Frustration Posted February 21 Posted February 21 5 minutes ago, Immortal Platypus said: IIRC, there's a WOB saying that someone could pick up the Dor and become a Vessel of Devotion/Dominion, but I don't think that's likely No, I meant this one. Spoiler strican In The Lost Metal, it mentions Autonomy having avatars in other worlds. In Shu-Dereth on Sel, Jaddeth speaks directly to Wyrn, who then propagates his will down the hierarchy- Brandon Sanderson Yes. strican Within the religion, ambition is rewarded, but only if it aligns with the orders of the hierarchy. That sounds similar to the philosophy used in the Set, but replacing Jaddeth with Trell. Is Jaddeth an avatar of Autonomy? Brandon Sanderson *chuckles and points at screen in very satisfied way* RAFO. You're a very smart person. It's [pronounced] "Yaddeth", by the way. That is also one of the Y-J's. ... So, I will say this. Here's what I'll canonize. There is something happening, and the people there legitimately believe, and have reason to believe, that their god is going to return. And I have said before, many times, that Book 2 of Elantris begins with the return of their god. 'Cause they've said "God can't come back until everybody converts". But they've found a loophole. They're like "well, except those heretics in Elantris. And also that other little place, that tiny little region that's over in the mountains, where they talk about roses, they don't count either. Because they're, um, not actually part of the planet." Um, so. So that's something to look forward to, if I ever get around to writing Dakhor, is the return of Jaddeth, the god of [Shu-Dereth]. YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022)
Immortal Platypus Posted February 21 Posted February 21 1 minute ago, Frustration said: No, I meant this one. Hide contents strican In The Lost Metal, it mentions Autonomy having avatars in other worlds. In Shu-Dereth on Sel, Jaddeth speaks directly to Wyrn, who then propagates his will down the hierarchy- Brandon Sanderson Yes. strican Within the religion, ambition is rewarded, but only if it aligns with the orders of the hierarchy. That sounds similar to the philosophy used in the Set, but replacing Jaddeth with Trell. Is Jaddeth an avatar of Autonomy? Brandon Sanderson *chuckles and points at screen in very satisfied way* RAFO. You're a very smart person. It's [pronounced] "Yaddeth", by the way. That is also one of the Y-J's. ... So, I will say this. Here's what I'll canonize. There is something happening, and the people there legitimately believe, and have reason to believe, that their god is going to return. And I have said before, many times, that Book 2 of Elantris begins with the return of their god. 'Cause they've said "God can't come back until everybody converts". But they've found a loophole. They're like "well, except those heretics in Elantris. And also that other little place, that tiny little region that's over in the mountains, where they talk about roses, they don't count either. Because they're, um, not actually part of the planet." Um, so. So that's something to look forward to, if I ever get around to writing Dakhor, is the return of Jaddeth, the god of [Shu-Dereth]. YouTube Spoiler Stream 5 (Dec. 2, 2022) ah yes, I forgot about that one.
Frustration Posted February 23 Posted February 23 @Aliroz-The-Confused after having read IED I have decided that you need to read that one ASAP. That one might give you some of this hope back.
Qianweilian He/him Posted February 23 Posted February 23 2 hours ago, Frustration said: @Aliroz-The-Confused after having read IED I have decided that you need to read that one ASAP. That one might give you some of this hope back. Ah yes, instead of (spoilered for Aliroz’s benefit) Spoiler getting conquered, Scadrial may be dominated by fascists, and at least the Malwish are. The Rosharans, although they don’t enslave Scadrial, attempt to vassalize an innocent, undeveloped planet.
Aliroz-The-Confused Posted February 23 Author Posted February 23 (edited) 8 hours ago, Frustration said: @Aliroz-The-Confused after having read IED I have decided that you need to read that one ASAP. That one might give you some of this hope back. IED? Is that one Isles Of The Emberdark, or something else? I don't want you to feel guilty if I end up unable to find hope (I think mister Sanderson intended the ending of The Lost Metal to be a hopeful and happy ending, and I don't think mister Sanderson intended his singular mention of Obrodai to be as distressing as I found it to be, and I don't think the children of Ashyn were intended to come off as being as threatening as I've interpreted them to be). I just worry for Scadrial and Sel (and to a lesser extent Nalthis), being from his earlier works, the ones he seems to think are inherently not as good as his obvious favorites. Those whole worlds could get any number of horrible fates offhandedly in a single chapter epigraph or throwaway mention. What if he wrote them first to beef up his writing skills for The Stormlight Archive? Those terrifying Jeskeri Mysteries smell like some Bavadin-flavored nonsense to me, and maybe the Dakhor monks as well, and if those monks then maybe all of Fjorden with Shu-Dereth. Hopefully it's just a messed up whatever-the-word-I-am-thinking-of-here which makes Fjorden be to Dominion as The Final Empire was to Preservation (a tyrannical theocracy, but not a seed of off-world influence). And, honestly, I kind of hope Hallandren is something of the same for Endowment. But I'm worried that mister Sanderson will sacrifice his non-preferred worlds/characters to ramp up the stakes for his favorites, especially with Azure (who I'm pretty sure is Vivenna), Zahel/Vasher, and Nightblood all being on Roshar (as if Roshar doesn't have enough cool stuff on its own without also getting to play with Nalthis's cool stuff). Having Sel, Scadrial, and Nalthis, the first three Cosmere worlds that readers learned to love, all fall to Retribution or Autonomy (or to a Totally Justified invasion by the humans on Roshar so that such can get character development and learn to be better people by figuring out they should stop doing evil things) seems like a brutally effective way to build tension (nowhere is safe) while clearing out space and competing plot threads. Having all the Shards we haven't visited yet (and their respective worlds) be gone/lost/overtaken/destroyed would do that too, making the scope of the overall bunch of books still astoundingly ambitious but perhaps more manageable (especially considering that mister Sanderson seems to want to abandon the page for the screen, sadly (though, to be fair, if he never writes another word set on Scadrial, he'll still have given that world more words than a lot of great fictional worlds ever got, so perhaps I ought to just be grateful)). And, heck, having Jaddeth turn out to be an avatar of Bavadin would reveal that Autonomy is, and has always been, the O.G. Cosmere Villain(ness), that we've been watching the work of Autonomy and Odium since 2009, those two nightmares whose names were revealed in Hoid's letter in The Way Of Kings. It would tie into how Trell was introduced back in chapter NINE of The Final Empire. Having that plus involving something similar on Nalthis would connect everything together startlingly well. Also, as I've said before, I think Autonomy helped Odium kill Devotion and Dominion, and possibly Ambition. I think Rayse and Bavadin were in cahoots. It would explain how Moash got that Taldain white sand with which he found Phendorana so he could kill her. In summary: Me, for this entire thread, Me, whenever anything even remotely suspicious happens off of Roshar Me, displaying my characteristic sense of proportion and sensibility. Edited February 24 by Aliroz-The-Confused Added Memes. 2
Frustration Posted February 23 Posted February 23 (edited) 2 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: IED? Is that one Isles Of The Emberdark, or something else? Yes, it's Isles Edited February 23 by Frustration 1
Aliroz-The-Confused Posted February 24 Author Posted February 24 (edited) The more I think about it, the more I think the Shards that Sazed has talked to since becoming Harmony were actually avatars of Autonomy mimicking the Shards. It just doesn't make sense that nobody warned Harmony about Autonomy otherwise, despite Invention, Mercy, Whimsy, and Valor apparently talking to him. And Dalinar, Taravangian, and Sazed were/are all very young as far as deities go (so, I think it would be easier to trick them than it would be to trick, for example, Koravellium or Edgli; thus, I don't trust the visions Dalinar and Taravangian have of other Shards the same way I trust Tanavast's flashback chapters), it just seems very on-brand for Autonomy, whose cults appropriate the imagery of other deities/traditions (lots of bad guys in the Wax and Wayne books appropriate Survivorist imagery), who can customize her avatars to the extent of programming them to hate specific individuals, and who is associated symbolically with masks, to try to mess with Harmony by pretending to be other Shards. I mean, Ruin did a similar thing with the mimic mist-spirit to try to get people to fear Preservation. I mean, with how many worlds Autonomy has, and how she's been messing around breaking any notion of isolation agreements, you'd think the ones willing to talk to Harmony would be at least willing to explain "Autonomy makes sock puppets to run worlds and is aggressively expansionist". I guess maybe they didn't know, but if they value the separate worlds agreement enough to only start taking the threat of Odium seriously once Retribution was free, then they should get really cheesed off if they learn that Autonomy's been violating that same agreement. Especially Edgli, given her(?) letters. And after The Lost Metal, if they didn't already know then they really ought to know, or, at least, Harmony ought to try to warn them, if only because it's the right thing to do and it helps his position. It just doesn't make sense to me for a Shard to be both forthcoming enough to communicate with the new kid AND isolationist enough to not warn the new kid against Autonomy (I mean, in one of Harmony's letters he mentions Preservation, Ruin, Mercy, Whimsy, Valor, Endowment, Ambition, Odium, Devotion, Dominion, and Invention, and says that "other Shards I cannot identify, and are hidden to me".); it's easy friend-points or easy leave-me-alone points. That Whimsy, Invention, Mercy, Valor, and Endowment all talked to Harmony and didn't give him a full