The Recreance: Why did it happen?

[TheDoomsday he/him]

Thx for all the attention this thread has been getting! I've loved reading the conversation, and its making me even more excited for what Oathbringer has in store for us. At least I finally started the Reckoners, so that will keep me occupied for a bit...

[Ciridae]

We know there was heavy fighting at the time, we know it was a big enough threat that regular troops were needed or at least kept as reserves along the thousands of Radiants.

Edgedance spoilers

Spoiler

Nale mentions that there have been clusters of voidspren hiding after desolations before.  Perhaps just before the Recreance happened such a cluster of voidspren was discovered, started bonding Listeners, maybe even raising thunderclasts. The Radiants of the time probably must have thought that a desolation had just begun. This could explain who or what the radiants were fighting. 

So facing what they think is a new desolation they somehow discover a secret that leads to nine orders breaking the first oath. Something to make them think killing their best friends is the right thing to do. 

I still have no idea what the secret is, but I like the idea of them fighting a mini/unofficial desolation better than fighting the Aimians. The scouring feels like a separate mostly unrelated event to me.

 

Edited August 25, 2017 by Ciridae

[Calderis he/him]

@Ciridae just to clarify my position, I don't think that was the scouring. 

I do think they were fighting the Aimians, but I think the scouring of Aimia was much much more recent. 

I also think that after the events leading up to the Recreance, the Sleepless chose to go into hiding rather than fight back during the scouring. 

[Ciridae]

@Calderis Sorry that wasn't solely directed at you, there's just a lack of possible enemies that are powerful enough to pose a threat to the radiants at the time so it's understandable and even logical to consider the Aimians as a possible enemy. It just never felt right to me that the Aimians were fought twice in the history since the last desolation with a lot of time between the two events and not much connecting them. It's still entirely possible, I'm just looking for alternatives at this point. I generally get the feeling that the Aimians are trying to do good, even if, due to their vast understanding of history and magic, that puts them at odds with other characters that don't understand their motivations. Two wars against probable allies just doesn't feel right. 

[Calderis he/him]

@Ciridae I understand. My idea is based more on feeling than evidence so it's not like I have any reason to argue it further.

I can understand why you see it the way you do as well. I just feel like the scouring was a mixture of two things. Primarily I think it was about greed. I think the scouring was far more focused on the gemhearts of the Lanceryn than the Aimians. I think that the reputation that the Aimians have was the pretense used to justify the scouring. That reputation, though it's origins have been forgotten since they were overshadowed by the Recreance itself, tie back to that period of war. 

So I believe the scouring is only Tangentially related. 

 

[Ciridae]

@Calderis Really good points and I agree for the most parts. With how weird the Aimians are even by Roshar standards, that reputation wouldn't even have to come from a war. 

Even if it was the Aimians that were fought at the time, I'm still curious about what Nale said. 

ED spoilers:

Spoiler

If pockets of ancient Listeners from the old days are a thing not unheard of, are there any events in history that mention them? Maybe this is where some legends of voidbringers in the highstorms come from.  I still like the idea of the minor desolation though haha

 

[galendo]

16 hours ago, Seloun said:

If the KR were founded through what they would have viewed as dishonorable means, I could see all or most of the Knights disbanding, since it breaks the first Oath.I don't think it's also definitively established that every KR abandoned their Oaths for the same reasons; it certainly seems possible that a large chunk of the KR disbanding could have caused the organization overall to start falling apart. Alternatively, the Skybreakers deciding that they suddenly had to hunt down all KR while the greater part of the military arm of the KR disbanding could have led to the organization collapsing.

Would founding through dishonorable means (whatever that means) have broken the first Oath, though?  My impression is that the Orders have sufficiently disparate views on the Oaths that no single event could ruin them all.  At least, I've never heard a reasonable theory as to one that could.  Also, it's not at all clear -- and in fact in Dalinar's case, strongly implied otherwise -- that dishonorable behavior in one's past causes any difficulty with one's spren bond in the present.  So even if they KR were founded dishonorably, I wouldn't expect that knowledge to interfere with the current Radiants' Oaths.

