Why do the Radiants need piles o' cash?

[Lightflame]

The Stormlight Archive: The Way of Kings, Chapter 46, Page 646 (Hardcover Edition):

"Though I was due for dinner in Veden City that night, I insisted upon visiting Kholinar to speak with Tivbet. The tariffs through Urithiru were growing quite unreasonable. By then, the so-called Radiants had already begun to show their true nature."

This is one of the epigraphs of Jasnah's notes. This one is from the autobiography of some guy called Terxim. It's the only page of the autobiography left or something.

I was thinking about the epigraphs, and I wondered the Radiants needed to charge ridiculous amounts of money. They were an organization dedicated to keeping the peace around Roshar, so why would they need to charge people and control trade through Urithiru?

I'm assuming that the currency back then was spheres, just like it is in the present Roshar. If that's the case, then my guess is that they needed spheres so that they could store more Stormlight. (Unless one of the Radiant leaders decided to buy Makabakam or something.)

So, that leads me to the question of what they needed the Stormlight for. Teleporting people to Urithiru wouldn't magically start requiring more Stormlight. Shardplate could hold Stormlight, so it wasn't new recruits.

So, what kind of crazy Stormlight crisis was going on behind the scenes? Could it have anything to do with why the Radiants left?

I'll leave that up to you.

[Aethling]

There could be two different meanings for tariff there. One is the one we usually think about. Used to control or restrict trade. There is also a meaning that just means a price of something, and that one is used in fantasy writing quite often. They could be talking about traditional tariffs on trade, or they could just be talking about the price of a trip to or through the city.

Even the traditional idea of tariffs is not always about money. In the late 80s or early 90s (I can't remember which), the US instituted tariffs on Chinese crawfish because the Southern farmers were complaining about the price they charged. Of course, as soon as they got price parity due to the tariff, they raised their prices by the same amount of the tariff which still made the foreign product far less expensive.

[Satsuoni]

I think part of the question is : where did Radiants usually get money? They were a relatively large organization, spread over several countries(if they were separated back then), and they needed to eat, train, they needed gems for soulcasting (with or without fabrial, the gems still crack), etc. Maybe the point was, that after desolation, the whole organization existed mainly on donations (people were happy to pay their protectors), and as the time progressed the donations stopped? Or maybe they did just become greedy Or the whole organization started to decay, admitting non-radiant members, not killing bureaucrats on the spot so they multiplied, you know, the usual...

[hoser]

... not killing bureaucrats on the spot so they multiplied ...

Snap-upvote!

Good catch Lightflame. I was so distracted by the jerk who would insist on making an extra trip before dinner and then complain about the cost that I ignored the other implication. There is an implication that the charges were growing.

There are other implications of this quote. Whoever wrote it likely wrote it post-Recreance. Therefore the Radiants were using Urithiru as a hub within one lifetime of the Recreance. But I believe Jasnah reports that they abandoned Urithiru pre-Recreance. Does that give us multiple events for that timeline?

The organized and disciplined way in which the Radiants quit leads me to believe that they were not corrupted at the end. If they were corrupt, they had a great gig, and they could have ruled and pillaged for a long time.

As for the main question, a completely baseless bit of speculation would be that they had some huge magical thing to do or make to:

1. Communicate with Honor
   
2. Determine if Honor was alive
   
3. Defend Honor
   
4. Hide the bulk of their weapons
   
5. Put themselves in stasis so they could be brought back when needed
   
6. Put their weapons and armor in stasis so they could be brought back when needed
   
7. Travel somewhere
   
8. Kill bureaucrats
   
9. Empower a set of catquisitors or Cats Radiant
   

This would imply that the Recreance or one of it's triggering events was planned for long in advance.

Edited February 7, 2013 by hoser

[Elwynn]

Hmmmm...Could be that while Honor lived, Radiants had a perfect connection to him that facilitated an unending/ample supply of Stormlight for use in Surgebinding/Soulcasting.

If the Almighty died and that connection was broken...you suddenly have hundreds, if not thousands of Radiants, that will have a limited ability to use Stormlight unless they're all suddenly extremely flush with spheres. That would be my first guess.

OT:

Ummm...never really voiced this before, but isn't it weird that the it's 'Veden City' and not current day 'Vedenar' but Alethi city is still 'Kholinar?'

That means Dalinar can trace his lineage to rulers from before the fall of the Radiants. Baffles me how these people haven't kept accurate records, even within the family.

edit: added a word

Edited February 7, 2013 by Elwynn

[Dros]

That means Dalinar can trace his lineage to rulers from before the fall of the Radiants. Baffles me how these people haven't kept accurate records, even within the family.

edit: added a word

That's easier said than done. We use a vast amount of resources and technology to protect the most important founding document of our time from rotting away. Rosahrians didn't seem to have that type of technology and with a complete lack of reverence (or perhaps fear?) for the written word, they probably just never bothered. Even with written records there's a debate about their accurateness.

It seems Brandon is looking at how information and language changes over time with these books and, really, our own history is an excellent case study in how accurate histories can easily be lost. Two hundred years ago, no one had any idea what those funny little pictures on ancient Egyptian structures meant. And it would have remained that way if two foreign nations warring in Egypt had not stumbled upon a huge rock used to build a fort that had been inscribed with three different languages (Rosetta Stone). That knowledge was regained basically by luck and could have easily been lost if the French hadn't surrendered and the Brits decided to pound Fort Julien into dust. Knowledge is easily lost. More so than we think, in my opinion.

As for the KR imposing Tariffs? There had to be some beauracracy to run a city like Urithiru, so maybe the KR wasn't to blame as much as the adminsitrators of their estates?

[Aethling]

To expound on Droz's you have to figure even if they did keep extremely accurate records, they would have had to survive wars, fires, governmental turmoil, and just plain human selfishness. Even if their records did survive, there is always the chance that no one could read it thousands of years later. The Rosetta stone is a good example, as are Linear A and B. Throw in the fact that languages change over time, sometimes to the point that a common tongue diverges into different languages. Even if the language stays relatively the same, you still have the meanings of words changing. Add to that trouble the fact that a large part of the populace doesn't even want to learn to read, and you have an extremely good formula for lost knowledge.

[Krelian]

I think surgeons in current Roshar serve as a very crude analogy for the KR's financial state, honestly. They're vital, people respect them, but they're very much not part of the regular order of things in most cities/villages. Some governments and individuals are happy to fully fund them, some just probably give enough to keep from dying next time their services are needed.

I think it's clear that in the later years, at least, the KR were totally on their own, and didn't have support from any higher power/organization. Tariffs/taxes/tithes to keep them all in fighting shape makes a lot of sense. Especially since, as long as they maintained their honor, they couldn't exactly use their abilities to directly raise money by force.

[dj26792]

Yeah I think thats something that this thread over looks, it costs a lot of money to run an army, but in the early days they would have been supported by governments, but as time goes on and desolations look less likely and there is less for the Radiants to do they would probably start to lose funding and have to start upping prices for their services to make up for it.

That would also explain why it was a gradual increase at an increasing rate, at first 1 government would stop supporting them and it wouldn't be a big deal in financial terms but it would be a huge scandal, and then as the fuss died down other governments would see no consequences to dropping the support and gradually one by one they would stop supporting this would happen quicker and quicker since every government that doesn't support them makes it easier for the ones that do support them to stop, and eventually supporters would be dropping in droves.