list of the sixteen, didn't say jack squat about Autonomy, and all had these god-conversations off-page, is SUSPICIOUS to me. It's suspicious to me, also, that Harmony couldn't find Invention again, that both Whimsy and Mercy acted such that Harmony seems not to think they're willing or able to help in any meaningful way, that Valor said two entirely opposite things to Harmony and Endowment, and that Endowment (the only one of these five whose letters we read) never mentions having communicated with Harmony. Sazed himself admits in his letters to Hoid that he's, as far as deities go, young and naïve. One of the main themes of The Lost Metal is how Bavadin/Trell/The Set would have had a much, much harder time if her/their enemies had gotten their acts together and compared notes (if the ghostbloods and the Wax&Wayne investigations had shared information, if Kelsier and Harmony had talked stuff out earlier, et cetera). Another is how lies, isolation, and whatever-the-word-is-for-when-you-convince-somebody-that-nobody-can-or-will-help-them can allow the less powerful to manipulate/contain/restrain the more powerful (The Set with the mistings and ferrings in Wayfarer, with an additional disgusting detail of the actors from Bilming being hired to sell the deceptions). Bavadin's whole thing is being the isolationist, the one who insists "no helping, no one helps you, you do it yourself or it doesn't count" (she fails to help Telsin and The Set at certain crucial points). It might actually be necessary for her, Intent-wise, to do all she can to prevent other Shards helping Harmony. So, since she's associated with masks (disposable false faces), isolation-for-manipulation-purposes, stealing someone else's style (Gertruda and Dumand, the dollar-store Wayne and Wax, being a clear example), preventing help, less-powerful beings deceiving more-powerful beings, and communication failure, it would honestly kind of bug me if she wasn't doing what I'm guessing she did and five or more shards just independently failed to mention her for no discernable reason. It fits thematically. We have means, motive, and opportunity. J'accuse, Autonomie! Edited March 4 by Aliroz-The-Confused
Aliroz-The-Confused Posted March 4 Author Posted March 4 (edited) On 1/10/2026 at 12:47 PM, Schizoposting said: @Frustration, I'm too lazy to dig up the exact quotes, but it's mentioned somewhere in WOK or WOR that, initially, when the Listeners tried surrendering after losing battles, the Alethi would massacre them, without taking any prisoners. I've been trying to figure out how to put the point I want to make about this into words for a while, and here's what I've got after a month and a half of working on it. It's not all that good, and at a bunch of points I employ intentional absurdity or silly phrasing when I come up against something I lack the words to express (so it's tonally a mess and very very cringeworthy), but it's free and you get what you pay for. Part One: Disclaimers (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler I know my reading comprehension is minimal. If there's one thing this thread has taught us, it's that I miss the most basic and obvious things. The Stormlight Archive is Crazy Bonkers Long. In its thousands of pages there may exist information to contradict the assertions I make in this post (especially in part four), but, dern it, I can't find any. Yeah, I didn't go through all five books with a fine-toothed comb (I just checked a couple hundred pages of The Way Of Kings and Words Of Radiance pretty thoroughly, then looked at a few chapters of the other three books where I thought the relevant stuff would be), so sue me. From here on out pretend that everything subjective that I say is preceded by "in my opinion," From here on out pretend that every assertion has "as far as I can tell" appended to it (if I have to qualify everything, this post will never end) and is based off of my memories, my notes, and on my physical copies of the books. I don't use the wiki, and there's no CTRL-F for paper. This is what's going on, as far as I understand, my sincere and probably-incorrect conclusion which represents my best efforts, wrong as it may be: Part Two: The Point I'm Trying To Make (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler Legitimate surrender must be accepted. By legitimate, I exclude false surrenders and whatever "wait, but what if-" edge cases that are obviously not relevant to the context of real life, Roshar, or pretty much anything except thought experiments designed for the purpose of "nuh-uh, what if the universe explodes if you don't do the bad thing". One can imagine "what if the universe explodes if you put your seatbelt on" but that doesn't mean that "put your seatbelt on when you drive" is bad advice. It doesn't need a million caveats and explanations about context. I don't want to argue about imaginary edge cases here. Legitimate surrender must be accepted. This is not a specifically modern notion, this is not a specific cultural perspective, this is simply right. Part Three: Frameworks (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler Within the framework we might call pragmatism (one based primarily or only on results, not based on the action itself, "game theory" is part of this), practicality, optimization, or whatever, this is (generally) correct strategy. Accepting real surrender means that you can make real surrender, the utility gain is worth more than whatever the heck killing sincerely-surrendered enemies for no reason is supposed to accomplish. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, it's self-sabotage. Accepting real surrender means that your friends, the other people on your side, can surrender, so massacre-with-no-prisoners is not just self-sabotage but actively sabotages everyone else on your side. To borrow the language of comedic understatement for a moment (since I can't find the words to express the sheer seriousness of what I'm trying to say here, I resort to the opposite): Within frameworks in which things like feelings and morality matter, reject-their-surrender-massacre-them-all-no-prisoners is non-controversially regarded as Not Very Cash Money Of You. Part Four: Policy (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler As far as I can tell, the Alethi prosecuted the invasion of the Shattered Plains with a "no surrenders ever" policy. Please remember the disclaimers in replying to this part. The books don't mention any prisoners of war. They really, really, really probably should at some point. Five books, each over a thousand pages, no mention? There are points-of-view from 1) the highest operational decision-making level of the Alethi in the conflict (Dalinar), 2) participants in the war (Bridge Four). 3) The listeners. Also, there are those chapters where scribes, scholars, and highlords talk about the war. There's not a single listener defection, prisoner-of-war, hostage exchange, ransom, or surrender anywhere in them! The same goes for humans, at least, before the whole Everstorm thing happened and the proverbial fecal matter intersected the rotary air circulator. At no point does any human surrender to or defect to the listeners before the Everstorm, either, nor do I recall anybody in the series even thinking of it prior to that point. Bridge Four, in their desire to escape Sadeas, do not conceive of the idea of surrendering to the listeners or defecting. Dalinar and all those unlucky loyal soldiers, betrayed and abandoned by Sadeas, surrounded by listeners in a battle, no way out, no possibility of cutting through and retreating? I don't remember even asking "wait, can't they surrender?" on my first read. Dalinar, with his men and his son's lives on the line, and I never considered surrender as a thing that could be tried in that situation. Sadeas's betrayal plan only works if no surrender can possibly be made. The Stormlight Archive presents the invasion of the Shattered Plains as one without any possibility of surrender, and establishes that the listeners tried to surrender at first and stopped because Sadeas massacred them all when they tried. YIKES, you guys. I don't think I'm crazy to say that the Alethi have a "no surrender, no prisoners, ever" policy in this war. Earlier posts asserted that Sadeas, in establishing that the invasion of the Shattered Plains would be a war without surrender, deteriorated the conditions of engagement to that point, but I'm not sure he did, I think that might have already been how the Alethi did war, since nobody in the books says "wait, this isn't how things were" (okay, there are gloomy thought-monologues about war, and about death and waste, and about how it must have been purer and more honorable in the old days, but nobody acts like this war without surrender is unusual). Nobody cites it as "man, isn't it messed up that the Alethi do this?", which implies that this is just... normal, for the Ashynites. Just something that people (or at least the Alethi) do, and it's become imperceptible, a faint moral background noise. YIKES ON BIKES, you guys. Part Five: Historical Comparisons (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan did not have this "no prisoners ever" policy, there were times they accepted surrenders and actively encouraged them because your enemy surrendering is victory, because prisoners represent leverage (and, for their captors, could be monetarily valuable as something to steal and get away with), and because fighting every civilian to the death while your enemies still have armies somewhere is a bad idea (it's going to wear down your forces in ways that make it harder to invade and pillage more places). Blackbeard always accepted surrenders, that's how pretty much all pirates work, pirates want loot and don't want ouchies, encouraging surrender encourages the outcome of maximal loot with minimal ouchies. Now, not all pirates were this way (in Tress of The Emerald Sea, the distinction is made between the pirates that accept surrender and the NOPENOPENOPE crews) and the most notable example is l'Olonnais, but the point is that "no prisoners, no surrender, ever" was never expected behavior even for pirates and those who did made enemies of all nations. Even in The Princess Bride, the pirate whose legend is that he kills everybody and leaves no survivors is the dread pirate Roberts, not the regular pirate Roberts. Flipping wolves accept surrenders when they fight with each other, it's instinct, god-granted in some views, simply natural in some views, evolved over millions of years