what happens to the ecosystem?

[king of nowhere]

the stormfather is dead. there is no more stormlight. apparently, there are no more highstorms, but the perpetual night of sorrows.

and that's massive, because highstorms were part of the life cycle of many creatures. many creatures pupated and needed a highstorm to reach the next stage in development, among them chasmfiends and chulls. many creatures have gemhearts, which they used to store some light that was of some relevance.

aside from that, the constant night is going to hurt most diurnal creatures that relied massively on sight. i don't know if birds can fly all that well in constant rain.

there should be a major extinction event on roshar following the night of sorrows. i doubt brandon will want to rewrite the ecology, though, so he'll find some excuse to avoid it.

[alder24]

21 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

the stormfather is dead. there is no more stormlight. apparently, there are no more highstorms, but the perpetual night of sorrows.

and that's massive, because highstorms were part of the life cycle of many creatures. many creatures pupated and needed a highstorm to reach the next stage in development, among them chasmfiends and chulls. many creatures have gemhearts, which they used to store some light that was of some relevance.

aside from that, the constant night is going to hurt most diurnal creatures that relied massively on sight. i don't know if birds can fly all that well in constant rain.

there should be a major extinction event on roshar following the night of sorrows. i doubt brandon will want to rewrite the ecology, though, so he'll find some excuse to avoid it.

It will definitely affect the ecosystem in massive ways. However, Retribution mentioned that he will still provide investiture for life on Roshar, so they still should persist and their transformations and life cycle should not be disrupted that much. The Everstorm might now be the source of minerals in the absence of crem from Highstorm, however we don't know this and I would expect this to be a major problem. If there is no crem anymore and no substitute for it, the plant life on Roshar will start dying soon. The constant rain also won't help them, flooding is already occurring around the Purelake, other regions also should experience it as there is no soil for rain to seep into and cracks in rocks would be sealed by crem. It's just a bare rock, water can only flow on it and cause massive floods everywhere. 

Retribution however did notice that the ecosystem needs his direct intervention to prevent its total collapse, so I think that he will or did use his powers to aid it in some way, but we should still expect an ecological disaster to follow the birth of the True Everstorm and the death of Highstorm.

[Nitpicking]

As Hoid points out, the end of sunlight will mean that plants will die out on most of Roshar's land mass, except for the ones kept alive by Warlight. Azir, mountaintops (above the Everstorm), and the Reshi Isles that are greatshells will still have plant life, as will the oceans (I assume).

What ecosystem? It'll be Investiture-sustained agriculture or nothing.

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

I am reminded in this of the way ancient mesopotamians thought about their gods with all of this. The original version of the flood myth, as best as archeology can find, goes that the gods destroyed humans for being too noisy. But then there was no one left to make food for the gods, and so they made one woman and one man immortal. Thus they were assured there would always be someone to make offerings.

This situation feels like a riff on that. The crop that Retribution seeks to reap is not any grain or animal sacrifice, but legions of fanatical warriors who will destroy the other Shards in his name. One of the things that has me actually wanting to read on after WaT is to see how the heck the Singers feel about their victory. Could you imagine winning a glorious liberation struggle to overthrow thousands of years of domination, and then all the wonderful things of nature are destroyed before your eyes as the world is engulfed in endless darkness?

Hopefully most of the oxygen everyone needs to breath and stuff is made by ocean life on Roshar, or otherwise Retribution is going to be knocking on the doors of Urithu asking if Jasnah could soulcast all the corpses of the Singers and their humans subjects into smoke so he doesn't have to look at them and be reminded of how badly he messed up.

[EdgedancerJacob he/him]

On 3/9/2025 at 5:49 AM, king of nowhere said:

i doubt brandon will want to rewrite the ecology, though, so he'll find some excuse to avoid it.

I disagree with this! To me, the ending promises huge changes to the ecology and Roshar in general - I bet he's excited to alter these things, especially after spending so many years on books one to five.