While there are certainly explanations that might have caused a majority of the KR to abandon their Oaths, there doesn't seem to be anything that would realistically account for, say, 95% of Radiants to do so.  Think of our modern-day Radiants and proto-Radiants: can you envision a single thing that would convince Dalinar, Kaladin, and Szeth to abandon their Oaths?  Or even two out of the three?  And they're only three out of maybe ten or fifteen candidates -- call it 20%.  And even 5% of the KR of the Recreance would still be a significant force to be reckoned with.  Hard to write them into the ashes of history, which is what apparently happened.

And while the organization could have collapsed through a number of ways or means, the Recreance is a very...extreme way for it to happen, to say the least.

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As to the second point, we actually don't know that the Recreance happened all at once. Dalinar's vision shows two Orders (and possibly not the entirety of the Orders) disbanding. This is likely the first instance since there's no rumors about this possibility or anything at all that suggests anyone besides the KR knows what might be going on, but it's not really at all clear that this was being simultaneously repeated by every KR nor that this is the entire Order of Windrunners and Stonewards.

While I've always assumed from Dalinar's vision that the Recreance happened effectively simultaneously in five different places, at two Orders per location, I realize that there's no non-circumstantial evidence to support this.  Still, we can strongly infer that the entirety of the Radiants broke their Oaths or went entirely (and perpetually, somehow) underground.  If any appreciable number of Nahel spren had survived, some of them would have bonded again, and the KR as a whole would not have died out.  Even if Nale were running around killing all the proto-Radiants at the time, we know that he can't be everywhere and stop everyone.

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For the third point: I think it's possible that the entire point was to make the spren essentially unrevivable. It's still unclear what happens if a KR dies/retires in good standing, so to speak, but it seems unlikely that it results in a dead spren in the same way the abandoned shards do (or there should be a -ton- of dead shards floating around from before the Recreance). The trickiest part is the lack of good documentation or explanation for their actions; it's possible that it was documented (later) and it just didn't survive (quite possible given the scarcity of information from that era in general) or that documentation would defeat the purpose (e.g. KR wanted to make sure there would be no future KR by obfuscating as much as possible; this potentially ties in with the Skybreaker/Nale's activities)

Yes, I agree that the point was to make the spren impossible to revive (or to give humanity constant access to Shards regardless of their willingness to swear Oaths, or for some other functionally equivalent reason).  My point, however, is that there's no reason to break their Oaths in such a sudden and inexplicable fashion.  The way they did it caused a large amount of chaos, infighting, and death.  If they had just spoken with the inhabitants of Feverkeep and arranged a peaceful transfer of arms, they still could have broken their Oaths, still trapped the spren in deadblade form, but saved a lot of pain and death in the process.

[Seloun]

On 8/25/2017 at 4:58 PM, galendo said:

Would founding through dishonorable means (whatever that means) have broken the first Oath, though?  My impression is that the Orders have sufficiently disparate views on the Oaths that no single event could ruin them all.  At least, I've never heard a reasonable theory as to one that could.  Also, it's not at all clear -- and in fact in Dalinar's case, strongly implied otherwise -- that dishonorable behavior in one's past causes any difficulty with one's spren bond in the present.  So even if they KR were founded dishonorably, I wouldn't expect that knowledge to interfere with the current Radiants' Oaths.

Founding through dishonorable means - probably not. Maintaining the Orders through dishonorable means - almost certainly. My bondfarming theory is that the KR were keeping their numbers up (again, probably without the KR themselves knowing at first) through the spren intentionally causing traumatic events to break candidates.