through survival-of-the-fittest selection in others. Flipping wolves, you guys (sure, they're a pack-based and highly social species, and there's a reason why they were able to be domesticated and certain other big predators weren't, but still, they're wild animals). When the conditions of engagement in a war get to this point, man has become more wild than even the beasts. YIKES ON BIKES WITH CATAPULT SPIKES, you guys. The species that can beef with itself but also resolve that beef without always resolving it in corpses thereby gains survival advantage, that's pretty much mathematically certain. The same applies to societies. Whenever you find "no prisoners, no mercy, no surrenders" in history, you find at least some contemporary source saying "that was pure evil! DON'T DO THIS." as a reaction someone had. I'm not saying everyone always universally reacted that way, but in the cases where generals who ordered this kind of thing didn't get in trouble for it, it's because of a pardon or the local power-player's protection or the people in charge concluding that the circumstances required it or it being what they were ordered to do. And those who ordered the doing of such things often got remembered as the worst kind of awful, for centuries (Richard the Lionheart's reputation only became positive centuries after his death, all his contemporaries agreed that he 100% went to heck for what he did at Acre), by their own cultures. This kind of reject-their-surrender-massacre-them-all-take-no-prisoners atrocity happened in history, but it was never unremarkable within the cultures that committed such (NOTE: I'm arguing that the instances were regarded as significant. I'm not saying that no culture ever celebrated or justified this kind of thing, I'm saying it was never not memorable, that it was not "just a boring Tuesday" in the years before industrialism made it possible to efficiently commit atrocities.). Part Six: Cosmere Comparisons (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler Other Cosmere protagonists don't wage this kind of war. Heck, pre-2010 Cosmere antagonists don't wage this kind of war. When they're invading you, you can surrender to the Fjordell Empire (This is not meant to whitewash them. They are the O.G. Cosmere baddies, committing unspeakable atrocities and giving readers nightmares since 2005, my point is that they try to get Eventeo to surrender), The Final Empire (I'm talking about their invasion on Scadrial in which Rashek allowed people to surrender; the nobility are descended from those quislings who did. This is in no way meant to whitewash the Final Empire, I'm arguing that their war/invasion methods were more sophisticated in their infinite evil. The Final Empire is, for my money, the evilest evil in the Cosmere that isn't a Shard, and Ruin has waaaaaay less direct sway over them than Odium had on the Ashynites and singers, so blah blah blah responsibility proportion blah blah blah... for all my salt about the children of Ashyn, I say the Final Empire was worse. it was the Scadrian Nobility who first grankled my bajankles.), and Hallandren (the plot of Warbreaker is incited by the heinous agreement that was forced on Idris at their surrender/peace "negotiations"). The only Cosmere antagonists who do this kind of "kill them all, invade without allowing any possibility of surrender" are Autonomy (via the men of red and gold, or at least that's the implication in The Lost Metal) and probably Odium/Retribution (though, interestingly, the singers, in their siege of Kholinar, take prisoners (something which is parsed as inexplicable and alien behavior by our point-of-view protagonists) and accept surrenders (Moash and Kaladin spend time as prisoners. EAT IT ASHYNITES! The singers take the moral W). Heck, in Rhythm of War they take a whole lot of prisoners.). The actual evilest evils of all. No Cosmere protagonists wage war with "no surrender, no prisoners, ever" as their policy except in The Stormlight Archive. Part Seven: Putting Two And Two Together (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler A layer that nobody in this thread has mentioned is that when combined with the "no surrenders ever" policy the fact that the Alethi are engaging in siege warfare is a nightmare. Siege warfare requires surrenders, that's the whole mechanism by which sieges work, because sieges are "surrender or starve to death" and when you remove the possibility of surrender from that... When you remove "surrender" from siege warfare, it goes from "surrender or die" to just "die". It becomes "die of starvation, come out and die at our swords, or die by your own hand". YIKES ON BIKES WITH CATAPULT SPIKES AND A NEST OF SHRIKES, you guys. If the listeners hadn't summoned the Everstorm, they would have gone extinct. There was no possibility of surrender for them. Our heroes would have killed them all. Were planning on it, were in the process of doing it. Narak was their last refuge.The Invasion of the Shattered Plains is a campaign to kill every listener, leaving the entirety of the singer species either dead or enslaved. Siege warfare without surrender cannot be anything else. Part 8: Six Years of Starvation (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Spoiler In this thread we discussed sieges and refused surrenders, but not the combination. So, given this, that the goal of a siege is to wait until the enemy starts starving to death, the hunting of Chasmfiends is another layer to "siege warfare" + "no surrenders" Paratulip described it thus, earlier in this thread: On 1/10/2026 at 7:58 PM, ParaTulip said: Oh, this picked up a lot while I was gone. "Taking gemhearts" seems to be understood differently by various parties to this conversation. To me, this is effectively the same as "taking away the food supply for the Listeners of the Shattered Plains". The Listener agriculture model depends on having an emerald supply, but they are more efficient about using stones than the humans, so there is no risk of driving the Chasmfiends to extinction by their traditional methods. This is in strong contrast to how humans expend the emeralds for soulcasting and also how the Chasmfiends have been going extinct. Depriving a population of the means to feed themselves by doing hideous ecological damage is, among other things, the kind of action that results in mass exterminations. It inflicts famine. This is abhorrent to me. Siege warfare is about waiting until the other side starts starving to death. The Alethi hunting of the Chasmfiends is, functionally, a way to deprive the listeners of the means to feed themselves. This was done for six years before the first book even starts. Quoted from The Way Of Kings, page 269, chapter 15 Dalinar left the fallen chasmfiend behind. He understood each step in the process of what had happened during those six years. He'd even hastened some of them. Only now did he worry. They were making headway in cutting down the Parshendi numbers, but the original goal of vengeance for Gavilar's murder had been forgotten. The Alethi lounged, they played, and they idled. Even though they'd killed plenty of Parshendi--as many as a quarter of their originally estimated forces were dead--this was just taking so long. The siege had lasted six years and could easily last another six. That troubled him. Obviously the Parshendi had expected to be besieged here. They'd prepared supply dumps and had been ready to move their entire population to the Shattered Plains, where they could use these Heralds-forsaken chasms and plateaus like hundreds of moats and fortifications. Edited March 4 by Aliroz-The-Confused 1
ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her) Posted March 4 Posted March 4 @Aliroz-The-Confused So, the thing you are missing is that those classical/ancient conquerors who would accept surrenders would usually take slaves in the process. The Listeners are terrible slaves for a bunch of reasons, and the Listeners might not even have a slave taking cultural practice. Further, no one is trading with the Listeners, so they might not have an idea of economic exchange with outside groups to serve as the basis for desiring currency or other resources in a ransom exchange. The idea of trying to conduct a minimally horrible wars is actually somewhat recent, even perhaps enlightened. Obviously there were people who understood that wars were bad and that some actions of soldiers and armies could be considered excessive. However, before the notions of universal rationality as opposed to common culture of the faith, policies like this were always about ensuring that internal conflict did not go too far. It is not until morality began to developed apart from religion, and thus without the notion of communion, that there was some idea that everyone could come to be temperate in their violence. This is not to say atrocities don't happen anymore or people do not just go "Ah, we needed to do atrocities to our enemies. They did a thing we feel made it was necessary."
Frustration Posted March 4 Posted March 4 4 hours ago, ParaTulip said: The idea of trying to conduct a minimally horrible wars is actually somewhat recent, even perhaps enlightened. Obviously there were people who understood that wars were bad and that some actions of soldiers and armies could be considered excessive. However, before the notions of universal rationality as opposed to common culture of the faith, policies like this were always about ensuring that internal conflict did not go too far. It is not until morality began to developed apart from religion, and thus without the notion of communion, that there was some idea that everyone could come to be temperate in their violence. That's really not true. Universal rationality can be dated easily to Plato, and 90% of what we have records of the Greeks talking about you can find Egyptian or Babylonian records from a thousand years earlier saying the same things. While I haven't found anything on this particular topic personally at the moment, I'll refrain from saying for certain that this specific idea does. As for making war less brutal or violent, in many ways ancient war was less violent than modern war. The Egyptian general Piankhi gave orders for his captains to ask the enemy where to have the battle. It was common to ask an army to leave their defenses to have battles on fair ground. Many ancient cultures followed the law of the third offense, that they were not allowed to go on the offensive until after they had been attacked and given the enemy the chance to settle three times.
