Jump to content

[OB] Kaladin's Scouting Mission


The Sovereign

Recommended Posts

Just a thought I had while reading the new chapters...

While chasing down the Voidbringers, Kaladin makes a mental note that the description of the Listeners sounds like Warform and it is noted that they don't have red eyes. Did anyone else get the impression that Kaladin is actually chasing down Thude and the other exiled Listeners?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, The Sovereign said:

Just a thought I had while reading the new chapters...

While chasing down the Voidbringers, Kaladin makes a mental note that the description of the Listeners sounds like Warform and it is noted that they don't have red eyes. Did anyone else get the impression that Kaladin is actually chasing down Thude and the other exiled Listeners?

Yeah. The Voidbringers stealing the ships in Jah Keved are what turned me away from it. That and the distance those listeners would have to have traveled on foot... There were elderly listeners, and ones not exactly mentally prepared for a steady hard march (like Eshonai's mom). Not exactly sure on the distance though. It could be them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's no way that Thude and the other refusnicks were able to get all the way to northern Alethkar in a week or two. It's much more likely that most parshmen aren't transforming into forms other than stormform, or maybe not into voidbringers at all. That's compounded by the fact that the negotiating and stealing of ships in different countries. I'm starting to think that there are a couple in a voidbringer form in each group that lead through Odium's influence, and the rest were transformed into regular forms. The ardent did say that a few red lights were seen, but definitely not the whole group. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought the village was playing a con on Kaladin till they said they didn't particularly see red eyes. If they were trying to fool the Radiant for some reason they would have claimed red eyes everywhere. There is no way the Listeners could get to that corner of Alethkar so quickly (alright, maybe they somehow could, but the idea never even crossed my head). As such, the ships elsewhere didn't surprise me. The negotiations got a raised eyebrow, but I half expected something like that. Remember the Amazon blurb. The fight against the Voidbringers/Parshendi/whatever they are is not going to be so black and white, at least not on OB.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I brought that up in the chapter thread.  Also the fact that there were so many who were not able to travel that far is what increased my thoughts that it was them.  Or at least Thude and some of those closest to Eshonai, most likely the elite of the whole parshendi army.  So maybe some pushed ahead to find food to bring back to the elders.  

Plus they're headed to Kholinar.  Directly there from the sounds of it.  As far as the Parshendi know, there are Alethi warriors on the shattered plains, but they rule from Kholinar.  Thats were they were when they assassinated Gavilar.  The some red lights maybe, could have been rubies in their beards. Sounds like it definitely wasn't their eyes.

 

And I don't buy the Odium powered everstorm to change parshmen into warform.  Warform is more likely to resist and fight against Odium than slaveform.  They either change to voidbringers or nothing in the everstorm imo.  Unless the shattered plains group stops by and convinces parshmen to bond a regular (non void) spren.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it is the case the void forms are relatively uncommon, it might very well be the case that the Battle of Narak will turn out to have been even more important than it already seems. Perhaps Odium invested a significant part of his power in that army, and losing them was fairly costly, even though they succeeded at Odium's primary goal.

Edited by Authweight
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, DiamondMind said:

There's no way that Thude and the other refusnicks were able to get all the way to northern Alethkar in a week or two. It's much more likely that most parshmen aren't transforming into forms other than stormform, or maybe not into voidbringers at all. That's compounded by the fact that the negotiating and stealing of ships in different countries. I'm starting to think that there are a couple in a voidbringer form in each group that lead through Odium's influence, and the rest were transformed into regular forms. The ardent did say that a few red lights were seen, but definitely not the whole group. 

 

They left when there were still 2 highstorms left before the weeping.  Then there was like 2 weeks of Dalinar moving across the plateaus and then like a week or 2 after.  Thats quite a bit of time,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Edonidd said:

And I don't buy the Odium powered everstorm to change parshmen into warform.  Warform is more likely to resist and fight against Odium than slaveform.  They either change to voidbringers or nothing in the everstorm imo.  Unless the shattered plains group stops by and convinces parshmen to bond a regular (non void) spren.

 

Quote

“Our enslaved parshmen were once like you. Then we somehow robbed them of their ability to undergo the transformation. We did it by capturing a spren. An ancient, crucial spren.” He looked at her, green eyes alight. “I’ve seen how that can be reversed. A new storm that will bring the Heralds out of hiding. A new war.”

I'd argue that Gavilar saw the Everstorm as a means to release that "ancient, crucial spren," and give enslaved parshmen the ability to undergo transformation. I'd stop short of saying that it only changes them into Voidbringers for a couple reasons, chief among them being that it creates a more complex and nuanced narrative. Brandon doesn't write simple "good vs. evil" plots where we readers know that a character or group will always act a certain way.

I predict that there will be divisions among the newly transformed parshmen and politicking by the good guys (e.g. Dalinar and crew) and the bad guys (e.g. Voidbringers) to convince the fence-sitters (e.g. normal listener forms) to join one side or another. I also don't believe this will end with listener genocide, so I believe a large group of them will have to survive. I mean, we've seen much less sympathetic forms of life live on after a convenient point to exterminate them (I'm thinking of Koloss and the near destruction of Scadrial here).