As an aside, note the spren bond itself doesn't seem to depend on the Oaths (surgebinders existed before KR). Instead the text seems to suggest that the Heralds (Ishi specifically) found a way to bind the spren abilities to the Oaths in some fashion that makes them work the way we do with the modern KR. It's not really the bonding that's at issue so much as the Oaths.

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While there are certainly explanations that might have caused a majority of the KR to abandon their Oaths, there doesn't seem to be anything that would realistically account for, say, 95% of Radiants to do so.  Think of our modern-day Radiants and proto-Radiants: can you envision a single thing that would convince Dalinar, Kaladin, and Szeth to abandon their Oaths?  Or even two out of the three?  And they're only three out of maybe ten or fifteen candidates -- call it 20%.  And even 5% of the KR of the Recreance would still be a significant force to be reckoned with.  Hard to write them into the ashes of history, which is what apparently happened.

We've seen Szeth abandon his oaths (and it was as extreme and traumatic as we would expect). Kaladin does abandon his oaths for a short period of time. Really all it takes is for them to change their minds, which any sort of new revelation could potentially do. I think something on par with bondfarming or learning the Heralds abandoned their responsibilities, or understanding how the Desolation cycles worked (or misunderstanding) could have been sufficient for this particular point (though as noted before, the reactions of the KR suggests to me that it was something personal and related to the spren).

I agree though that it's unlikely every KR or even nearly every KR would have come to the same conclusion about their oaths. I think it's more likely a large number of them did agree (let say a signiicant majority), and that some that agreed felt it was justified to enforce their views on the rest (e.g. Skybreakers). Sort of a murder-suicide thing. This would require a lot less of the KR necessarily agreeing.

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Still, we can strongly infer that the entirety of the Radiants broke their Oaths or went entirely (and perpetually, somehow) underground.  If any appreciable number of Nahel spren had survived, some of them would have bonded again, and the KR as a whole would not have died out.  Even if Nale were running around killing all the proto-Radiants at the time, we know that he can't be everywhere and stop everyone.

I don't think it's immediately obvious that the spren would have immediately attempted to re-bond. Based on what we've seen from the modern KR spren, the process of crossing over is extremely traumatic and probably would have required a good support system to succeed on a consistent basis. We've seen from Darkness's vignettes that newbie surgebinders generally don't have much of a chance again Nale hunting them down, and the way he talks in Edgebringer suggests that he's dealt with quite a few surgebinders.

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Yes, I agree that the point was to make the spren impossible to revive (or to give humanity constant access to Shards regardless of their willingness to swear Oaths, or for some other functionally equivalent reason).  My point, however, is that there's no reason to break their Oaths in such a sudden and inexplicable fashion.  The way they did it caused a large amount of chaos, infighting, and death.  If they had just spoken with the inhabitants of Feverkeep and arranged a peaceful transfer of arms, they still could have broken their Oaths, still trapped the spren in deadblade form, but saved a lot of pain and death in the process.

I'm not completely sure that the spren could have been killed so thoroughly without bearers that acted in extremely dishonorable fashion. Causing the infighting could have basically been the whole point of the exercise. Based on the vision, it seems like the result was specifically intended (since as noted, there were plenty of other, more rational alternatives if the infighting was not desirable) or the KR proactively didn't care (e.g. due to very personal reasons - sort of cop out, but KR don't seem immune to making bad decisions due to personal feelings).

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, Seloun said:

Founding through dishonorable means - probably not. Maintaining the Orders through dishonorable means - almost certainly. My bondfarming theory is that the KR were keeping their numbers up (again, probably without the KR themselves knowing at first) through the spren intentionally causing traumatic events to break candidates.

You farming idea has a major flaw in the fact that without a bond, the Spren are non-sentient. They can't plan anything. 

1 hour ago, Seloun said:

We've seen Szeth abandon his oaths (and it was as extreme and traumatic as we would expect).

No we haven't. Szeth was bound to an Honorblade. He swore no oaths. 

