honor he was corrupted?

Edited October 27, 2024 by Dostaglou

[logicless.bt]

6 hours ago, Dostaglou said:

All this makes me wonder: did the singers create the Stormfather and through some act of Honor he was corrupted?

The Sibling said that they themself were a deliberate child of Cultivation and Honor, but also that they were intended as Stone's "legacy" which implies a certain level of parenthood from Stone imo. It's possible that the Storm was simply an aspect of Wind that Honor elevated into godhood. The Radiants getting Stormlight from its namesake also explains why people started worshiping it.

The "traitor" thing I think comes from Honor/the Stormfather choosing humanity over the singers during Roshar's episode of God Swap.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 10/27/2024 at 7:37 PM, Dostaglou said:

In Eila Steele and WaT seem to say the original gods were Wind, Stone and Spren. There is also mention that people used to worship the Wind until it was usurped or forgotten in place of the Storm. 
 

All this makes me wonder: did the singers create the Stormfather and through some act of Honor he was corrupted?

The Singers need the Highstorm for their forms. Much of the ecology of Roshar needs the Highstorm to recharge their gemhearts.

Hence the Highstorm must be ancient. That something so monumental should not have had a spren associated with it seems implausible.

[Slayd_07]

I'm of the mind that the process that turned these primordial spren we've heard about (wind, stone, night) into the more familiar bondsmith spren we know about (stormfather, sibling, nightwatcher) is roughly the same process that Odium uses to create Unmade - it's the same idea, at least. I'm assuming that the Stormfather was present in some form on Roshar even before Honor arrived. Probably as the Wind. 

Honor arrived on Roshar long before any of the history we know about, and a really long time before humans came to Roshar. Honor was, in my mind, probably responsible for "Making" the Stormfather out of the Wind, and that was so long ago that even the singers remember the Stormfather as a core part of Roshar.

[Display-Names-Are-Stupid]

I'm fairly certain there are passages where the Stormfather talks about when he was just the spren of the highstorm, which from the way he talks makes me think he wasn't a fully sapient spren until the ideas of human perspective changed and also Honor remade him into a Bondsmith spren and later left his cognitive shadow to this newly formed spren. 

So I believe that the highstorm was before/adjacent to the Singers, but the Stormfather himself came after. 

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 10/29/2024 at 5:10 PM, Slayd_07 said:

I'm of the mind that the process that turned these primordial spren we've heard about (wind, stone, night) into the more familiar bondsmith spren we know about (stormfather, sibling, nightwatcher) is roughly the same process that Odium uses to create Unmade - it's the same idea, at least. I'm assuming that the Stormfather was present in some form on Roshar even before Honor arrived. Probably as the Wind.

The Wind seems to have persisted to the present day. Yet the Stormfather exists.

[Dostaglou]

I think I am coming back to the idea that the Stormfather isn't as ancient as we'd think. On re-read of Oathbringer, when Dalinar brings Queen Fen into the visions, he remarks on the wooden structures. Later he says that something about this era nags at him. It has been remarked a few times that wood is a poor material given the highstorms. We aren't led to believe the area seen in Starfalls is Shinovar and its implied that it is in Alethkar or near it. 

I vaguely recall other areas where the weather being odd is hinted at. Then there is the word "desolation". This makes me think that perhaps the Stormfather IS the desolation. He literally causes desolation upon Roshar. So perhaps there is more to the notion of Stormform bringing forth the Stormfather and the first desolation. 

Edited November 11, 2024 by Dostaglou

[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 hour ago, Dostaglou said:

On re-read of Oathbringer, when Dalinar brings Queen Fen into the visions, he remarks on the wooden structures.

The town is in a lait, so it's protected from the storms. What he remarks on is that wood is normally reserved for the wealthy nowadays but in the vision it's common and the wealthy house uses crem bricks, which is interesting to call out but I don't think says anything about the storm. To the contrary, the town being built in a lait and house using crem suggests the storm was around.

1 hour ago, Dostaglou said:

Later he says that something about this era nags at him.

Do you remember more specifically what he said/where he said it?

1 hour ago, Dostaglou said:

We aren't led to believe the area seen in Starfalls is Shinovar and its implied that it is in Alethkar or near it. 

It's mentioned to be in Natantan, which is the kingdom the Shattered Plains used to be capital of. So yeah same general region as Alethkar.

1 hour ago, Dostaglou said:

So perhaps there is more to the notion of Stormform bringing forth the Stormfather and the first desolation. 

A loooot of life on Roshar depends on the storms, though. Many animals need it to pupate and singers need it to change forms, the plants are evolved to hide when it comes, spren rejuvenate themselves, the continent itself needs crem to counteract erosion. And that presumably was around before the Ashynite arrival, because if evolution was sped up so much that all of this sprang up in the past seven thousand years then Ashynite plants/animals should have adapted too but they didn't.

[Dostaglou]

 

Quote

The town is in a lait, so it's protected from the storms...