alder24 Posted March 4 Posted March 4 Well, I've been lurking in this fascinating topic for a while and decided not to engage, but here we go. I don't know if I'm gonna respond much in the future, I'll probably go back to lurking again if it's too time consuming. Aliroz, your whole argument on "no surrender" is based on factually wrong assumptions and then for a historical comparison you pull up Blackbeard? Come on, I had to respond! Starting, I must say that calling all humans on Roshar as "the children of Ashyn" is just wrong to me. By doing this, you put the blame for any ancient crime on currently living people. Children are not responsible for wrongdoings of their ancestors, especially those living thousands of years ago! It's like blaming modern Americans for the bronze age collapse, because why not. By calling humans "the children of Ashyn" you also deny them the right to inhabit Roshar. RoW not only addressed this issue, but also with Navani hearing the pure tones of Roshar, it proved that humans are just as deeply tied to Roshar as Singers are - they have the right to call Roshar their home. Are modern Americans "children of Europe" who should be blamed for conquering both Americas? Not to me, they were born there, just as natives were. You do you, but every time you use this phrase to me it just looks like because you are dissatisfied with SA in general (which is fine), you're just looking for reasons to hate it more (which is fine as long as your arguments are based on facts, which often than not is not true). 7 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: As far as I can tell, the Alethi prosecuted the invasion of the Shattered Plains with a "no surrenders ever" policy. Please remember the disclaimers in replying to this part. The books don't mention any prisoners of war. They really, really, really probably should at some point. Five books, each over a thousand pages, no mention? There are points-of-view from 1) the highest operational decision-making level of the Alethi in the conflict (Dalinar), 2) participants in the war (Bridge Four). 3) The listeners. Also, there are those chapters where scribes, scholars, and highlords talk about the war. There's not a single listener defection, prisoner-of-war, hostage exchange, ransom, or surrender anywhere in them! The same goes for humans, at least, before the whole Everstorm thing happened and the proverbial fecal matter intersected the rotary air circulator. At no point does any human surrender to or defect to the listeners before the Everstorm, either, nor do I recall anybody in the series even thinking of it prior to that point. How would Alethi surrender to Listeners in the first place? The battlefield was cracked and broken by 100 foot deep chasms, to cross them you needed dozens of people carrying bridges. No single person or a small unit of army could have made it to Listeners and surrender to them, even assuming that they would accept them as prisoners, which isn't true, because they are already struggling with feeding their own people, they have no food to spare for prisoners. Not to mention there is a huge language barrier between Alethi and Listeners and a pure hatred between both nations - Alethi hate them for killing their king and Listeners hate them for decimating their population. Because of this Alethi knew that anyone who tried to surrender would be either killed on spot, or left to be killed by Chasmfiends and Highstorms - Parshendi left no survivors just like Alethi did (but you don't blame them for that). That's why people who wanted to unofficially quit the army decided to become deserters and there are plenty of them roaming among Unclaimed Hills and Frostlands. Shallan met and recruited them in WoR, Gaz was one of them. As for why would Listeners not want to surrender to Alethi, you've already explained why - Sadeas set up a precedent of killing any who tries, thus Listeners have no reason to believe that anyone who tries to surrender wouldn't be killed (honestly, I think he killed just their envoys, but I don't remember). They didn't understand that Alethi aren't as unified as they thought they are and that other Highprinces might have accepted their surrender, especially as time progressed. However, the biggest reason why Listeners didn't try to surrender is simple - they could always run away from a lost battle due to their superior mobility and ability to jump over chasms. They were never caught and surrounded in a battle - Dalinar and Sadeas tried to do it during the battle of the Tower, but Dalinar got surrounded instead. The Tower was the only battlefield on the Shattered Plains on which such a tactic could be executed with large enough armies on both sides. The presence of Shardbeares on Parshendi's side, allowed them to rescue an army that was surrendered and let them escape to safety - something that Eshonai confirmed in her thoughts in WoR. And the same goes for Alethi - as long as they have bridges and even a single Shardbearer, they can escape from encirclement. We do see from Eshonai PoV in WoR that some Listeners had enough and took a Dullform wanting to surrender and become slaves of Alethi, who as they argue would inevitably come and defeat them. While most Listeners were fighting for the survival of their people, some did have this fatalistic view and were waiting to surrender when the war would end. Also, keep in mind that from the perspective of Alethi, there were no civilians among Parshendi, all they encountered were warriors. And when Dalinar finally reached Narak, he ordered to spare all civilians, children and those who surrendered - he went there not to slaughter them all but to end the war with as little casualties as possible on both sides after negotiations were broken by Eshonai weeks prior. I do admit, as far as realism goes, not having prisoners at all is a big error. However, this is a fantasy book, it's not realistic when you have crab people fighting over giant crab eggs with non-crab people in a planet wide hurricane on a world with magical powers and fairy-like creatures. I don't remember your exact words, but you basically said you want your fantasy book to be detached from reality and modernism - here it is and you don't like it. Books give enough reasons to suspend our disbelief on this matter, I don't see the need to paint humans as pure evil because of that, especially when Parshendi are doing the same. 7 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Bridge Four, in their desire to escape Sadeas, do not conceive of the idea of surrendering to the listeners or defecting. Bridge Four surrendering to Listeners? That's a stupid idea because you do know what happens to PoW? They are exchanged. Slaves have no value, they wouldn't be accepted as PoW in the first place and if they were, they would be returned to Sadeas who would then execute them immediately. Moreover, Kaladin was aiming for freedom, being a prisoner in hands of Listeners was not freedom and bridgemen were unwilling to fight for them (not that Listeners would want humans to slow them down with their bridges), so joining them is not an option. The other reason why surrender to Listeners wasn't even considered is that the location of their base wasn't even known, but they knew they would have to cross countless chasms, avoid Alethi scouts, Chasmfiends and Highstorms - impossible to even attempt. Surrendering during the battle was not an option because they couldn't just run away from Sadeas' army - they would be cut down in an instant. 7 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Dalinar and all those unlucky loyal soldiers, betrayed and abandoned by Sadeas, surrounded by listeners in a battle, no way out, no possibility of cutting through and retreating? I don't remember even asking "wait, can't they surrender?" on my first read. Dalinar, with his men and his son's lives on the line, and I never considered surrender as a thing that could be tried in that situation. Sadeas's betrayal plan only works if no surrender can possibly be made. They never considered surrender as an option because they knew it wasn't and that Parshendi wouldn't accept surrender at all. Why? Because Dalinar knew that Parshendi, just as Alethi, were seeking a way to deal a decisive, moral breaking defeat in hopes of crippling the enemy's ability to fight and gaining the upper hand during negotiations. Of course, Listeners didn't know that such a thing is impossible to achieve for several reasons, like huge manpower available to Alethi, army divided into ten camps and the fact that most Highprinces were more interested in gemhearts than in the war itself by the time of WoK. Nonetheless, Alethi knew they wouldn't be taken as prisoners of war and Parshendi didn't leave any survivors in the past, so they didn't even try. WoK ch 66: Quote He knew. Just as Dalinar did. Just as the men likely did. There would be no surviving this battle. The Parshendi left no survivors. 8 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Earlier posts asserted that Sadeas, in establishing that the invasion of the Shattered Plains would be a war without surrender, deteriorated the conditions of engagement to that point, but I'm not sure he did, I think that might have already been how the Alethi did war, since nobody in the books says "wait, this isn't how things were" (okay, there are gloomy thought-monologues about war, and about death and waste, and about how it must have been purer and more honorable in the old days, but nobody acts like this war without surrender is unusual). Nobody cites it as "man, isn't it messed up that the Alethi do this?", which implies that this is just... normal, for the Ashynites. Just something that people (or at least the Alethi) do, and it's become imperceptible, a faint moral background noise. Not true at all. Surrendering was a normal thing for Alethi. OB ch 3: Quote “We’re enemies!” Dalinar nodded toward the town below, where the beleaguered enemy army was—at long last—surrendering. “Not anymore. Looks like we’re all allies now!” The battles on the Shattered Plains aren't fought till the last man, they are fought till a gemheart is secured and then both armies disengage and retreat. The situation that favors surrender happens rarely and when it does, soldiers don't believe their enemies would accept their surrender, nor do they want to surrender so they will fight till death or till rescue comes. 