[Frostlander]

Sorry for the upcoming giant quote from the scene where Dalinar watches the Recreance, but I've never understood the bolded sections:

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Nearby, some of the keep’s soldiers had reached the Shardblades—but rather than chasing after the Radiants, these men were cautiously pulling the Blades free. A few officers scrambled out of the keep, calling for the Blades to be put down. They were soon outnumbered by men who began boiling out of side gates and rushing toward the weapons.

“They are the first,” a voice said.

Dalinar looked up to see that one of the knights had stopped beside him. It was the man who looked Alethi. He looked over his shoulder at the crowd gathering around the blades. Men had begun to scream at one another, everyone scrambling to get a Blade before they were all claimed.

“They are the first,” the Radiant said, turning to Dalinar. Dalinar recognized the depth of that voice. It was the voice that always spoke to him in these visions. “They were the first, and they were also the last.” 

“Is this the Day of Recreance?” Dalinar asked.

“These events will go down in history,” the Radiant said. “They will be infamous. You will have many names for what happened here.”

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) (p. 733). Macmillan. Kindle Edition. 

 

In terms of "the first," is he referring to the non-radiants who take the blades and plate or to the Radiants? Both? And why does he switch tenses from "They are the first" to "They were the first and they were also the last."

Then, when Dalinar asks if this is the Day of Recreance, the voice gives a non-answer. Non-answers, I've found, frequently mask misdirection in Sanderson's writing. (Ofen, these moments sound poetic or funny.) What are the other names for what happened there besides Recreance? Have we heard them?

There's something off about the construction of this scene here, but I can't figure out what or why.

[Killik he/him]

"This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at the time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership; but this was only nine of the ten, as one said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine." Words of Radiance, Chapter 38, page 20

I've always read this as the 10th order "entertained great subterfuge" in order to survive the assault from non-KRs after the Recreance.  But as this is from the perspective of a outsider some 200 years after the Recreance, perhaps the great subterfuge was the 10th order orchestrating the Recreance itself.  Perhaps like the Heralds thought that if at least one returns to Braize it will be enough to maintain the oathpact, if only one KR order remained it would be enough to break whatever contribution the KRs had on the desolations to end, but still maintain one order to assist in the rebuilding of the KRs should it be needed.  

I haven't decided if I am leaning towards the remaining KR order betraying the others and causing the order's destruction, or if they were well-intended and it was more of a democratic decision that the one particular order would remain.

[Landis963 he/him]

2 hours ago, Killik said:

"This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at the time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership; but this was only nine of the ten, as one said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine." Words of Radiance, Chapter 38, page 20

I've always read this as the 10th order "entertained great subterfuge" in order to survive the assault from non-KRs after the Recreance.  But as this is from the perspective of a outsider some 200 years after the Recreance, perhaps the great subterfuge was the 10th order orchestrating the Recreance itself.  Perhaps like the Heralds thought that if at least one returns to Braize it will be enough to maintain the oathpact, if only one KR order remained it would be enough to break whatever contribution the KRs had on the desolations to end, but still maintain one order to assist in the rebuilding of the KRs should it be needed.  

I haven't decided if I am leaning towards the remaining KR order betraying the others and causing the order's destruction, or if they were well-intended and it was more of a democratic decision that the one particular order would remain.

"...At the expense of the other nine." Which would indicate that your first hypothesis is correct, and doesn't really match with the second one. 

[Killik he/him]

24 minutes ago, Landis963 said:

"...At the expense of the other nine." Which would indicate that your first hypothesis is correct, and doesn't really match with the second one. 

Yes, but my point was that from the perspective of the author of that quote, they viewed destruction of the other 9 and the presumed survival of the 10th order to be the result of the subterfuge of the 10th order.  Essentially they used the other 9 orders to hide themselves and survive or something like that.

But perhaps this is a biased opinion and in truth all 10 orders were agreed on the plan and allowed the survival of the 10th order to appear to be at the detriment of the other 9.

