[OB] Debunked-What the Girl Who Looked Up is Really About

[Fifth of Daybreak he/him]

 

Edit: Thanks to @SilverTiger for pointing out that the scouring of Aimia portion of my theory is solidly debunked. 

 

 

In another thread on the play, I postulated about how it's possible the story is about the epigraph about bonding the Dawnshard, and that the main character is the strider in the storm and the reason for investiture. I want to expand on that because I believe I might have had a breakthrough. 

I think that this story is actually about the destruction of Aimia, and the main character is a Dysian Aimian, and one of the figures we see striding in the Highstorms. 

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Light came from above, too steady to be lightning. Something was glowing on the plateau. Something that moved. It was hard to see, since water streamed off the side of the plateau above, falling in a sheet before their refuge. He swore he saw an enormous figure walking up there, a glowing inhuman form, followed by another, alien and sleek. Striding the storm. Leg after leg, until the glow passed.

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 876). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

An explosive burst of wind drove him against the wall, and he stumbled, then stepped backward, driven by instincts he couldn’t define. A large boulder slammed into the wall, then bounced away. Dalinar glanced and saw something luminous in the distance: a gargantuan figure that moved on spindly glowing legs.

Chapter 19

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So someone from Aimia, which is walled off from the rest of the world somehow, breaches that boundary, enters the herald's temple, and bonds a Dawnshard, or, possibly imprisons one of the Dawnsingers in a gemstone, as there's only one thing we know about them (if we can trust it) and we also know that the listeners learned how to imprison spren from humans.

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“What about the Dawnsingers?” Shallan asked.

“What about them?”

“Could they have created it?”

He chuckled as they arrived at the lift. “That isn’t the kind of thing the Dawnsingers did. They were healers, kindly spren sent by the Almighty to care for humans once we were forced out of the Tranquiline Halls.”

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (pp. 633-634). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

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This causes them to invest far more than they can handle, or as Zahel puts it: 

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Oh, right. One of those storms had come, Invested to the hilt and looking for a place to stick it all. Cursed things.

Sanderson, Brandon. Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The) (p. 398). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

 

I don't want to do too much speculation, but just taking the story at face value, as a result of her theft, the storms come and the wall is destroyed. The story hints that her people were already regarded as monsters:

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“The girl stared at those steps,” Shallan whispered, remembering, “and suddenly the gruesome statues on her side of the wall made sense. The spears. The way it cast everything into shadow. The wall did indeed hide something evil, something frightening. It was the people, like the girl and her village.” ...

“That’s how it ended?” Pattern asked.

“No,” Shallan said, Stormlight puffing from her lips. “She goes down, sees a perfect society lit by Stormlight. She steals some and brings it back. The storms come as a punishment, tearing down the wall.”

“Ah…” Pattern said, hovering beside her on the now-dull stage. “So that’s how the storms first began?”

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Axies tells us that stories and legends of the scouring of his homeland have crept into society, this could be one of them:

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It hadn’t been that long since the scouring of his homeland. Just long ago enough for stories and legends to have crept into the general knowledge of most peoples.

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (p. 440). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

 

Keep in mind that Axies is immortal, so his frame of reference is skewed longer than ours would be. 

Edgedancer Spoilers

Spoiler

We also know, or can at least reasonably infer, that Dysian Aimians can face discrimination from Arclo, corroborating the "we are the monsters" theme from the story.

"“I like this place,” he explained. “Where else would I have the excuse to cover my entire body? I’ve spent thousands of years breeding my hordelings, and still I can’t make them fit together quite right. I can pass for human almost as well as a Siah can these days, I’d hazard, but anyone who looks closely finds something off. It’s rather frustrating.”"

Sanderson, Brandon. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (pp. 651-652). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

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So picking up where we the story left off, a Dysian Aimian has descended the steps and gone into the perfect society. That's when the theft occurs, and when I think the epigraph happens, the selection from the poem of Ista:

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“Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above.”

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (p. 524). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

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Notice the parallels here: 

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The back side of the wall was crisscrossed with enormous sets of steps leading down to the ground, so distant.

Enormous sets of steps, maybe ten strides tall apiece?

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“The girl stared at those steps,” Shallan whispered, remembering, “and suddenly the gruesome statues on her side of the wall made sense. The spears. The way it cast everything into shadow. The wall did indeed hide something evil, something frightening. It was the people, like the girl and her village.”

 

Gruesome here could just be comparative. Maybe humans would be gruesome compared to Aimians, as it definitely is the other way around. The Aimian sees human statues and thinks they're very odd. They don't adopt semi-human forms until they're forced to later as refugees under this supposition.

 

There's only one thing that's hard to rationalize here, but even so, as much history as there could be between the events happening, it doesn't even have to conflict, but I'd like to include it anyway to see what you guys think. Edgedancer spoilers. 

Spoiler

“Your war is my war, and has been for millennia. Ancient Radiants named me friend and ally before everything went wrong. What wonderful days those were, before the Last Desolation. Days of … honor. Now gone, long gone.”

Sanderson, Brandon. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (p. 650). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

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I do have a theory that could tie it together though. This sparked the war Nohadon blames on Alakavish in Dalinar's vision, as I believe this is before the Radiant's were officially founded. Teft says something about the Way of Kings being inspiration for a lot of the organization behind the orders. 

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“The others want to blame Alakavish. And true, if he hadn’t brought us to war before the Desolation, we might not have been broken this badly. But Alakavish was a symptom of a greater disease."

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (p. 851). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

 

I don't want you guys to focus on the very tail end though, this is very tenuous in my opinion, and mostly spitballing. What I'm really concerned with is what your opinion is on the liklihood of the story being about an Aimian and the scouring of the Aimian homeland.

Edited November 2, 2017 by Fifth of Daybreak

[SilverTiger she/her]

Um, I always thought that the Scouring happened after the Recreance, possibly around/after the time of the Hierocracy. It was mentioned that lanceryns, greatshells with gemhearts from Aimia, were exterminated during the Scouring and may have been part of the cause (greed).

--Edit--

Crazy thought, what if the Scouring was the reason for the Recreance? That's a theory that hasn't been proposed, I think. But it kind of makes sense... ish.

Edited November 2, 2017 by SilverTiger

[Fifth of Daybreak he/him]

1 minute ago, SilverTiger said:

Um, I always thought that the Scouring happened after the Recreance, possibly around/after the time of the Hierocracy. It was mentioned that lanceryns, greatshells with gemhearts from Aimia, were exterminated during the Scouring and may have been part of the cause (greed).

That was a quick debunking 

Have an upvote. And an extra kudos for the easy to search keyword.

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“You should have seen our shock when we discovered where they’d gotten them. When the lanceryn died off during the scouring of Aimia, we thought we’d seen the last gemhearts of large size. And yet here was another great-shelled beast with them, living in a land not too distant from Kholinar itself."

Sanderson, Brandon. The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, Book 1) (p. 527). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.