8 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Part Five: Historical Comparisons (spoilered for organization, there are no actual spoilers). Don't get me started on history. Not taking prisoners is a common tactic in warfare, as old as history itself and it's especially prevalent in siege warfare. Slaughtering and plundering an entire city was an accepted strategy during war and its goal was to break the enemy morale and send a message to any other city and castle of your enemy - know when to surrender, or you will share their fate. Sieges were expensive, very expensive. If defenders are causing too much trouble for attackers, they can't hope for mercy because attackers don't want to engage in a prolonged costly siege every time they get to a castle, fort or city. That's why usually the attackers won't massacre the defenders as long as they surrender early during the siege - before their situation becomes hopeless and the siege becomes too costly. After that commanders often let the victorious soldiers relieve their built up stress and tension as much as they want - rape, murder, plunder for days, do as you like because defenders deserved it. Obviously, I'm not claiming that common people weren't outraged or horrified by such acts, they obviously were and that was the whole point of this strategy. It worked because people were afraid they would fall victim to it. Often during a siege, besieged citizens rebelled against their garrison and opened the gates to the invaders because they were terrified they would be sacked and killed by them. Of course, sometimes this tactic backfired and it only stiffened the resistance and people rallied together against the attacker. And there are also examples of pure genocidal insanity like the annihilation of Carthage in the third Punic War. There was only one accepted outcome of this war - Carthago delenda est! Around 0.5 to 0.75 mil of its inhabitants were mercilessly slaughtered and only a handful were taken as slaves. The world not only didn't care that much, many Romans and their allies were celebrating the end of their mortal enemies. In comparison, on Roshar we have Dalinar burning Rathalas down to the ground with all its inhabitants. As books are presenting it, at least to me it seems there was no massacre on a scale of the Rift outside of Desolations or the Sunmaker's invasion of Azir. The very fact that almost all of Roshar uniformly condemned this as a heinous and evil act and fears and hates Dalinar for it, tells me that wars on Roshar, even waged by bloodlusted Alethi, is more civilized than wars in our history. The Rift was the only tragic massacre done since the Sunmaker, the history of our world is full of such things that weren't even as harshly condemned. And because of that when I read the book I wasn't moved by this at all (death of Evi was a crushing moment for me). It's hard for me to believe that everyone would hate and fear Dalinar so much for destroying a single city to the point that even his own soldiers left him afterwards. 9 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Odium/Retribution (though, interestingly, the singers, in their siege of Kholinar, take prisoners (something which is parsed as inexplicable and alien behavior by our point-of-view protagonists) and accept surrenders (Moash and Kaladin spend time as prisoners. Because they expected Voidbringers to be monsters, but saw normal people. Don't forget there are Fused who wanted to fully annihilate humanity on Roshar, Raboniel was one of them and almost succeeded with her disease. 9 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: A layer that nobody in this thread has mentioned is that when combined with the "no surrenders ever" policy the fact that the Alethi are engaging in siege warfare is a nightmare. Siege warfare requires surrenders, that's the whole mechanism by which sieges work, because sieges are "surrender or starve to death" and when you remove the possibility of surrender from that... When you remove "surrender" from siege warfare, it goes from "surrender or die" to just "die". It becomes "die of starvation, come out and die at our swords, or die by your own hand". Except that's not true. Nobody removed surrender as an option for Listeners, in fact we saw in WoR that more and more Listeners wanted to surrender even if it meant becoming a slave. Dalinar and Adolin even went as far as begging Eshonai for peace and she also wanted to negotiate peace before she took Stormform. Parshendi soldiers didn't want to surrender, they didn't accept surrender from Alethi and they weren't starving yet - Alethi could only try to inflict higher losses to force them to surrender, which is a completely normal and reasonable strategy. 9 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: There was no possibility of surrender for them. Our heroes would have killed them all. Were planning on it, were in the process of doing it. Narak was their last refuge.The Invasion of the Shattered Plains is a campaign to kill every listener, leaving the entirety of the singer species either dead or enslaved. Siege warfare without surrender cannot be anything else. You really did forget that in WoR was Dalinar wanted to negotiate peace and end the war without further death? Or how Dalinar ordered his soldiers not to harm anyone without a weapon on Narak? It happens, you warned us, but your entire argument is voided by this simple fact that humans tried to end the war and didn't want to kill all Parshendi. Many Alethi really had enough of this war after 5 or 6 years, but Parshendi stubbornly refused to even engage in peace talks. The war of Reckoning wasn't to kill every Listener, it was to win it and force them into a humiliating position to get revenge for killing their king - a totally normal reaction. The Listeners turned this war into a giant siege and mobilized their entire population, that's what killed them. It wasn't a planned genocide, it was a war of attrition turned into gemstone hunting. Parshendi could have tried to negotiate earlier, but they were intentionally prolonging the war in hopes of either inflicting a crippling blow to Alethi or discovering a new form that would turn the tables for Listeners. In fact, there were even some comments wondering how Parshendi are still able to field an army after suffering such high losses. And before you say that Alethi in their peace talks would have wanted to enslave all Parshendi, we don't know this. Sure, some Listeners were believing in this outcome, but Dalinar as the leader was willing to hear their proposal out and he never stated that they would become slaves - in fact that wouldn't be good at all, they would be bad slaves compared to Parshmen. The treaty would cement Alethi possession over south-western side of the Shattered Place, limit the territory of Listeners, execute more of their leadership, maybe even full subjugation to Alethi rule or something like that. Those are mine speculations, but the fact remains that Alethi would most likely not enslave all of Parshendi. 10 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Siege warfare is about waiting until the other side starts starving to death. The Alethi hunting of the Chasmfiends is, functionally, a way to deprive the listeners of the means to feed themselves. This was done for six years before the first book even starts. And? What's the problem? That's how you do sieges. That's how you force them to surrender. They didn't surrender, they weren't starving, although their food situation wasn't that good, but they could still feed themselves even after Parshendi abandoned plateau runs weeks before the Everstorm was summoned. And to be fair, Alethi stopped caring about the siege and cared only about getting rich by hunting Chasmfiends - denying Listeners the means to produce food was a nice bonus. 3
Aliroz-The-Confused Posted March 5 Author Posted March 5 (edited) Within the books themselves, it's impossible to win an argument against a windrunner; you either get convinced or get proven wrong. Nothing they do can be condemned as wrong. This, evidently, extends to this forum. Whatever I say, except for agreeing with you, results in "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". Responding to that ends up in more "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". This absolute dominance of The Stormlight Archive's protagonists' paradigm is exactly why I don't want the humans on Roshar to go to other worlds and start interacting with others. It's exactly why I don't want The Stormlight Archive to connect to the rest of the Cosmere. I'm not going to try to provide support for any of my assertions anymore, it doesn't change the "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why" outcome. I'm not going to try to defend my positions anymore, responding to disputation doesn't change the "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why" outcome. MY PESSIMISTIC PREDICTION (spoilered for organization) Spoiler The framework for this guessing is based on Main Character Energy, fanbase investment, pessimism, Brandon Sanderson's stated favorites, and the patterns of who has not, at this point, ever taken the L. The point-of-view characters of The Stormlight Archive are fantasy villains framed as heroes. This is my perspective and I stand by it. From the moment Taravangian took up Odium, The Stormlight Archive has been a territorial dispute between two factions of the humans on Roshar, villains fighting over who gets to rule what. With The Lost Metal revealing Autonomy's conquest of the Cosmere and Wind And Truth ending with Retribution, the Cosmere has become a territorial dispute between Autonomy and Retribution (and probably the Radiants). With White Sand, Tress of the Emerald Sea, Sixth Of The Dusk, Elantris (not yet, but if Jaddeth is Bavadin then it's almost certain in the future, and this applies to everything set on Sel), and Mistborn (not yet, but it's almost certain in the future) taking place on Autonomy-worlds, it's clear that every story leads to this. The only Cosmere content that doesn't lead to mister Sanderson's obvious favorites (the children of Ashyn, Retribution, and Autonomy) is the short story Shadows for Silence in the Forests Of Hell and the novel Warbreaker. Shadows for Silence in the Forests Of Hell was a story for a short story collection called Dangerous Women, so it was Brandon Sanderson's contribution to a group project rather than something he wrote for its own sake (essentially, homework). Warbreaker is, in this framework, the only indication that Brandon Sanderson has any interest in writing Cosmere novels that aren't tributaries to this big stream. It's the only indication that he has any interest in writing worlds that aren't inevitably defined by Autonomy, Retribution, or the Radiants. One could argue that Warbreaker is a tributary to The Stormlight Archive in that it introduces Nightblood, Zahel/Vasher, and (assuming Azure is Vivenna) Azure/Vivenna before they become part of The Stormlight Archive, but the point is that that's Nalthian things having impacts on Roshar rather than the other way around, the point is that Warbreaker and Nalthis aren't impacted by Sanderson's favorites. The readership, as far as I can tell, absolutely adores The Stormlight Archive, but in general this forum has a tendency to disregard everything written before The Way Of Kings as "objectively weaker" earlier work. There's a tendency to present it as the author practicing his skills so he can get good enough for the real story (I remember, some years back, people saying that Sarene was a prototype for Shallan and Raoden was a prototype for Adolin). I seem to