[Seloun]

On 8/27/2017 at 6:19 PM, Calderis said:

You farming idea has a major flaw in the fact that without a bond, the Spren are non-sentient. They can't plan anything.

Spren are absolutely sentient and can indeed plan things without being bonded. There's something about coming over to the material realm that seems to cause them great trauma, but they're perfectly capable of agency in the Cognitive. There's multiple references for this, including a number of things Wyndle says, what Jasnah talks about regarding the Highspren, and references of cities and other edifices in the Cognitive. Just from Wyndle from Lift's chapter in WoR:

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“I wanted to pick a distinguished Iriali matron. A grandmother, an accomplished gardener. But no, the Ring said we should choose you. ‘She has visited the Old Magic,’ they said. ‘Our mother has blessed her,’ they said. ‘She will be young, and we can mold her,’ they said. Well, they don’t have to put up with—”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 684). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

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“I . . . I’m not sure. Mistress, the transition to your side was difficult and left holes in my memory, even with the precautions my people took. I . . .”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 704). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

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“Thieving in the night, chased by abominations. I was a gardener. A wonderful gardener! Cryptics and honorspren alike came to see the crystals I grew from the minds of your world. Now this. What have I become?”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 701). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition

There's plenty of issues with the bondfarming theory (though mostly areas that other theories also have trouble explaining) but the spren not being able to plan and act on their own isn't one of them.

[Calderis he/him]

@Seloun yes. They can observe, and they can plan. That's It.

They can't interact in the physical realm without a bond which means they can't enact any of those plans until they're sapient enough to do so. Which means they need a bond. 

[+robardin he/him]

On 8/24/2017 at 1:43 AM, Seloun said:

Actually (with the usual caveat that assuming Dalanar's vision is correct):

... whatever theory trying to explain the Recreance has to be able to explain why the Radiants (these particular ones) chose to break their bonds in this fashion. Surely there would have been ways to break their bond in a more private or more respectful manner towards the spren. The Radiants throw away their spren like trash, in a highly public way. It's hard not to interpret this as being something done out of highly personal motivation rather than simply calculated.

Not just "like trash" - as Shards. Both Blade and Plate (presumably resulting from an Ideal beyond the Third).

We've seen from Syl's (temporary) "death" when Kaladin went off his Ideal Path that spren-death can mean the spren is consigned to a diminished, dormant existence in the Cognitive Realm. But what happened in Dalinar's vision is that the KRs summoned their spren as Shardblades and THEN walked away from their oaths, apparently locking them in Blade form, such that anybody could just pick them up and use them "without the checks a spren requires" (i.e., binding the wielder to a set of Ideals).

With the later creation of the hilt gem fabrials a non-Radiant can force a kind of bond with the dead spren to be able to summon/dismiss the Blade (which takes a week's time, and lighten's ones eyes), but upon the wielder's death, the Blade falls once more into the Physical Realm, for anybody to wield.

So it seems to me that whatever mass decision was behind the Recreance also involved intentionally creating a large number of "un-sprenned Shards" in the world. They knew that would happen, and chose to do the Recreance in a way that made it happen.

In Kaladin's case when he killed Syl, he had only yet reached the Second Ideal, so perhaps it is somehow part and parcel of the Third Ideal and beyond that an oathbroken bond would result in a Physical Shard.

But the way Dalinar's vision plays out, the Knights assemble (in Plate) outside of a garrisoned keep, without their Shardblades out; then once assembled, they summon their Blades en masse, driving them point-first into the ground, followed by removing and abandoning their Plate as well. They could've done it in a big cave and then blocked it off, or something like that, but the way it was done, it seems a distinct gesture not just of "I renounce my Ideals", but also "these superweapons are now up for grabs for you soldiers to use".

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by robardin

[Bort he/him]

New theory.

