[OB] I think... Crazy and probably wrong...

[IllNsickly]

Ok... Just had a crazy thought and I haven't seen any speculation on it. Please feel free to shoot me down.

I seem to recall (sorry, can't provide a quote) an Eshonai interlude that suggested the Listeners intentionally severed themselves for their Gods. 

The Recreance, we have been told, Humans intentionally severed their bonds with their Spren. Causing a great deal of damage and essentially killing their associated Spren in the process.

I am getting to a point, maybe.

With the advent of the Everstorm and subsequent healing of the Parshmens Spirit Webs,  I began thinking.

Usually a bad idea for me.

However... What if the Recreance and the Listeners Severing were the SAME Event. Something drastically nasty came to light (Spren bonds and Listener Forms both.) And it was decided mutually by both sides that is was necessary? 

The Skybreakers would have abstained for, insert clever idea here, reasons and a group of Listeners, **idea reasons** possibly abstained as well.

Crackpot idea built of Crem and Wattle, but I thought I'd throw it up. 

Dissect accordingly.

[Yata]

This would be mostly impossible as It Will place the parshmen's Creation +an event that took Place  After the  Last legion flees) After the Recreance. And the Parshmen are implied to be' caused by a Bondsmith.

[Guest Bananarama]

Don’t the Parahendi believe that thaleybturned away from their gods on purpose? Wouldn’t that mean that there might have been some consent given to remove the connection? 

[Storyspren]

Not only I agree, but I feel this almost certainly what we are supposed to believe at this point.

The recreance is the human version of the parshendi severing. 

At the very least we’re supposed to think the events are the same sort of thing and for potentially similar reasons. 

Regarding the timeline issue Yata raises:

1 hour ago, Yata said:

This would be mostly impossible as It Will place the parshmen's Creation +an event that took Place  After the  Last legion flees) After the Recreance. And the Parshmen are implied to be' caused by a Bondsmith.

We’ve only seen one, maybe two orders I believe, give up their blades in dalinar’s vision. Neither were bondsmith. Assuming a bondsmith freed the parshmen from the “gods,” they could have hung around a while before doing it. Plus just because everybody says they are participating in whatever the recreance was, doesn’t mean they actually did. Maybe one person or even a whole order opted out of losing their amazing cosmic powers.

[Yata]

2 hours ago, Storyspren said:

Regarding the timeline issue Yata raises:

We’ve only seen one, maybe two orders I believe, give up their blades in dalinar’s vision. Neither were bondsmith. Assuming a bondsmith freed the parshmen from the “gods,” they could have hung around a while before doing it. Plus just because everybody says they are participating in whatever the recreance was, doesn’t mean they actually did. Maybe one person or even a whole order opted out of losing their amazing cosmic powers.

The OP 's theory is the skybreaker order was the One to remain, not the Bondsmith so It's still wrong.

By the way, also if an history's manipulation is possible. Nobody on Roshar remember the original parshmen's nature. This point to a very old event, much more than the Recreance. The text about Melishi in WoR Talk about a fight with the Voidbringer and the Voidbringers are Active only in the Desolations or close to them...this would set the Parshmen's birth around the twotk's prologue

[IllNsickly]

31 minutes ago, Yata said:

The OP 's theory is the skybreaker order was the One to remain, not the Bondsmith so It's still wrong.

By the way, also if an history's manipulation is possible. Nobody on Roshar remember the original parshmen's nature. This point to a very old event, much more than the Recreance. The text about Melishi in WoR Talk about a fight with the Voidbringer and the Voidbringers are Active only in the Desolations or close to them...this would set the Parshmen's birth around the twotk's prologue

I am admittedly not up to acratch on which orders didn't abandon their oaths during the Recreance. Cheers to that.

to your other point, though.

Excepting Dalinars Vision at Feverstone Keep when the Radiants dropped their Plate and Blades, the only thing the Humans on Roshar know about it is that the Radiants 'Betrayed' Humanity. That information is heavily salted by both History and the Vorin Church.

Nothing is really Known about the Recreance except that it happend. 

I dunno. It just feels to me like the Events should be connected somehow.

[Yata]

8 minutes ago, IllNsickly said:

Excepting Dalinars Vision at Feverstone Keep when the Radiants dropped their Plate and Blades, the only thing the Humans on Roshar know about it is that the Radiants 'Betrayed' Humanity. That information is heavily salted by both History and the Vorin Church.

Nothing is really Known about the Recreance except that it happend. 

I dunno. It just feels to me like the Events should be connected somehow.

They could be related (one theory about the Recreance is the KR made it when they discover what their older members did to the Listeners turning them into parshmen).

Anyway remember also the Diagram's words "Hold the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. You may need it to destroy the new orders when they return." this means the Recreance's cause is something fairly replicable

[Blacksmithki]

@Yata Wait, was it confirmed the skybreakers abandoned? where? the wording you used implied that we had a WoB or something that it was the bondsmiths who stayed and we certainly did not have one as of a bit ago, this is the first i've heard of such a thing.

[Yata]

1 hour ago, Blacksmithki said:

@Yata Wait, was it confirmed the skybreakers abandoned? where? the wording you used implied that we had a WoB or something that it was the bondsmiths who stayed and we certainly did not have one as of a bit ago, this is the first i've heard of such a thing.

No, it's not confirmed witch Orders adandoned and witch did not.

Probably you asked this for my first reply.

I meant that the theory is wrong because, the theory proposed the Skybreakers as the order that remained and the Receance and Last Legion's free as a single event.