Ah. I think this part is what I didn't catch well enough. That probably explains the issue in and of itself 

Quote

Do you remember more specifically what he said/where he said it?

Oathbringer Chapter 34 "Resistance". It is near the end after time slowed and he had his outburst at Fen ( Transcription by me as I use Audible ) :

"These people wearing unfamiliar clothing. He'd of expected everything in the past to be crude but it wasn't. The doors, the building, the clothing. It was well made just lacking something he couldn't define". 

It was this part in particular that left me thinking that Dalinar was picking up on something that was off. 

With regards to the life of Roshar being so dependent on the storms, I don't doubt that some powerful storms existed just that the "Highstorm" and in particular the "Stormfather" might not have. The difference being the difference between a category 1~2 vs a category 5 hurricane. 

Edited November 11, 2024 by Dostaglou

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Dostaglou said:

I think I am coming back to the idea that the Stormfather isn't as ancient as we'd think. On re-read of Oathbringer, when Dalinar brings Queen Fen into the visions, he remarks on the wooden structures. Later he says that something about this era nags at him. It has been remarked a few times that wood is a poor material given the highstorms. We aren't led to believe the area seen in Starfalls is Shinovar and its implied that it is in Alethkar or near it. 

I vaguely recall other areas where the weather being odd is hinted at. Then there is the word "desolation". This makes me think that perhaps the Stormfather IS the desolation. He literally causes desolation upon Roshar. So perhaps there is more to the notion of Stormform bringing forth the Stormfather and the first desolation. 

2 hours ago, Dostaglou said:

Oathbringer Chapter 34 "Resistance". It is near the end after time slowed and he had his outburst at Fen ( Transcription by me as I use Audible ) :

"These people wearing unfamiliar clothing. He'd of expected everything in the past to be crude but it wasn't. The doors, the building, the clothing. It was well made just lacking something he couldn't define". 

It was this part in particular that left me thinking that Dalinar was picking up on something that was off. 

With regards to the life of Roshar being so dependent on the storms, I don't doubt that some powerful storms existed just that the "Highstorm" and in particular the "Stormfather" might not have. The difference being the difference between a category 1~2 vs a category 5 hurricane. 

The vision takes place during the 8th Epoch, year 337 (said in WoK ch 19) - that's well after the establishment of the Knights Radiants, who existed since at least the 6th Epoch and at that time the Stormfather already existed as one of the Bondsmith spren. In previous chapters the Sibling said they are around 6000 years old and the Stormfather is older than they are - and from the Nohadon vision we know that during his times Knights Radiants weren't a thing yet (which means he lived before the 6th Epoch), but Urithiru already existed. And this means the Stormfather is older than Radiants and he already existed when the Starfall vision happened.

Also, Highstorms predate the Shattering so they've been around for a very, very long time.

Spoiler

Dan Wells

Sixth Epoch, Year 31, Shashaches 6.3.1.

Bondsmiths

Bondsmiths are, well... different. For starters, there are only three of them at a time, because there are only three spren that can grant Bondsmith powers. Seems kind of strange for a Radiant Order whose whole job is to bring people together, right? But, see, that's where the strangeness continues. Every Order takes squires; that's nothing new. But Bondsmiths sometimes have whole groups of servants who swear oaths but gain no powers at all. Can you imagine? I think there's something beautifully pure about that. They might be the only people in any Order who've ever taken the oaths for purely selfless reasons. They can't do any Surgebinding, they don't get spren, they just... take the oaths. Because oaths are important, and the values they swear to uphold are worth upholding.

And those values, I admit, are pretty great. Bondsmiths unite things - mostly people, but also governments and kingdoms and armies and everything else. They negotiate treaties, and resolve disputes, and help people to see each other as people, instead of as rivals or foreigners or enemies. Their main power (if you can call it a power) is to help people find common ground, and get them to agree on things, and to make those agreements matter. No matter which of the three spren they bond with (and those three spren can produce some very different textures in the bond), the thing all Bondsmiths share is that they bring people together. They make people feel included and important. Sometimes, they're in the middle of those groups, corralling the actions and holding the attention. Sometimes, they're out on the edges, watching the group they created have new ideas and activities and adventures of their own. Either way, the Bondsmith is happy.

#SayTheWords (Feb. 28, 2024)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

You mentioned the ecology on Roshar, and also you mentioned that mostly the non-sentient spren predate the Shattering of Adonalsium. So my question is about the evolution of life on Roshar, and how essential the highstorms are to life on Roshar, how the plants evolved, so can we assume that life that is dependent on the highstorms predates the Shattering of Adonalsium?

Brandon Sanderson

Um… You--

Questioner

Can we correctly assume?

Brandon Sanderson

--yeah, *laughter* I'll tell you this. The highstorms predate, and there was a lot of natural evolution on Roshar, resulting in a lot of what we have there.

JordanCon 2016 (April 23, 2016)