The Radiants betrayed their oaths because they themselves were betrayed. The Heralds lied to them, telling them that the Desolation in the prologue of WoK was the last one, and that humanity had won. During the Shin Invasion, the Radiants were doing their stuff, protecting the peasants, when they discovered that the Shin were using the Honourblades, the Heralds weren't really gone, and the Desolations weren't really over.

[Velvet Thunder he/him]

33 minutes ago, Bort said:

New theory.

The Radiants betrayed their oaths because they themselves were betrayed. The Heralds lied to them, telling them that the Desolation in the prologue of WoK was the last one, and that humanity had won. During the Shin Invasion, the Radiants were doing their stuff, protecting the peasants, when they discovered that the Shin were using the Honourblades, the Heralds weren't really gone, and the Desolations weren't really over.

Or perhaps, as others suggested, although they did not have the same effect as the heralds, they did... encourage(?) new desolations faster. The Truthwatchers saw that without the Heralds, they were doomed on the next one (the final desolation) with their current forces and state of the world. They needed a united, stronger world to survive. By discarding their spren, they 'bought time' in which they hoped future humanity (and maybe some parshendi..) would unite to become strong enough, where the knights radiant would also be reborn and they may survive the final desolation.

Links well with the current - "oh sh*t, were totally not united" and certain orders belief that the KR would return.

Based off nothing more than my whimsical drifting thoughts while at work!

Edited August 29, 2017 by Velvet Thunder

[Bort he/him]

1 minute ago, Velvet Thunder said:

Or perhaps, as others suggested, although they did not have the same effect as the heralds, they did... encourage(?) new desolations faster. The Truthwatchers saw that without the Heralds, they were doomed on the next one (the final desolation) with their current forces and state of the world. They needed a united, stronger world to survive. By discarding their spren, they 'bought time' in which they hoped future humanity (and maybe some parshendi..) would unite to become strong enough, where the knights radiant would also be reborn and they may survive the final desolation. Based off nothing more than my whimsical drifting thoughts while at work!

Not bad whimsical drifting

I like this idea. I hope this is revealed as the truth when Adolin revives his Blade during his exile.

[WhiteLeeopard she/her]

Another tinfoil hat option.

The Truthwatchers foresaw that the True Desolation was coming, so brutal that all of Roshar would be destroyed as Radiants wouldn't be enough to save Roshar. Therefore, they broke their oaths to give humanity a lot of Shards, so that the average person could fight in the True Desolation, and give the non Radiants a better chance of surviving too. Part that doesn't fit is skybreakers actions. Could be they were not aware of what they were doing, or truly Radiants could bring the Desolation faster, as such they were trying to gain as much time as possible. 

[Seloun]

13 hours ago, Bort said:

New theory.

The Radiants betrayed their oaths because they themselves were betrayed. The Heralds lied to them, telling them that the Desolation in the prologue of WoK was the last one, and that humanity had won. During the Shin Invasion, the Radiants were doing their stuff, protecting the peasants, when they discovered that the Shin were using the Honourblades, the Heralds weren't really gone, and the Desolations weren't really over.

This theory runs into the already mentioned problem of 'why did the Radiants choose to break their oaths in this particular manner?' It also doesn't explain why even if the Radiants were betrayed, they would take it out on innocent people/spren (presumably the KR are still Cool Dudes, just butthurt, so to speak, in the betrayal scenario, or it must also explain why they suddenly became callous, immoral individuals). Wouldn't it make more sense that they would act against/lash out against the ones that betrayed them?

Which is why I reiterate: given that they specifically killed the spren in a way to make it essentially impossible for them to revive, the spren must somehow have been responsible for whatever caused their actions (or were otherwise indirectly associated with whatever caused their action, e.g. Heralds betrayed us -> somehow spren power the Heralds -> kill spren to punish Heralds (please note this is an example of a chain of reasoning that would validate against this specific point; I don't subscribe to this particular theory).