As the Parshmen's creation have to happen after the Last Legion's flee and the Parshmen's creation is mostly imputable to something a Bondsmith did.
It's impossible for a Bondsmith to have made it if the Bondsmith already broke their Oaths (as the Skybreaker is the remaining Order...always for the theory)

Edited November 12, 2017 by Yata

[IllNsickly]

“Centuries ago,” Demid said, “we escaped both our gods and the humans. Our ancestors left behind civilization, power, and might in order to secure freedom. I would not give that up, Eshonai. Stormform. With it, we can destroy the Alethi army.”

This is from 'Narak' in WoR. 

I am having trouble finding the other reference, but this one serves as well. There are hints that what happened to the Listeners was Voluntary and what we know of the Recreance it appears to have been Voluntary as well. This is what got me thinking. 

 

Escape sounds fairly desperate to me and 'Desperate times, desperate measures.'

 

Imagine a Really Big Parlay between Listeners and Humans. They realize there is a 'Great Big Wrong Thing' and severing the Bonds, both Listener and Radiant, is the only way to stop it. The final resolution would have been the Bondsmiths finally agreeing to find a way to sever the Bonds.

 

The 'Wicked Thing of Eminence' might not be the Severing itself, but rather what led them to it.

 

I am in no way glued to this theory, it's just something that started rolling around in my head. It is incomplete and full of holes, but I thought I would try filling it out a bit more.

 

[Grahamfactor]

So the Recreance and the breaking of the Voidbringers both involved breaking the bonds between spren and the physical world.  Whether they were related or otherwise happened at roughly the same time is a tougher question.

Here's what I think we know about the KR and the Recreance:

• The pre-recreance orders were fractured due to some "wicked think of eminence."
• This is related to some "secret" that Taravangian is aware of.
• Not all of the orders broke their oaths at the same time; The Windrunners and Stonewards were among the last of the orders to break.  The orders may have fought among themselves before they broke.
• One of the orders remained, but "entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the others."
• At the time the Windrunners and Stonewards broke, they were supposed to be fighting the "enemy."
• After the Recreance, the remaining higher spren made a decision, by and large, to stop bonding humans.  

Other than the reference to the "enemy" in the chapter about Feverstone Keep, there is no indication that the Recreance involved the Listeners or the Voidbringers at all.

In contrast, here is what I think we know about the Listeners and the ancient destruction of the voidbringers.

• Listeners take their forms by attracting and bonding the proper spren in a highstorm or everstorm.
• Listeners can bond with either voidspren or "normal" spren.
• One of the weaknesses with the Listener bond is that they are vulnerable to the influence of Odium and his spren to one degree or another, except for dullform. 
• A Bondsmith named Melishi destroyed the "Voidbringers" using the Bondsmith's unique abilities to affect "the very nature of the Heralds and their divine duties."
• Melishi's actions appear to have blocked the Parshmen who were under Odium's influence--and their posterity--from bonding with any spren, voidish or otherwise.
• Melishi may have defeated the voidbringers by preventing the Parshmen from acquiring the mindset/emotions necessary to attract a spren to bond.
• Melishi's actions likely involved binding some type of uber void-spren in specially designed gemstones.  The examples of trapped spren (Cucicesh and the flamespren measured by the scholars in WoK) may by related.
• Whatever Melishi did, it only impacted the Listener's who were under Odium's influence at the time; it did not stop the Parshendi from retaining dullform or acquiring new forms at a later time.

Some (if not most) of this is debatable, at least around the edges.  But given this background, it seems that the Recreance and the destruction of the Voidbringers have strong parallels (higher spren stopped forming bonds with sentient beings in the physical world), but they seem to have happened at different times and to have involved different individuals and motivations.  I agree that the Recreance was voluntary and that the Parshendi taking on dullform was voluntary.  But the destruction of the voidbringers / creation of the Parshmen appears to be involuntary.  It's very possible that the KR betrayed the spren to save humankind.  But the reference to a "wicked thing of eminence" suggests that the KR were broken by internal conflict.  Of course, the Heralds were broken by an impossible choice; perhaps the KR were as well.

To me, the pivotal question (based on the evidence we currently have) is 'who is the enemy" mentioned in the Feverstone Keep chapter?'  Is that the voidbringers, or something else?  If it is the voidbringers, then your theory (which is excellent, BTW) is probably more correct than not.  But I wonder if there is some other non-voidbringer enemy in play here related to the Unmade (e.g., whoever released the "midnight essence" in the Starfall chapter, or whoever convinced the Parshendi to buy Szeth in the Oathbringer prologue).

[IllNsickly]

@Grahamfactor 

Knowing who the 'Enemy' was and what the 'Wicked thing of Eminence' was would help tremendously and also likely ruin the fun of trying to Theorycraft. I hope we get more hints in OB, but I can't decide if I want to know for sure, yet.

I like how you've listed everything out so neatly. I can barely translate my random thoughts into something legible.

Also thank you.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by IllNsickly
Seppling

[Grahamfactor]

Something else to consider--we know that Nin thinks (and Ishar claims) that permitting the KR/spren bonds to form risks causing a desolation (e.g., by forming a "bridge").  I've always assumed that was a mechanism for allowing voidspren to bond to the Listeners.

So did the KR break their bonds to stop the desolations (the way that the heralds abandoned their oaths)?  Or was Nin trying to stop desolations by ensuring that the KR (and, in particular, the  Bondsmiths) never developed the ability to restart them?  Or did Ishar betray everyone?  See--plenty of speculation theorycrafting to go around:)