Creation of Roshar

[Pagerunner]

I stumbled across this WoB on Reddit, about the map of Roshar:

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I was searching for something that at once felt organic, but would hint at a pattern. (Much like cymatic patterns, as referenced in the first book.) Fractals and mathematical functions became my go-to place to hunt, as I like the blend of structure and spontaneity they can sometimes exhibit. The slice of the Julia Set was the one that stuck with me as feeling perfect for Roshar. As the continent was specifically grown by Adonalsium, you now know the seed that was used in-world to create it.

The fact that it looked like a swirling cloud is part of this all--but also part of the connection between natural patterns and the underlying math, which is a primary theme of the Stormlight books. So yes, it SHOULD look like a storm--but for deeper reasons than you might assume.

I must have missed this the first time around, and the implications are staggering to me. It puts a totally new spin on Frost's admonition to Hoid, that the worlds they tread now bear the touch of Adonalsium, and maybe even gives us another concrete reason for the Shattering: to stop Adonalsium from terraforming planets. It further cements, in my mind, the idea that Frost is a Shard; he wanted to stop Adonalsium, and took a piece of the power to keep it out of the hands of someone who will use it.

It also challenges my assumptions on the history of the Parshendi. I knew the continent was relatively new (which is why the ecosystem looks like a coral reef), and that the Parshendi had been there before the humans, and that Adonalsium had been there, but I had assumed that Adonalsium hadn't created the Parshendi, merely imparted spren to make them sentient. This doesn't seem to be the case, though; if Adonalsium created the continent, he must have also created its inhabitants, right?

So Adonalsium creates life. We know that Yolen is the original human homeworld, but other worlds were populated before the Shattering; it stands to reason, to me, that Adonalsium came from Yolen, creating human life as he went, until he was Shattered. But where do the Parshendi and Aimians fit into this timeline? Did Adonalsium stop creating humans, and start creating something else, and the Vessels decided they needed to make sure that didn't happen again? Was Adonalsium actually behind the human diaspora, or was it something alien that came crashing into Yolish worlds? Or did Adonalsium create the Parshendi first, then go to Yolen, where it took humans as a pattern instead (a true betrayal of the Listeners)?

So, I'm not sure any of this is groundbreaking, but I just hadn't put the thought into it yet. I didn't see any deep threads about pre-Shattering history; anyone else have ideas to share?

[nervousnerd]

Well, I think we don't know that Adonalsium was Yolish. It could have just been a force that always existed in the cosmere (presumably before any other life but it existed) or it could have come from a race of equally powered beings that died out leaving only itself (I don't even remotely think this is likely). While it is therefore also possible that its force was centered on Yolen initially (Is that what you meant or did you mean it was a Yolish person who somehow ascended to godhood?), we just know so little about it that there is still no way to extrapolate what it was.

I'm not sure I understand how terraforming new planets would be seen as a bad thing. I not sure I believe that Adonalsium was giving up on humanity by creating new races on new planets because don't think that creating new races (like those on Roshar) is a betrayal to humans. A race of dragons like Frost appear to have been around since before the shattering and it also makes sense to create life the fits the differences of the planet in my mind.

There do actually seem to be a lot more planets with human life on them in the cosmere than any other at the moment so I do tend to wonder how much of that is because of the shards and how much is natural.

I do think it is possible that Adonalsium was spreading its influence throughout the cosmere over time though. Whether that started at Yolen or not is hard to say but I do think that the new formation of the Roshar continent could have also been just a natural extension of this spreading of power rather than a conscious terraforming.

I do wonder how much Adonalsium was a force at that point in history because even if there was technically a person weilding the mega shard of Adonalsium, I'm not sure how much ability to focus that power a person like that would have after a long time. The longer shards are held, the stronger their intent limits their choices until eventually the shard and the person are the same. I wonder if that is only because they are intents that are separated from the whole or if Adonalsium would be similar limited because of all of those intents together.

(Sorry I feel like not much of that might make sense but I've been up all night so there is not much I can do about that.)

