[OB] How many Radiants were there?

[Gray to he/him]

My cousin and I were wondering what our odds were in becoming Radiants if we magically teleported to Roshar. That got me to wondering how many Radiants there were at its peak, which is presumably right before the Recreance. 

During Dalinar's Recreance vision, we see (I think 300) Radiants give up their Shards. Also the were only some of the Radiants from the Stonewards and Windrunners. Meaning there's still the rest of those 2 Orders and the other 8 Orders.

Also Jasnah told Shallan at the beginning of WoR that there much more Radiants that didn't have Shards. So how many Radiants were there during the height of its peak?

[StrikerEZ he/him]

I'm gonna guess that maybe half of both the Windrunners and Stonewards were at Feverstone keep, which puts each order at about 300 full Radiants each. So, 2703 (assuming there are all three bondsmiths) full Radiants. For every full Radiant, I'd wager there's probably another 5 in training. So, I'm gonna guess 13,503. That might be a little high, but knowing what types of threats they faced, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. Urithiru is gigantic, so....

[Kered he/him]

OB SPOILERS

Spoiler

Quote

Never mind what the Radiants did to Spark’s friends, never mind that organized devotion to Honor is what killed hundreds of ashspren in the first place.” - Malata

Using that quote as a reference, I think your answer is pretty spot on @StrikerEZ. If we make the leap and assume all orders(besides Bondsmiths) had roughly the same numbers in regards to bonded spren. 

 

[NiceBleach]

In response to the question of how many Radiants existed, I would give the answer of a lot. There were only ever no more than 3 bondsmiths at a time. Do you count squires as radiants? I guess not. The squires in Oathbringer don't. I feel like I remember someone saying something in an epigraph about some orders of radiants keeping their numbers low. I don't think we have enough information to give even a reliable ballpark answer.

[NiceBleach]

Spoiler

Also, Kaladin says at the end of Oathbringer either that he doesn't think the radiants gave up their shards like that or that not all radiants gave up their shards like that. I think he might have said something about that vision of Feverstone keep being a representation Honor created of The Recreance, and one that wasn't necessarily accurate.

 

Edited July 8, 2018 by NiceBleach
Added spoiler tag-minor non plot related spoiler for Oathbringer.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

9 hours ago, NiceBleach said:

Spoiler

Also, Kaladin says at the end of Oathbringer either that he doesn't think the radiants gave up their shards like that or that not all radiants gave up their shards like that. I think he might have said something about that vision of Feverstone keep being a representation Honor created of The Recreance, and one that wasn't necessarily accurate.

 

Could you please put that in a spoiler box, since it has OB spoilers?

Edited July 9, 2018 by StrikerEZ

[NiceBleach]

Oops. Fair point. I'll fix that.

[Rebecca she/her]

Hey, @StrikerEZ, you might want to edit the quote box in your post as well. 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

11 minutes ago, Rebecca said:

Hey, @StrikerEZ, you might want to edit the quote box in your post as well. 

Oh, I didn't realize that second half was in OB too.

[Scion of the Mists]

On 7/8/2018 at 2:32 AM, Kered said:

OB SPOILERS

  Hide contents

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21 hours ago, NiceBleach said:

  Hide contents

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Edited 16 hours ago by NiceBleach 
Added spoiler tag-minor non plot related spoiler for Oathbringer.

 

20 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Could you please put that in a spoiler box, since it has OB spoilers?

OB spoilers (even properly marked) CANNOT be posted in the general Stormlight board.  They must be placed in the special Oathbringer Spoiler Board (or the Cosmere Discussion/Cosmere Q&A).  

Edited July 9, 2018 by Scion of the Mists
Added other OB spoiler-allowed boards, per Argent

[Argent he/him]

19 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

OB spoilers (even properly marked) CANNOT be posted in the general Stormlight board.  They must be placed in the special Oathbringer Spoiler Board.  

This is correct (thought Cosmere Discussion is also valid). I am moving the topic to the Oathbringer Spoiler Board, @Gray to, you can PM me if you prefer to keep it here. I'll delete all OB replies in that case.

[NiceBleach]

I could have just removed the part of my message where I said when the event happened.

[Magpro]

Out of all the orders, There are some orders which are militarilistic. i.e Windrunners, Skybreakers, Dustbringers, and Stonewards. I believe these had the highest numbers about 200 to 300 each. At any time there is only one Bondsmith, So i believe the remaining orders had roughly 100 each. So i think in total there were around 1500 radiants. 

[Juanaton he/him]

21 minutes ago, FahadWajid said:

 At any time there is only one Bondsmith

This is inaccurate. There were at most 3 Bondsmiths...and there were usually 3. One of the pre-chapter excerpts from Words of Radiance talks about how the Bondsmiths numbered "only three," and to encourage them to expand beyond that was considered blasphemous or seditious or something like that.