Hence bondfarming. There doesn't really seem to be a lot of direct reasons to punish the spren otherwise given what's currently known.

12 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

Another tinfoil hat option.

The Truthwatchers foresaw that the True Desolation was coming, so brutal that all of Roshar would be destroyed as Radiants wouldn't be enough to save Roshar. Therefore, they broke their oaths to give humanity a lot of Shards, so that the average person could fight in the True Desolation, and give the non Radiants a better chance of surviving too. Part that doesn't fit is skybreakers actions. Could be they were not aware of what they were doing, or truly Radiants could bring the Desolation faster, as such they were trying to gain as much time as possible. 

This runs into the same problem as the above ( 'why did the Radiants choose to break their oaths in this particular manner?') but in a different way. If this is the case, why not leave instructions? The KR don't say anything to the soldiers as they leave the Shards; this is really strange given that no matter what their aims were, saying something probably would have furthered them, even possibly as a reverse-psychology sort of thing.

Further, this seems like an odd way to leave a lot of Shards, given there aren't really that many. The 200 or so from just the two Orders are more than Dalinar believed existed in the entire world:

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The scout outside backed his horse up. There looked to be a good two hundred Shardbearers out there. Alethkar owned some twenty Blades, Jah Keved a similar number. If one added up all the rest in the world, there might be enough total to equal the two powerful Vorin kingdoms. That meant, so far as he knew, there were less than a hundred Blades in all of the world. And here he saw two hundred Shardbearers gathered in one army. It was mind-numbing.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (pp. 730-731). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

Of course, Dalinar could be missing a huge cache of them somewhere, but even so in the best case you're talking about (number of KR during Recreance) + (number of KR in the modern era) which is unlikely to be much larger than the first number.

[Seloun]

On 8/28/2017 at 10:25 PM, Calderis said:

@Seloun yes. They can observe, and they can plan. That's It.

They can't interact in the physical realm without a bond which means they can't enact any of those plans until they're sapient enough to do so. Which means they need a bond. 

I'm not sure there's enough information to conclude this. Soulcasting seems to occur through interaction in the Cognitive. There are spren that do have partial physical representation and they seem to be able to interact with Cognitive spren to some degree:

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I visited another place, she thought. I think … I think I spoke with the spirit of the goblet. Did a goblet, of all things, have a soul? Upon opening her pouch to check on the Soulcaster, she’d found that the sphere Kabsal had given her had stopped glowing. She could remember a vague feeling of light and beauty, a raging storm inside of her.

She’d taken the light from the sphere and given it to the goblet— the spren of the goblet— as a bribe to transform. Was that how Soulcasting worked? Or was she just struggling to make connections?

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (p. 678). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

As she touched it, she noticed something sweeping through the air above her. She cringed, looking up to find large, birdlike creatures circling around her in Shadesmar. They were a dark grey and seemed to have no specific shape, their forms blurry.

“What . . .”

“Spren,” Pattern said. “Drawn by you. Your . . . tiredness?”

“Exhaustionspren?” she asked, shocked by their size here.

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (pp. 143-144). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

“They can’t see me,” Wyndle said, growing up beside her to create another line of handholds, “because I exist mostly in the Cognitive Realm, even though I’ve moved my consciousness to this Realm. I can make myself visible to anyone, should I desire, though it’s not easy for me. Other spren are more skilled at it, while some have the opposite trouble. Of course, no matter how I manifest, nobody can touch me, as I barely have any substance in this Realm.”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 694). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

So spren generally can have manifestations in both the Cognitive and the Material, and different spren manifest in differing amounts. Objects have(?) spren, which can at the very least transform themselves, causing a physical change. We see this with Shallan's transformation of the boat and pretty much all of the fabrials as well, e.g.