[Pagerunner]

We learned from the Scadrial essay in Arcanum Unbunded that all the Shardworlds except two were inhabited before the Shattering: Scadrial, and one other one (I suspect Nalthis, because of the Breath phenomenon). Either the same kind of human life 'naturally' developed on dozens of planets, or something prior to the Shattering was copying the humans from Yolen. That 'something' was most likely Adonalsium, (I found a follow-up WoB that said Roshar wasn't the only one created this way, and we know that Adonalsium has an 'intent' of creating sentience).

If Adonalsium didn't create Yolen (big if, I know), then of the 10 other Shardworlds we have seen, exactly one has nonhuman intelligence on it. So, it's not like Adonalsium is creating kinds of life that fit with the natural ecosystems; it's always humans, regardless of the craziness of the world (like tidally locked Taldain), and in the vast majority of cases the planet's flora and fauna look a lot like Yolen's (which, I understand, is an earth analogue). Actually, Roshar and Taldain are the only two that are drastically different, and Taldain is by necessity, since an Earth-like ecosystem wouldn't be able to survive there. It seems like a classic case of Yolish colonialism, which is why I lean that Adonalsium is from Yolen, changing the universe to look like Yolen. If the planets were all uninhabitable before the arrival of Adonalsium, then there's no harm, no foul. But if it's overwriting existing life to make planets habitable for new life (like, say, what if the Dysian Aimians were there before Adonalsium arrived), then I can understand why people would have wanted to stop it.

So, the pieces all fit that Adonalsium was going around the cosmere, transforming worlds and creating life. The original origin of Adonalsium doesn't much matter. But, here's the image that popped into my mind:

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Picture a group of Yolish emissaries, who follow behind Adonalsium, helping establish civilizations on the new planets and welcome them to the worldhopping community. They've helped dozens of new human worlds, and they travel to Adonalsium's latest stop, the Rosharan system.

They land on Roshar... and are greeted by a completely alien world. 'That's fine,' they say, 'we've seen crazy stuff before.' But then, they meet the inhabitants, the Listeners. Adonalsium has stopped making humans, he's made something else. Something different. They wonder why, but aren't too concerned. They're not racists. Let's see what planet Adonalsium is going to transform next, and whether or not he'll put humans there.

Wait a minute. It looks like Adonalsium's next target is...

Yolen.

It gets even creepier if Adonalsium isn't creating new humans, just terraforming worlds for humans to settle. But I don't think that's consistent with what we know of Adonalsium.

[Blightsong]

Brandon has said that most humans came from stolen, but that there were other humans on other planets that weren't native to Yolen (such as the shin).

 

I'm also unsure why any of the Vessels would care that Adonalsium was terra forming planets. I think we need to be careful about blaming anything we hear that Adonalsium had done as why the Vessels destroyed him, especially when they seems this unrelated.

[nervousnerd]

Yeah. It is mentioned that shattering Adonalsium is seen by the people doing it as their only hope but that might be specific to those people somehow and not necessarily Yolen's only hope.

I also think that with magic, it would be easier to spread humanity (and other races) to other planets. Maybe that is what worldhoppers originally did.

[Krandacth]

17 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Picture a group of Yolish emissaries, who follow behind Adonalsium, helping establish civilizations on the new planets and welcome them to the worldhopping community. They've helped dozens of new human worlds, and they travel to Adonalsium's latest stop, the Rosharan system.
They land on Roshar... and are greeted by a completely alien world. 'That's fine,' they say, 'we've seen crazy stuff before.' But then, they meet the inhabitants, the Listeners. Adonalsium has stopped making humans, he's made something else. Something different. They wonder why, but aren't too concerned. They're not racists. Let's see what planet Adonalsium is going to transform next, and whether or not he'll put humans there.
Wait a minute. It looks like Adonalsium's next target is...
Yolen.

Interestingly, this fits eerily well with the situation presented in the available chapters of The Liar of Partinel,

Spoiler

in which a "corruption" is consuming the land, transforming everything into internally compatible alternative flora/fauna that is, apparently, toxic to the existing population.

If that does turn out to be an early prototype for Dragonsteel, then I actually really like this theory, Pagerunner.