be the only one around here who actually prefers the earlier works and thinks The Stormlight Archive is the low point. Heck, I don't really see much enthusiasm for Mistborn or Scadrial at all, especially compared to Roshar. Tress of the Emerald Sea had the first happy ending since Warbreaker, and Tress wasn't even something that was originally planned to exist, it was written without the intent that it be published. It comes off as "what Brandon Sanderson wants to write, not what he thinks he should write", and gloomy stuff like The Stormlight Archive and Wax and Wayne seem to be what he thinks he should write. Considering that he's writing for his audience, that you guys are his audience, and that I disagree with you guys on pretty much everything, the likelihood that the books favoring what I want over what the general consensus here wants seems small. Conclusion: I should probably quit while I'm ahead. The books are almost certainly written for people with whom I disagree on basically everything, not for me. MY OPTIMISTIC PREDICTION (spoilered for organization) Spoiler The framework for this prediction is based on pattern recognition, subjective personal feelings, how Brandon Sanderson writes endings, and hope. Elantris had a happy ending, satisfying and good, well worth it. The Final Empire had a happy ending, satisfying and good, well worth it. The Well Of Ascension had an upsetting ending, unsatisfying and frustrating, and did not seem worth it when I first read it. I thought "so, there's no hope for Scadrial.". I felt gutpunched, and felt like it ruined The Final Empire. The Hero Of Ages had a happy ending, satisfying and good, well worth it, proving that The Well Of Ascension wasn't a bad ending but a brilliantly-written middle (and middles aren't supposed to function as endings. It would be unfair to take the first half of a book and expect something that is complete and satisfying). Warbreaker had a happy ending, satisfying and good, well worth it. That's a perfect success rate. What seems scary, like a bad ending or something that undercuts what came before, is actually necessary and brilliant setup for what comes next, and what seemed undercut was actually being tested, and it holds up in the end. As far as I'm concerned, for the Cosmere before The Way Of Kings, Sanderson always came through. The answer to "Wait! This sucks. I don't like this. What a waste of time, how did this happen, what's going on?" was "wait. Let him cook.". True story-conclusions have been scarce, since, in The Cosmere. The Stormlight Archive is unfinished. Wax And Wayne has an upsetting ending, unsatisfying and frustrating, and I don't think it's worth it. I think, "So, there's no hope for Scadrial". Except... Mistborn was promised as a trilogy of trilogies. From the original trilogy, the pattern is that the first one works as a standalone, the three together work, and the second isn't meant to be satisfying and complete because it's a middle. A trilogy of Mistborn eras displaying the same pattern would have this as middle, not ending. Arcanum Unbounded was a short story collection. I liked them stories. Also short stories are a whole different thing, typically requiring less reader investment than novels, so if you don't like the ending at least you didn't spend four hundred pages getting there. I've not read Isles of the Emberdark, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, or The Sunlit Man. Tress Of The Emerald Sea had a happy ending, satisfying and good, well worth it. Tress Of The Emerald Sea proves that Brandon Sanderson can still deliver perfect endings. So... Maybe my dissatisfaction with Wax and Wayne and The Stormlight Archive is from me expecting middles to be endings and getting salty when they're not, and from expecting happiness during the "oh no everything is sad and bad, there's no hope!" part. Whenever I thought I found bad writing in the first five books, it turned out to be not a miss but a trickshot. Maybe what I think is bad writing in the later books is actually more trickshots. Maybe if Bavadin and Taravangian never take the L and certain good guys aren't getting Ws it's because Sanderson is building up consternation and anticipation to get the readers invested in wanting to see Taravangian and Bavadin get wrecked. Maybe "Oh no, Scadrial is doomed, I hate this, why would Sanderson write this, it undercuts what came before, I'd better quit while I'm ahead, there's no hope, this was all a waste of time!" isn't me being bright enough to sense what's going to happen but me being gullible enough not to sense it. Maybe The Stormlight Archive, a series about redemption, hasn't redeemed its characters in my eyes because it isn't finished yet. Conclusion: I am still an absolute sucker for the Nebraskan nerd's stories. I still always go "yep, that was more than worth it, thank goodness I stuck it out" in the end. I should probably not quit. MY UNSETTLING PREDICTION (spoilered for organization) Spoiler I do not think Brandon Sanderson is incapable of bamboozling his readership. We're being bamboozled. You're being bamboozled, I'm being bamboozled, a Linear Algebra professor reading these books somewhere is being bamboozled. Look at the theories of yesteryear. How many of them were right? In predicting future books, will our predictions be more accurate than the predictions we made multiple books ago? Don't think so. Individual prediction was never reliable, and the general "what will happen next" consensus was never a reliable predictor before. The readership is blindsided with each book. Even if you successfully predict one thing, there will be something else that surprises you. Take the existing fanbase consensus from earlier years, and see how many scenes are now seen entirely differently (particularly the scene where Dalinar takes over from Elhokar). Not only is this forum's understanding of future books insufficient for certainty, the understanding of books already out is likely to change. We're being bamboozled. All of us. I don't know where, or in what way, or about what, but we are, I know it. Even with the wiki, with WOBs, with podcasts and YouTube videos by Sanderson about how he writes, Brandon Sanderson is still outwitting us all. And it's incredible, because the man writes fair mysteries. He always gives the information needed to figure it out AND the pattern that puts them together before the big plot twist. It is possible, but rare, for a first-time reader to catch on to Warbreaker's big rug-pull before it happens. Everything necessary is in the books themselves. Knowing this, and having decades of past books as context, and having access to all the stuff Sanderson gives outside the books, has not made us as a readership any better at not falling for Brandon's shenanigans. The predictive power has not increased with more data. It has not increased despite the author explaining the method behind his writing. And so, this is my prediction, or, rather, a theory. WOBS are intentionally given to direct and manage the readership, and are part of the bamboozlement. I posit, not just that WOBS are unnecessary to solve Sanderson's "Fair Mysteries", but that they are junk data. Any answer to a mystery which can only be derived with the context of one or more WOBs, no matter how brilliant, will not be the answer, because the answer will always be something that can be constructed from the published information. The vast, vast, vast majority of Sanderson's readers don't get into the WOBS, podcasts, videos, or anything else Brandon Sanderson makes. He writes the books to be satisfying to that majority and to be sufficient in themselves. The sliver of the readership who post about the books on the internet, who get into forums and podcasts, WOBS and streams, are the most vocal fans. Passionate, too-much-time-on-our-hands, thoughtful, nerdy enthusiasts. The portion of the readership whose theories are the most visible, who most likely to get together and collaboratively theorize in a public-and-available-to-anyone-with-internet place. The ones most qualified to warn everyone else about the plot twists, heartaches, and heartbreaks to come. Brandon Sanderson knows this, and I say his interaction with our sliver of the readership is him running interference. He's sabotaging us. WOBS are a distraction (noise), anything that would actually help is RAFO (signal). The podcasts are a distraction. Whenever he talks about writing he is teaching thought-patterns with intentional weaknesses to his chicanery, building expectations he intends to exploit. It's like a kung-fu master teaching you only some of his moves so he can whoop your arrogant tush later. Brandon Sanderson said that characters need to have flaws and need to have arcs. But he wrote Raoden and Sarene! He knows how to make a story that doesn't rely on such things, but he teaches otherwise. I call shenanigans. There's no way he forgot what he knew. He's lying when he says a character without flaws can't be compelling because he's written those and made them compelling. Not everything he says is deceptive, of course. That would be obvious. You'd catch on. I think he typically provides true, but incomplete, information. I think he gets a real kick out of dropping interesting, but not crucial, details and knowing that the Seventeenth Shard will go "Ooooh, that's important!". There are over sixteen thousand WOBs. Put together, they'd fill up a book. What if that book is filled with lies? Wouldn't that be the cruelest rug-pull of all? If suddenly some portion of that context turned out to be a trick? It would be like Ati twisting the written words, a magnificent manipulation that means nothing from the source you trusted is above suspicion now. And the books themselves would be the words written in metal. I can't prove it. Okay, okay, I know it's a classic bit whenever anyone has an unpopular theory, but... come on. Let me do the Kwaan bit, just this once. For old meme's sake. I write these words in lolz, for anything not set in lolz cannot be trusted. have begun to wonder if I am the only sane poster remaining. Can the others not see? They have been waiting so long for their catharsis to come-- the one spoken of in Sanderson prophecies-- that they quickly jump between conclusions, presuming that each story and legend applies to ME BEING WRONG ALL THE TIME OH MY FREAKING GOSH THIS THREAD. My fellow sharders ignore the other facts. They cannot connect the other strange things that are happening. They are deaf to my objections and blind to my discoveries. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps I am mad, or jealous, or simply daft. My screen-name is Aliroz The Confused. Crudposter, idiot, traitor. And with that, I've said all I'm going to say in this thread. Thank you for putting up with my rambling. -Does a kickflip off of the concept of fairness while flipping double birds at the concept of maturity.- Edited March 5 by Aliroz-The-Confused