Edited by Salkara
Grammar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Edonidd said:

They left when there were still 2 highstorms left before the weeping.  Then there was like 2 weeks of Dalinar moving across the plateaus and then like a week or 2 after.  Thats quite a bit of time,

Nice timeline. I was busy looking stuff up but this feel right. So, 4 weeks is 20 days (5 days in a week on Roshar iirc) so we have a minimum of 20 travel days with a max of around 30. I cannot seem to find the map of Roshar that has a legend with the distance marked off but, going on fallible memory, it looks like there is a minimum of 1000 km (620+ mi) [see blue line] between the Shattered Plains and Kholinar. Add to that the fact that Hearthstone is past Kholinar if one was heading from the Shattered Plains [see purple line] and it makes it highly unlikely that the refugee Last Legion group is the one Kaladin found. Damnation. I really thought I was being clever by noticing that the refugee group could be the one's Kaladin sought.

alethkar.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, CaptainRyan said:

Nice timeline. I was busy looking stuff up but this feel right. So, 4 weeks is 20 days (5 days in a week on Roshar iirc) so we have a minimum of 20 travel days with a max of around 30. I cannot seem to find the map of Roshar that has a legend with the distance marked off but, going on fallible memory, it looks like there is a minimum of 1000 km (620+ mi) [see blue line] between the Shattered Plains and Kholinar. Add to that the fact that Hearthstone is past Kholinar if one was heading from the Shattered Plains [see purple line] and it makes it highly unlikely that the refugee Last Legion group is the one Kaladin found. Damnation. I really thought I was being clever by noticing that the refugee group could be the one's Kaladin sought.

alethkar.jpg

Yeah, that's the end of that theory.  Like I said in the other thread where I brought it up, I'm not a very spatial thinker I can never keep the map in my head when reading any fantasy books.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Edonidd said:

They left when there were still 2 highstorms left before the weeping.  Then there was like 2 weeks of Dalinar moving across the plateaus and then like a week or 2 after.  Thats quite a bit of time,

Ok, I checked @jofwu's timeline. There are 6 or so Rosharan weeks (30 days) between Thude escaping and Kaladin arriving at Hearthstone. I assume chapter 10 occurs within the next week. As @CaptainRyan points out on the map, the distance between the Shattered Plain and Kholinar, let alone Hearthstone, is huge. It took a week and a half (8 days) for the 4 armies to march inward to Narak over the chasms. Thude and his group jumped into the chasms on 10/6/1 and had to get out and find shelter from a highstorm within two days. After that, they would have to pass over the rest of the Shattered Plains, pass the warcamps which are all along their edge and avoid their scouts, and had to travel all the way through Alethi lands which absolutely hate them, in order to travel to northern Althekar for some unknown reason. Travelling through all that Alethi land seems implausible at best, doing so in so little time with women and children seems downright impossible and/or insane. Looking at a full map of Roshar, a journey to Kholinar alone is 10-20 times the distance to the center of the Shattered Plains from their edge. If you say that army was going slowly because of the chasms and in enemy territory, we can say that's a 5 day journey. That's 50 days at absolute minimum just to Kholinar, and I'm making a lot of generous assumptions.

No, if we meet Thude again, and I do believe we will, it will be near the Shattered Plains. It makes the most sense that they went to the mountains to hide. It's a loose plot end that Rlain was concerned about the women and children and Dalinar promised to find them and then they were never mentioned again. I think he'll advocate for and then be sent with a Bridge 4 team back to the Shattered Plains in order to find that remnant, and run across Thude and/or and de-voided Eshonai.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Calderis said:

Yeah. The Voidbringers stealing the ships in Jah Keved are what turned me away from it. That and the distance those listeners would have to have traveled on foot... There were elderly listeners, and ones not exactly mentally prepared for a steady hard march (like Eshonai's mom). Not exactly sure on the distance though. It could be them. 

 

First, I thought you were just making a crude joke on Eshonai's mother that I didn't get, and then I remembered that she is old and getting senile, which made me sad :(

Edited by Rasha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the first storm gave every Parshmen the ability to listen. So the next storm can transform them better; then, the next one to give them a fighting form, etc. This desolation is different than before, the storm is here to stay right? It'll go around the world and won't disperse ever. So maybe the transformation is just smaller. But I don't get why they haven't attacked yet, even 2 or 4 of them could probably destroy a town. 

Maybe Odium don't have complete control yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, lastofus said:

Maybe Odium don't have complete control yet.

Or maybe Odium is smart and paying attention. 

An all out attack confirms Dalinar's claims and unites the world against his armies. A slow build undermines the opposition and allows him to choose his battles. 

