[OB] The Great Voidbringer Army

[BrightVoid he/him]

23 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

So the best use of this force is the middle way: gather all parshendi of an area into a mid-sized fighting unit that is capable of pillaging a town, but can still live off what it loots. Have  hundreds of those units around all of roshar. Assault the farming communities, they are poorly defended but they play a vital role in the economy. Yes, they can soulcast food, but they would not have farmers if it was practical to soulcast on such a large scale. Start chewing at the roots, undermine the economy and the army will fall.

One of Dalinar's visions showed voidbringers attacking farms, so there is historical precedent for this strategy being used.

[OathKeeper]

13 hours ago, Pattern said:

Certainly it makes sense to pull the parshmen together out of small villages where they were in the minority. I am looking forward to what happens in big cities where parshmen were quite abundant (think of Kharbranth and Kholinar). Pulling the parshmen out there steathily would have been a missed chance of wreaking havoc.

 

You say missed opportunity, I say sacrificed opportunity. An enduring theme in SA is nobody believing Dalinar's warnings. His conversation with Navani confirms that the other monarchies in Roshar are still doubting his warnings. I think only the Parshmen that are left out in the everstorm, as we saw in Edgedancer, will be transformed, and they'll be taken away by the storm before anyone witnesses the transformation. This will leave the monarchs room to doubt Dalinar further, as those who heeded his warning just lost all their Parshmen. 

Early Voidbringer raids, even in metropolitan centers like Kholinar, would hurt Odium more than they help, as the monarchies of Roshar would unite immediately in their wake and the KR will be fleshed out before Odium can amass and train a full army. 

In terms of story, this would just make Dalinar's job too easy. It will be better (harder and more heroic) if Dalinar has to scramble to get cooperation when a huge voidbringer army is knocking on Uruthiru's door (or perhaps another city. I'm agnostic on where they attack).

[Ciridae]

On 9/6/2017 at 9:18 PM, king of nowhere said:

So the best use of this force is the middle way: gather all parshendi of an area into a mid-sized fighting unit that is capable of pillaging a town, but can still live off what it loots. Have  hundreds of those units around all of roshar. Assault the farming communities, they are poorly defended but they play a vital role in the economy.

Yes, this would be devastating. Big cities can fall back on soulcast food for a time when supplies from outside farms stop coming. The rural communities don't have that luxury. And as soon as the cities are flooded with refugees from the countryside, without the additional supplies from outside farms these larger cities are going to have a huge problem. The Voidbringer armies don't have to defeat humanity in battle if they can cause famine across the continent. 

I could also see small teams of Listeners sneak into the cities to sabotage existing food supplies (smokeform comes to mind).

That said I think there is an army being gathered somewhere. I'd have all the listeners in one region gather, pillage the countryside, moving from town to town and between farms.  Eventually though, these groups would gather somewhere, maybe in multiple locations across Roshar. Sharing knowledge of newly discovered forms is important, and wearing a new form doesn't automatically make the listeners into soldiers, like Eshonai said. So training would be in order. Other logistics like a clear command structure would need to be established too.

On the actual army, do we have any estimates on how many parshmen there are on Roshar? How many in cities? Outside of cities? Are they spread evenly across Roshar or are there nations that use them more than others or some that don't use them at all? The Purelake seems to be pretty save from them for the moment for example.

I am so excited to see the new forms. 

Edited September 7, 2017 by Ciridae

[OathKeeper]

7 hours ago, Ciridae said:

 The Purelake seems to be pretty save from them for the moment for example.

Too bad it's plagued at the moment :/

[Pattern he/him]

10 hours ago, OathKeeper said:

You say missed opportunity, I say sacrificed opportunity. An enduring theme in SA is nobody believing Dalinar's warnings.

We know for WoR (or the ending of WoK?) that parshmen are even used to raise human children, they are practically everywhere. I guess it's impossible for them to leave the great cities without someone noticing, and even if they would, the powers that be would have to wonder where all the parshmen have gone.

The next logical point would be to rethink Dalinar's warnings and acknowledge the truth. Parshmen are mostly inert, they stand still and do nothing until someone tells them so. Their sudden vanishing would be highly suspicious, even without them wreaking havoc in the process.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Pattern

[Calderis he/him]

8 hours ago, OathKeeper said:

Too bad it's plagued at the moment :/

Yeah, that cold going around is going to be the end of the Voidbringers.

[Overlord Jebus]

My first thought when Kal mentioned the Parshmen being missing was that Taravangian mentioned Moelach was heading west.

He may have simply been heading to Urithiru to keep an eye of things there (I am interested to find out where the death rattles start again) or there may have been a sort of.... call to action for Odiums forces. 

So that's my current only theory, Parshmen transformed by the Everstorm are heading west like Moelach is.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

18 hours ago, Ciridae said:

The Voidbringer armies don't have to defeat humanity in battle if they can cause famine across the continent.

The same could be said in reverse. Won't the transformed Parshendi still require food? They can pillage for a while but then they are going to need a stable food source, eh? Unless they have some form of soulcasting... perhaps?

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

Yeah, that cold going around is going to be the end of the Voidbringers.

@Calderis The Stormlight Archives is going to have a "War of the Worlds" style ending!

Edited September 8, 2017 by CaptainRyan

[Ciridae]

2 hours ago, CaptainRyan said:

The same could be said in reverse. Won't the transformed Parshendi still require food? They can pillage for a while but then they are going to need a stable food source, eh? Unless they have some form of soulcasting... perhaps?