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Five groupings of fabrial have been discovered so far. The methods of their creation are carefully guarded by the artifabrian community, but they appear to be the work of dedicated scientists, as opposed to the more mystical Surgebindings once performed by the Knights Radiant. I am more and more convinced that the creation of these devices requires forced enslavement of transformative cognitive entities, known as “spren” to the local communities.

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) . Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

It doesn't have to be easy for the spren to manipulate the Material world to do so or want to do so; indeed, one could easily argue that that very difficulty could be the reason why they'd want to do so. It's worth considering what the spren get from the bond, whether they value it, and whether they value it enough to do potentially stupid things for it. Given that Pattern seems to think he's essentially committing suicide by bonding with Shallan, but still finds it worthwhile, I'd say what they get from the bond is quite highly valued indeed:

Quote

He buzzed with an annoyed sound, quick and high pitched. “I will learn what I can of you before you kill me.”

...

“So that’s what you get out of it,” Shallan said, untangling her hair with her fingers. “Symbiosis. I get access to Surgebinding, you get thought.”

“Sapience,” Pattern said. “Thought. Life. These are of humans. We are ideas. Ideas that wish to live.”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 256). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

So the spren want to bond, and at least some of them are willing to die for a chance to live, so to speak. Also, the spren don't necessarily understand humans all that well in their original form:

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“I listened to them last night,” Pattern said with a buzzing, excited voice from the back of her dress. “Is nonexistence really such a fascinating concept to humans?”

“They spoke of death, did they?” Shallan asked.

“They kept wondering if you would ‘come for them.’ I realize that nonexistence is not something to look forward to, but they talked on, and on, and on about it. Fascinating indeed.”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 420). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

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“It’s perfectly clear to us,” Syl said. “You’re the strange ones. Break a rock, and it’s still there. Break a spren, and she’s still there. Sort of. Break a person, and something leaves. Something changes. What’s left is just meat. You’re weird.”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 1044). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

So in my bondfarming theory, I'd assume the spren began somewhat innocently (e.g. some bright spren realizes that Desolation => more people become KR => more smart spren, therefore: cause more Desolations!) and possibly continued even they began knowing better (bad behavior that becomes normalized due to lack of counteraction is notoriously easy to maintain) but ultimately were sufficiently involved that the KR could be convinced that the spren caused them to break for their own purposes. Hence to huge counter-reaction to the spren by the KR.

[Calderis he/him]

I'll agree to disagree. There's a big difference in my mind between the Cognitive representation of a physical object like the beads, and a spren. The only spren we've seen capable of interacting with the physical realm without a bond are the Stormfather and, by way of the Old Magic, the Nightwatcher. 

I've seen no evidence that Nahel Spren are capable of what you suggest. 

[Seloun]

10 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I'll agree to disagree. There's a big difference in my mind between the Cognitive representation of a physical object like the beads, and a spren. The only spren we've seen capable of interacting with the physical realm without a bond are the Stormfather and, by way of the Old Magic, the Nightwatcher. 

I've seen no evidence that Nahel Spren are capable of what you suggest. 

Quote

“Pattern,” she said. “Can you look inside of this? Squeeze in through the keyhole?”

“Mmm . . .” Pattern moved onto the side of the trunk, then shrank down to be the size of her thumbnail. He moved in easily. She heard his voice from inside. “Dark.”

“Drat,” she said, fishing out a sphere and holding it up to the keyhole. “Does that help?”

“I see a pattern,” he said.

“A pattern? What kind of—”

Click.

Shallan started, then reached to lift the lid of the trunk. Pattern buzzed happily inside.

“You unlocked it.”

“A pattern,” he said happily.

“You can move things?”

“Push a little here and there,” he said. “Very little strength on this side. Mmm . . .”

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 419). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.

 

[Calderis he/him]

3 minutes ago, Seloun said:

 

Yes, and Syl carries a blackbane leaf. Both of which happen after they've already crossed over to the physical realm and bonded to a Radiant. 

This does not support your hypothesis that they could do so prior to bonding to create a bond.