Qianweilian He/him Posted March 5 Posted March 5 27 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Within the books themselves, it's impossible to win an argument against a windrunner; you either get convinced or get proven wrong. Nothing they do can be condemned as wrong. This, evidently, extends to this forum. Sorry, Roz, you forgot when Windrunners *temporarily* lose an argument, have some plot about ruminating and self development, and then come back and win the argument without changing their positions. 28 minutes ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: WOBS are intentionally given to direct and manage the readership, and are part of the bamboozlement. I doubt this, mostly because Brandon has said (in a WoB) that he doesn't intentionally troll fans. That doesn't rule out misleading, but it suggests he doesn't just try to mislead/lie to fans often. I would also keep in mind that while many WoBs are from conventions and stuff, many others are derived from other sources. Also, many WoBs have been fully fulfilled as books come out. Quote Pai Lanningham Given that the 17th Shard picks through every word you say with a fine-toothed comb and argues over the tiniest details, what have you said in the past to most thoroughly troll them? Brandon Sanderson I try not to actively troll on those sorts of things. I like that people are interested in my work and are treating it with sincerity. It is far better than the alternative. So I don't do a ton of trolling. But I would call things like the Shardhunt and things like that that we did a bit of trolling. (If you weren't aware, that's where I was giving out codes you could find or could get from me that would unlock things. We did it for Steelheart, we did it for Wheel of Time, and I think we did it for one of the other books. And there's some trolling that goes on involved in that where I'm hiding these things and playing coy about what they would reveal, and stuff like that.) I guess you would count, when someone asks me a question that a "yes" is a technically true answer but I know it's going to mislead them, I will still often say "yes." Because if they give me wiggle room on some of these very detailed questions, I will take it. So because of that, sometimes they grossly misinterpret things I say. But I also, sometimes, am really tired and don't hear the question right and answer something, and then they don't grossly misinterpret it; I have just misled them. Both of those things happen. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/430/#e13979 3
alder24 Posted March 5 Posted March 5 12 hours ago, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Within the books themselves, it's impossible to win an argument against a windrunner; you either get convinced or get proven wrong. Nothing they do can be condemned as wrong. This, evidently, extends to this forum. Whatever I say, except for agreeing with you, results in "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". Responding to that ends up in more "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". This absolute dominance of The Stormlight Archive's protagonists' paradigm is exactly why I don't want the humans on Roshar to go to other worlds and start interacting with others. It's exactly why I don't want The Stormlight Archive to connect to the rest of the Cosmere. I'm not going to try to provide support for any of my assertions anymore, it doesn't change the "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why" outcome. I honestly don't even know how to respond to it. Engaging in a discussion and correcting someone else's mistakes and factually incorrect claims was somehow wrong on my part. Did I go too far or did I offend you in my post? If I did then I would want others to point this out to me, so that I would know this and correct my mistakes. I can see it now that you're not seeking a logical discussion, you want to express your disappointment in SA without being criticized for it. In that case you should change the title of this topic and add [Support] to it, to let us know that you don't want to be proven wrong in a discussion, you just want to find others who share your opinion. I think I'm not wrong saying that nobody here wants to force you to like SA and its characters against your will. Iit's fine to dislike it and have problems with how things developed in the books. Most of us probably have a thing or two that they didn't like in SA and fair criticisms pointed against WoT are quite numerous here. Introducing Topic Tags: [Support] and [Discuss]: Quote [Support], on the other hand, indicates that you want to: Talk about something that bothers you, without being criticized for being bothered Express joy, appreciation, or enthusiasm, knowing that others in the thread will respond with the same vibe Have a more casual conversation, avoiding nitpicking and debate And last thing, you can either take it as a nitpicking proving your point, or a ray of hope shining upon you, or you can just don't look inside at all: Spoiler Kaladin sometimes loses arguments in book, he just stubbornly doesn't want to admit he's wrong when it's his PoV so it may look like he's always right. One example I can think of right now happens in OB ch 39, when he idiotically tries to argue that "Parshmen aren't our enemies." I couldn't help but point this out because I can't resist nitpicking. 1
Qianweilian He/him Posted March 5 Posted March 5 20 minutes ago, alder24 said: In that case you should change the title of this topic and add [Support] to it, to let us know that you don't want to be proven wrong in a discussion, you just want to find others who share your opinion Aliroz already added [support] as a tag to the post. Considering how that’s about the only thing tags are useful for, I think that’s fair enough. If you can’t see it, it’s below the title. 1
alder24 Posted March 5 Posted March 5 6 minutes ago, Qianweilian said: Aliroz already added [support] as a tag to the post. Considering how that’s about the only thing tags are useful for, I think that’s fair enough. If you can’t see it, it’s below the title. Ohhhh, it’s in the tags, I didn't see it. My bad. I was expecting it in the name itself as that's usually when its placed. 1
ThroughTheLivingSequence she/her/they/them Posted March 6 Posted March 6 On 6/11/2025 at 4:30 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said: NOTE: This is all theory and speculation and opinion. So, I realized that there is chouta on Scadrial, and I figure that those red-haired people who keep getting mentioned are Herdazians, and that means that there is a population of Rosharans living on Scadrial, and that means that there's no hope for the Scadrians, and that makes me sad. I don't really want to see the Scadrians become slaves again. I don't want to see species go extinct on Scadrial again. I don't want the children of Ashyn to claim, desecrate, and then leave a THIRD world. It's what's going to happen, though. We're going to get Navani Kholin XVIII telling a first-generation Kandra that she's "just as native" as any Kandra. We're going to see everything unique and interesting about Scadrial get commodified, made extinct, enslaved, exploited, trafficked, forgotten, or repurposed. Because that's what they did to Roshar. That's what Navani and Jasnah did to Roshar. That's what the good guys, the honorable faction, of the Rosharan system, do. None of what I describe is appreciably worse than what has already been done on Roshar, it's just that we never had a bunch of books to learn to care about the Listeners and the Spren in the way that we had for the Scadrians. Slavery is no stranger to Rosharan societies. Navani herself is innovating new ways to subordinate Spren to her whims and the material needs of humanity, and she's one we're supposed to be rooting for. The Lord Ruler oppressed the Skaa for so, so long. A millennia. It has only been about three or four centuries that the Skaa have been free since then, that the Terris have not been selectively trafficking and breeding themselves just to stay alive. And the Set, serving Bavadin, do the same thing with the ones they take. Because that is what happens when outside Shards take an interest in Scadrial. One can only hope that Scadrians are not interfertile with non-Scadrian humans, or else... eugh. No way is anybody going to let them have reproductive autonomy, not when Feruchemy and Allomancy are genetically passed and the need to oppose Retribution is so great. The Terris will probably go back to how they were in the times of the Lord Ruler, as will the Skaa. And, honestly? That's probably going to utterly break Kelsier and Harmony... especially Harmony, considering Tindwyl... That's probably how we get Discord and why they will love him for it. Because the Scadrians rejected Bavadin. They rejected Autonomy, and stayed true to Harmony. True to Ruin and Preservation. And you can't reject Autonomy in favor of Harmony without repercussions, without an exploration of what it means to choose Harmony. The Scadrians will, I predict, accept the Rosharans, as the Listeners and Spren did. And they will end up just as the Listeners and Spren have. Because they must. Because it is the right thing to do. Because the Rosharans in question are refugees, and that is worth everything. The worth of a world, of a society, of a people, is in how they treat such. To not accept the Rosharans would be to lose something irreplaceable and eternal. Something worth more than freedom, more than autonomy, more than life, more than the world. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul? Well, what time are you talking about? Spoilers for Isles of the Emberdark and the Sunlit Man: Spoiler We know that the Ones Above who visit First of Sun are Scadrian, and we hear Nomad talk about Scadrian space stations and scientists often. We know that both of these books take place well into the future of the Cosmere, so it's reasonable to assume that Scadrial as a planet has made something of an empire for itself, which in turn I think means it's reasonable to assume that Scadrians haven't been entirely enslaved or subdued by the Rosharans. Unless, maybe, this is far enough into the future that the groups that once made up Scadrial like the skaa and the Terris have been completely eradicated and/or assimilated into the ruling Rosharans that you suggest will exist, but it's been long enough that the now mostly ethnically Rosharan population of Scadrial considers themselves Scadrians. While Vathi was dealing with the Ones Above (who we've established as Scadrian) on behalf of First of Sun, she was also making secret dealings with a Rosharan shardbearer of some kind, so we know that Rosharans and Scadrians are still two distinct groups at this point in time... Though I suppose that the Rosharans who stayed and progressed on Roshar would be separate from any refugees to other planets. Hm. Interesting thought exercise, I should probably finish Isles of the Emberdark and the Sunlit Man and think on it further . Also, sorry if somebody already made these points, I couldn't be bothered to read through all 17 pages of this thread .