He's already waited 4500 (Rosharan) years. What's a little more time? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/19/2017 at 11:32 PM, Edonidd said:

And I don't buy the Odium powered everstorm to change parshmen into warform.  Warform is more likely to resist and fight against Odium than slaveform.  They either change to voidbringers or nothing in the everstorm imo.  Unless the shattered plains group stops by and convinces parshmen to bond a regular (non void) spren.

Warform is more likely to act on anger and hatred than slaveform. Odium doesn't need to mind control anyone if he can rely on the anger at being enslaved for a lifetime that even non-voidforms will certainly feel. Eshonai also mentions that warform is more likely to follow orders and look to authorities. Warform, with their physical benefits, their willingness to follow voidforms that are directly influenced by Odium and their new anger and hate are the perfect soldiers for Odium. Granted, it would be better if every listener was transformed into stormform, but every voidspren is a tiny chip of Odium and I still think he's hesitant to expend too much of his power. Theres a limited amount of voidspren, and if there are not enough around to transform all the listeners, warform is the next best thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems that the parshmen are changing into whatever forms are most prevalent in their area. In a alethkar, it's Warform. In thaylen, it's sailors. In others it's negotiators and scribes. 

 

Could they just be changing depending upon the prevalent spren in that land? 

Edited by cremling
Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, cremling said:

It seems that the parshmen are changing into whatever forms are most prevalent in their area. In a alethkar, it's Warform. In thaylen, it's sailors. In others it's negotiators and scribes. 

 

Could they just be changing depending upon the prevalent spren in that land? 

I like that. I'm not sure it's as straightforward as Alethkar = Warform. Shattered Plains for the form we saw there, but there's not significantly less war actually in Alethkar (Most of their fighting is elsewhere). But that fits, since the ones Kaladin is after don't seem to have gone full Odium. They're probably the Parshendi equivalent of farmers. 

There definitely seems to be a connection. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, cremling said:

It seems that the parshmen are changing into whatever forms are most prevalent in their area. In a alethkar, it's Warform. In thaylen, it's sailors. In others it's negotiators and scribes. 

 

Could they just be changing depending upon the prevalent spren in that land? 

@cremling I like this theory, it's subtle like something BS would do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/19/2017 at 5:56 PM, Salkara said:

I'd argue that Gavilar saw the Everstorm as a means to release that "ancient, crucial spren," and give enslaved parshmen the ability to undergo transformation. I'd stop short of saying that it only changes them into Voidbringers for a couple reasons, chief among them being that it creates a more complex and nuanced narrative. Brandon doesn't write simple "good vs. evil" plots where we readers know that a character or group will always act a certain way.

I had always bought into the rebel pareshendi theory, until I read this. It works make a lot more sense though

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 09/23/2017 at 3:29 PM, Tai'shar-Malkier said:

I had always bought into the rebel pareshendi theory, until I read this. It works make a lot more sense though

Re-reading my post, I'm not sure if I explained my view well enough. The Eshonai POV chapters in WoR painted the listeners as a varied, complex society. It seems a shame to me to turn them all into dark, evil creatures just one book later. In a series with the injustice of societal prejudices as a central theme, I want the ending to include peace and acceptance between all species on Roshar, and that's going to be exceedingly difficult if one species in completely evil.


I expect, from a story-telling POV, that some listeners will be Voidbringers, and others will have normal listener forms. How this works, I don't entirely know, but it does provide space for readers to empathize with the parshmen. I mean, if all parshmen are now Voidbringers, who's going to be sad they were oppressed? If they're all Voidbringers, then humanity should've killed them instead enslaving them, and I don't think that's the narrative Brandon wants.


My personal theory (right now at least; probably shelved tomorrow at 9am) is that there is a voidspren equivalent to the Nahel bond. Such that all listeners are capable of bonding with a spren but only a broken soul with the right mindset can bond a voidspren. I feel somewhat confident in this based on the responses Dalinar got from other monarchs, the WoB on how parshmen might not bond in the middle of a storm (can't find the link atm; on mobile), and the simple fact that it creates a more complex plot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Warform

“Warform is worn for battle and reign,
Claimed by the gods, given to kill.
Unknown, unseen, but vital to gain.
It comes to those with the will. ”

—15th stanza of the Song of Listing

 

some parshman taking warform don't strike me strange. taking the form don't create a link to the unmade (eshonai in stormform can hear 'new rythms'), but some officer in form of power can rule the common soldier, specially if the race how wage war are enslaved you and your friend for generations. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Salkara said:

Re-reading my post, I'm not sure if I explained my view well enough. The Eshonai POV chapters in WoR painted the listeners as a varied, complex society. It seems a shame to me to turn them all into dark, evil creatures just one book later. In a series with the injustice of societal prejudices as a central theme, I want the ending to include peace and acceptance between all species on Roshar, and that's going to be exceedingly difficult if one species in completely evil.

I agree. The idea of a long series where one of the upshots is that the heroes should have committed genocide against the race that they'd enslaved isn't a very pleasant prospect to me. I imagine (and sincerely hope) that Sanderson is heading in another direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Argent changed the title to [OB] Kaladin's Scouting Mission
  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...