They would be living off of what the countryside provides. Everything that would usually support rural communities or get sold in larger cities goes to sustain these small groups of voidbringers. That is why this tactic is so effective. Cut off the enemy from a large portion of supplies while sustaining their own troops. 

The small towns in the countryside are already staggering from the everstorm. Add in raids by voidbringers and soon enough the rural population will try to find refuge in the closest large city. Strain the cities resources through the sudden increase in population, continue to make sure no supplies get to the city. 

Gather all the raiding groups around the city and besiege it. Attack during the next high- or everstorm, stormform should have no problems. Little to no resistance from a terrified, hungry group of people. Easy pickings.

Edit: as soon as the war us over I guess they would have to farm again, but until then I think foraging and raiding the countryside is enough to get them through, depending on how long it takes to wipe out those pesky humans. I mean we know the humans is going to put up a fight, but it looks pretty bad for humanity right now. 

I do like the idea that they may have access to some form of soulcasting, they should have similar orders with similar surged judging by the surgebinding chart.

Edited September 8, 2017 by Ciridae

[CaptainRyan he/him]

1 minute ago, Ciridae said:

They would be living off of what the countryside provides. Everything that would usually support rural communities or get sold in larger cities goes to sustain these small groups of voidbringers. That is why this tactic is so effective. Cut off the enemy from a large portion of supplies while sustaining their own troops. 

The small towns in the countryside are already staggering from the everstorm. Add in raids by voidbringers and soon enough the rural population will try to find refuge in the closest large city. Strain the cities resources through the sudden increase in population, continue to make sure no supplies get to the city. 

Gather all the raiding groups around the city and besiege it. Attack during the next high- or everstorm, stormform should have no problems. Little to no resistance from a terrified, hungry group of people. Easy pickings.

Just to clarify, are you assuming some portion of the Voidbringer army starts farming? Otherwise, unless they raid these communities right at/around harvest time, there won't be a ton to pillage. Even if they raid just as a harvest is completed they will only steal enough food to sustain them for a (relatively) short time. If the Alethi use their soulcasters to provide food (and, thanks to the gemheart hunting of the last six years they have a solid stockpile of gemstones) then I think the Alethi, even besieged, will be able to feed their people for a longer period of time than Voidbringers who subsist solely on pillaged food. 

[Ciridae]

@CaptainRyan They would have to be quick, you're right. But not all of Roshar has soulcasters and not all of Roshar has a stockpile of gemhearts. I think it will be a very short fight for some of the less-prepared cities. It's a big continent, and not all cultures are as war oriented as the Alethi. 

[CaptainRyan he/him]

2 minutes ago, Ciridae said:

@CaptainRyan They would have to be quick, you're right. But not all of Roshar has soulcasters and not all of Roshar has a stockpile of gemhearts. I think it will be a very short fight for some of the less-prepared cities. It's a big continent, and not all cultures are as war oriented as the Alethi. 

Definitely agree with you there. This tactic would be very effective against a lot of the world.

[The Sovereign]

Just thought I would put this WoB in here as it is tangentially relevant. 
 

Quote

 

INTERVIEW: Apr 23rd, 2016

Brandon Sanderson RAFOlympics at JordanCon 8 (Verbatim)

QUESTION

A dullform Listener is indoors when the Everstorm passes over, will they be transformed into a Voidform?

BRANDON SANDERSON

No. It depends on the strength of the boundary between them, but it is possible for them to...Being transformed, taking new forms, there is a measure of will behind it, meaning for instance, even when Eshonai took the new form, she had herself open to taking a new form. By the time she didn’t want to, it was too late. But she had made the decision, even though she’d been kind of misled in some ways. If a parshmen were even in the Everstorm, and aggressively didn't want this to happen, I'm not saying they won't, but there is room for discussion whether or not they would change there. But also one who DOES want to, and there's only a pane of glass and things like that, then yeah.

TAGS

parshendi, everstorm, voidform,

 

 

[WhiteLeeopard she/her]

Humans could just flee en masse to Urithiru, use soulcasters till the land there can be farmed, and last a very long time. It sounded absolutely huge, and had planting areas too. Wouldn't be surpised if it was originally built specifically to be the last bastion of humanity before the Voidbringers. Since its hard to reach without Oathgates can probably defend forever. Of course convincing people that they need to flee before disaster does come will be the tricky part. 

Edited September 8, 2017 by WhiteLeeopard

[Subvisual Haze]

I think there's some cleverness at work here from Odium (and Brandon too obviously).  We were sort of expecting the Parshmen to mass convert into hulked out murder machines who would immediately start sowing death and chaos all around them.  This is the warning that Dalinar has been shouting to the leaders of the world.

How much more clever if Odium moves slowly and cautiously.  It not only serves to make Dalinar look like a crazy loon for predicting a catastrophe that did not occur, but gives the forces of Odium time to coordinate and plan their first unsuspected strikes.  If the conversion of parshmen into voidbringers is facilitated by them being outside in the everstorm, Dalinar's warnings could tragically have the opposite of their intended effect.  Those communities that listened to Dalinar and in fear kicked out their parshmen just delivered Odium a fresh batch of recruits.

Dalinar dismisses the lack of responses received from world leaders as them being stubborn.  A possibility he didn't consider was that the voidbringers simply haven't gone overtly hostile yet.