Frustration Posted March 6 Posted March 6 12 minutes ago, Sequence said: Well, what time are you talking about? Spoilers for Isles of the Emberdark and the Sunlit Man: Reveal hidden contents We know that the Ones Above who visit First of Sun are Scadrian, and we hear Nomad talk about Scadrian space stations and scientists often. We know that both of these books take place well into the future of the Cosmere, so it's reasonable to assume that Scadrial as a planet has made something of an empire for itself, which in turn I think means it's reasonable to assume that Scadrians haven't been entirely enslaved or subdued by the Rosharans. Unless, maybe, this is far enough into the future that the groups that once made up Scadrial like the skaa and the Terris have been completely eradicated and/or assimilated into the ruling Rosharans that you suggest will exist, but it's been long enough that the now mostly ethnically Rosharan population of Scadrial considers themselves Scadrians. While Vathi was dealing with the Ones Above (who we've established as Scadrian) on behalf of First of Sun, she was also making secret dealings with a Rosharan shardbearer of some kind, so we know that Rosharans and Scadrians are still two distinct groups at this point in time... Though I suppose that the Rosharans who stayed and progressed on Roshar would be separate from any refugees to other planets. Hm. Interesting thought exercise, I should probably finish Isles of the Emberdark and the Sunlit Man and think on it further . Also, sorry if somebody already made these points, I couldn't be bothered to read through all 17 pages of this thread . He hasn't read those yet 1
Qianweilian He/him Posted March 6 Posted March 6 52 minutes ago, Sequence said: Also, sorry if somebody already made these points, I couldn't be bothered to read through all 17 pages of this thread . The thread has kinda changed topics. It’s less about a potential conquest of Scadrial and more if Rosharans are the subject of favoritism or not. 1
QuantumAce Posted March 6 Posted March 6 On 3/4/2026 at 1:00 AM, Aliroz-The-Confused said: I know my reading comprehension is minimal. If there's one thing this thread has taught us, it's that I miss the most basic and obvious things. The Stormlight Archive is Crazy Bonkers Long. In its thousands of pages there may exist information to contradict the assertions I make in this post (especially in part four), but, dern it, I can't find any. Yeah, I didn't go through all five books with a fine-toothed comb (I just checked a couple hundred pages of The Way Of Kings and Words Of Radiance pretty thoroughly, then looked at a few chapters of the other three books where I thought the relevant stuff would be), so sue me. So you should be pretty grateful for the forum members who take the time to explain what you missed, with citations from the text, right? On 3/4/2026 at 7:12 PM, Aliroz-The-Confused said: Within the books themselves, it's impossible to win an argument against a windrunner; you either get convinced or get proven wrong. Nothing they do can be condemned as wrong. This, evidently, extends to this forum. Whatever I say, except for agreeing with you, results in "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". Responding to that ends up in more "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why". This absolute dominance of The Stormlight Archive's protagonists' paradigm is exactly why I don't want the humans on Roshar to go to other worlds and start interacting with others. It's exactly why I don't want The Stormlight Archive to connect to the rest of the Cosmere. Or not, apparently. If you tried to understand why people are saying "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why", you might see things in a way that is not as cut and dried as your original interpretation. It definitely took a re-read and some forum browsing for me to pick up on specific details that reframed how I understood certain characters. 4
Qianweilian He/him Posted March 6 Posted March 6 (edited) 13 minutes ago, QuantumAce said: So you should be pretty grateful for the forum members who take the time to explain what you missed, with citations from the text, right? This feels really passive aggressive. I don’t know, maybe I misinterpreted your tone, but this post is tagged [support] and we should generally be polite. Why are you telling Aliroz what he should feel? 13 minutes ago, QuantumAce said: Or not, apparently. If you tried to understand why people are saying "You're wrong, Aliroz, and here's why", you might see things in a way that is not as cut and dried as your original interpretation. Aliroz does have a different perspective from me and many others in this thread. But he has been very clear how he has tried to understand different perspectives. Maybe you should. 13 minutes ago, QuantumAce said: It definitely took a re-read and some forum browsing for me to pick up on specific details that reframed how I understood certain characters. I don’t see how this is relevant unless you’re inferring Aliroz’s perspective is inferior. Yes, facts and equations have clear answers, and many opinions are not justifiable in modern society, but this is a matter of literary interpretations and taste. Edit: If I misinterpreted the tone of your post, please say so. Edited March 6 by Qianweilian 2
QuantumAce Posted March 9 Posted March 9 On 3/6/2026 at 4:02 PM, Qianweilian said: This feels really passive aggressive. I don’t know, maybe I misinterpreted your tone, but this post is tagged [support] and we should generally be polite. Why are you telling Aliroz what he should feel? He stated he had trouble picking up every detail due to the length and density of the series, which is something I also struggle with. Sometimes those details are minor, but occasionally they have a fundamental impact on the story. With this series I usually have to re-read each book at least once. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to sit and read for long stretches without interruption, so that process can take quite a while. By browsing this forum after my first read through, I have been able to fill in some of those gaps more efficiently. My point was that having people volunteer to point out details you missed is beneficial to your understanding of the series, but I should not have addressed how he should feel about that. On 3/6/2026 at 4:02 PM, Qianweilian said: Aliroz does have a different perspective from me and many others in this thread. But he has been very clear how he has tried to understand different perspectives. Maybe you should. I embrace the sharing and discussion of differing perspectives. I should have been more specific, but my intent was to address only the details used to build those perspectives. When someone says "you are wrong" that can be frustrating. I get that. However, sometimes the "and heres why" contains key details. My point was to pay attention to those details, because they may fundamentally change your perspective. Not "correct" your perspective, or align it with the standard windrunner perspective, but provide additional information that changes how you view and interpret things. Your perspective may still be different than everyone elses, and thats great. On 3/6/2026 at 4:02 PM, Qianweilian said: I don’t see how this is relevant unless you’re inferring Aliroz’s perspective is inferior. Yes, facts and equations have clear answers, and many opinions are not justifiable in modern society, but this is a matter of literary interpretations and taste. If my perspective is based on faulty or incomplete information, than I would say yes it is inferior. I don't like that Kaladin is a self righteous stick in the mud who can be verrrryyyyy slow to embrace new ideas or understand other peoples perspectives. Yes I know he tries to accept people and their differences, and sometimes he eventually develops an understanding and appreciation, but my specific gripe is how slow that process can be. One example is how dismissive he is of chouta. I believe immediately calling it gross or disgusting before trying it is a character flaw. Hypothetically, if there was a scene I missed from WoK where escaped slave Kaladin steals a wrap filled with fried stuff and gravy that he eagerly eats then becomes violently ill which leads to his recapture and eventual sale into the bridge crews*, I would have to reconsider. It is a small point overall that probably probably wouldn't mean much to most people, but it would to me personally. I'm not really interested in discussing why his reaction to a specific food matters to me, or in trying to convince anyone it should matter to them. What does matter is I missed a specific detail that explains why he might have a negative reaction to it, regardless whether anyone else even thinks that would be a valid reason. *This is not a real scene. At least I don't think is. I am open to correction on existence of this or a similar event, but not my views of choutas and how I judge people based on choutas. 3
al_lan_mandragoran Posted March 16 Posted March 16 Wow that took a while to go through. I probably missed a lot. Anyways. My take is that a) Aliroz doesn't like the fact that spren are being imprisoned in fabrials, and that Navani is ignoring a lesser deity to continue her work. I agree. Mostly. The "lesser" spren don't APPEAR to feel anything negative from being imprisoned, but the fact is that the Sibling said they do, and so she should just trust the Sibling. b) Aliroz doesn't like the Alethi conquererors, especially with regards to the War of Reckoning. I agree. The fact that the immediate reaction of the Alethi after Gavilar's death was not asking the Listeners why they had done it, but rather immediate mobilisation of the Highprinces to exterminate the Listeners is despicable and shows a lust for war. Vorinism is literally based on the idea of eternal battle (remember when Dalinar asks an ardent what will happen after they reclaim the Tranquilline Halls? He says, "I'm sure there'll be more war for you to enjoy." Obviously paraphrasing). The fact that it took 6 YEARS for Dalinar to even think of negotiation is truly disgusting. c) I think there was more, but I forgot. If anyone would like to summarise the key arguments, feel free. 1
Qianweilian He/him Posted March 16 Posted March 16 1 hour ago, al_lan_mandragoran said: c) I think there was more, but I forgot. If anyone would like to summarise the key arguments, feel free. c) Aliroz feels that the Radiants, especially the Windrunners, are always treated as moral superiors. d) Aliroz feels that the Scadrians are morally superior to the Radiants.
QuantumAce Posted March 16 Posted March 16 3 hours ago, al_lan_mandragoran said: I agree. Mostly. The "lesser" spren don't APPEAR to feel anything negative from being imprisoned, but the fact is that the Sibling said they do, and so she should just trust the Sibling. Why? The Sibling has been reluctantly cooperative at best. As a reader I would give the Sibling a little more credit, but I think it would be crazy for someone in Navani's position to automatically trust the Sibling. 3 hours ago, al_lan_mandragoran said: b) Aliroz doesn't like the Alethi conquererors, especially with regards to the War of Reckoning. I agree. The fact that the immediate reaction of the Alethi after Gavilar's death was not asking the Listeners why they had done it, but rather immediate mobilisation of the Highprinces to exterminate the Listeners is despicable and shows a lust for war. Vorinism is literally based on the idea of eternal battle (remember when Dalinar asks an ardent what will happen after they reclaim the Tranquilline Halls? He says, "I'm sure there'll be more war for you to enjoy." Obviously paraphrasing). The fact that it took 6 YEARS for Dalinar to even think of negotiation is truly disgusting. In WoR prologue the Alethi did immediately question the Listener leaders who surrendered after the assassination. The Listener leadership confirmed they intentionally murdered the Alethi king in cold blood immediately after signing a treaty, but refused to explain why. I believe the Alethi also sent messengers once they reached the Shattered Plains, but the Listeners refused to negotiate or even respond. I can't remember which book, but I think it was a throwaway line that was easy to miss. 1 hour ago, Qianweilian said: c) Aliroz feels that the Radiants, especially the Windrunners, are always treated as moral superiors. With so much Kaladin POV, it can be hard to see that it is pretty much only Windrunners who actually feel this way. 3
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