[Magpro]

5 minutes ago, Juanaton said:

This is inaccurate. There were at most 3 Bondsmiths...and there were usually 3. One of the pre-chapter excerpts from Words of Radiance talks about how the Bondsmiths numbered "only three," and to encourage them to expand beyond that was considered blasphemous or seditious or something like that.

i stand corrected.

Edited July 10, 2018 by FahadWajid

[Calderis he/him]

2 hours ago, FahadWajid said:

At any time there is only one Bondsmith

This is false. The gem archive speaks of having only one Bondsmith as a sign of the decline of the Radiants. 

Quote

This generation has had only one Bondsmith, and some blame the divisions among us upon this fact. The true problem is far deeper. I believe that Honor himself is changing.
—From drawer 24-18, smokestone

There were never more than three, but we have nothing saying that one was commonplace. That epigraph implies the opposite.

Edit: and I should really finish reading the thread before I respond. 

Edited July 10, 2018 by Calderis

[Wandering Investor]

On 7/7/2018 at 6:34 PM, Gray to said:

Also Jasnah told Shallan at the beginning of WoR that there much more Radiants that didn't have Shards.

Jasnah was referring to many Radiants not being front-line combatants, instead serving the roles of scholars, healers and whatnot instead of soldiers. They all had their shards after reaching the correct oath level though.

[Calderis he/him]

7 minutes ago, Wandering Investor said:

Jasnah was referring to many Radiants not being front-line combatants, instead serving the roles of scholars, healers and whatnot instead of soldiers. They all had their shards after reaching the correct oath level though.

Yes and no. Plate was available to all if they wished, but it was a choice that not all Radiants made. 

Quote

Argent (paraphrased)

Did all orders of Knights Radiants use Shardplate?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

It was available to all of them, and they could (all) use it. Many Knights (not Orders) chose not to. There were Knights who were not soldiers and had not interest in wearing Shardplate.

source

 

Edited July 10, 2018 by Calderis

[Wandering Investor]

6 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Yes and no. Plate was available to all if they wished, but it was a choice that not all Radiants made. 

 

So yes they all had shards. The choice to use them varied, but they were available to every radiant of the correct oath rank.

[Wander89 he/him]

I'm sure in one of the visions it was mentioned that there were once thousands of Radiants. I forgot the exact quote but when I do my next readthrough I will come back to this.

[KalaDANG he/him]

Teft tells Kaladin at the end of WoR that the Radiants weren't made up of just the knights themselves, meaning that there were also the squires. If we DO bring the squires into it, it makes sense why Urithru was so huge. Say that the estimate of 2703 is accurate, and say that per knight (Excluding bondsmiths) there were a minimum of 25 squires (Minimum bridge crew size). That makes 67,500 squires altogether. I don't even know if that would fill more than the lowest level of Urithru. That's a big generalization, because most of the experience we have with squires comes from Bridge Four. And during recruitment in OB, Kaladin has at least 40 or 50 squires alone. If it was similar during the early days before the Recreance during heavy recruitment, (Which I think it was, because the Windrunners have got a really militaristic setup) The Windrunners were probably a lot bigger than the other orders. 50 squires each is 15,000 squires overall. If that's accurate, the amount of people working with the Knights must have been INSANE. Now, I kind of doubt that all the orders had the same amounts of squires. But imagining the sheer amount of people in Urithru blows the mind. It's ten tiered, so it's possible that the largest orders might have been at the lower and larger levels, while the smaller orders might have been arranged higher up, with Bondsmiths at the top. It's really interesting. I hope we get a look at pre-recreance organization of Urithru. 

[CrazyRioter she/her]

Windrunners definitely had more squires than the other orders, but we don't know how many more.

 

Quote

Argent

There is a person on the forums who noticed that Shallan has this awesome Memory thing going on, Jasnah seems to have a really powerful, kind of, geolocation thing going on, Kaladin is a really good fighter - are those just their traits, or is there something supernatural going on?

Brandon Sanderson

There is something supernatural going on. Each Order... Well, how about this. If you look at the scholar interpretations, there are some scholars who think that these things are not supernatural, in the past, and some who said they definitely are. But many, if you look, many Lightweavers had powerful mnemonic abilities.

Argent

So it's definitely tied to the Orders?

Brandon Sanderson

It's tied to the Orders. Now, I am not going to say that you've got them all 100% correct, but each Order, there are things that come with Order, things that do not add up from simple the "you get this power plus this power," there is something else going on. And I would say that for Windrunners, watch the number of squires and the power of the squires... is abnormal for the Windrunners.

Argent

And each Order's squires are somehow different from the other Orders'?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeeeaaaah... some Orders don't have them, [that] is the difference.

Argent

 But some have more?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah.

source

 

[Nymeros]

A few thousand.....which is CRAZY. Many, many, many more if squires and the like are accounted for.