Raboniel's disease

[Gderu]

I think that Raboniel's disease might come from another planet.

Raboniel has definitely lived long enough to be Cosmere aware. I think that it's not much of an assumption to think that she knows there are other planets.

In the Purelake, we have seen what off world diseases can do on Roshar, and the was only the common cold. I think that Raboniel saw something like this, and thought that a stronger disease might be able to kill all humans. Because of that, she went to another planet and brought back something worse than the common cold. 

She assumed that it would wipe the humans out because they would be susceptible to it since they would not have it on the planet. She assumed it would not hurt the singers because of their different biology, but she forgot to factor in the fact that they have been living with the humans for thousands of years up to that point. The two species have probably intermixed quite a bit up to this point. The Horneaters and Herdazians are proof of this. I suggest that that is why some singers were killed. At the same time, this intermixing would have made humans less susceptible to the disease, and so not all of them would have died.

This also makes narrative sense - we have seen other planets becoming a more important part of the books. This is exactly the right fit in that other books aren't necessary to understand this, but it does lead to questions about them, and therefore leads new readers to read them. 

The only other way the disease could have been made seems to be with fabrials, but I have no idea how that would be a possible feat with fabrials. My idea seems like the simpler solution.

[Halyo_Alex]

2 minutes ago, Gderu said:

I think that Raboniel's disease might come from another planet.

Raboniel has definitely lived long enough to be Cosmere aware. I think that it's not much of an assumption to think that she knows there are other planets.

In the Purelake, we have seen what off world diseases can do on Roshar, and the was only the common cold. I think that Raboniel saw something like this, and thought that a stronger disease might be able to kill all humans. Because of that, she went to another planet and brought back something worse than the common cold. 

She assumed that it would wipe the humans out because they would be susceptible to it since they would not have it on the planet. She assumed it would not hurt the singers because of their different biology, but she forgot to factor in the fact that they have been living with the humans for thousands of years up to that point. The two species have probably intermixed quite a bit up to this point. The Horneaters and Herdazians are proof of this. I suggest that that is why some singers were killed. At the same time, this intermixing would have made humans less susceptible to the disease, and so not all of them would have died.

This also makes narrative sense - we have seen other planets becoming a more important part of the books. This is exactly the right fit in that other books aren't necessary to understand this, but it does lead to questions about them, and therefore leads new readers to read them. 

The only other way the disease could have been made seems to be with fabrials, but I have no idea how that would be a possible feat with fabrials. My idea seems like the simpler solution.

50 Emerald Broams says she tried to bring an Ashynite disease to Roshar.

[StormFather!]

Didn’t the Scadrains have a disease that severely infected 16 out of 100 people?

[Innovation]

3 hours ago, StormFather! said:

Didn’t the Scadrains have a disease that severely infected 16 out of 100 people?

It was was actually 

(Mistborn spoilers)

Spoiler

The Mists Snapping people who had the potential to become Allomancers. It wasn’t really a disease, though it did cause a lot of pain to the victims and required some time to recover  

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Innovation

[dgreene196]

If Raboniel's disease came from another planet, I suspect it wasn't Raboniel who directly acquired it.  If Heralds and Surgebinders are too strongly Invested to leave the Rosharan system via Shadesmar, then it seems reasonable to say the Fused are also unable to leave the system.

But, then, I also choose to believe, until we have more information, that Raboniel actually created the disease by Soulcasting (think of it as Surgebinding equivalent of the creation of Nightblood; it was just her convincing something to "Destroy humans" in the same way that Nighblood was Awakened to "Destroy Evil").

[LifeBeforeDeath]

On 10/7/2020 at 7:53 AM, Gderu said:

The Horneaters and Herdazians are proof of this.

How?

[Kittalia]

1 hour ago, LifeBeforeDeath said:

How?

Horneaters and Herdazians both have a small amount of Parshendi Heritage--it shows up (among other things) in the Herdazians' crystalline fingernails and the Horneaters' ability to digest shells.

 

I do think it's more likely that Parshendi and Humans are more biologically compatible than she reckoned, not necessarily that they all had small amounts of human blood. After all, they are close enough to interbreed.

[Dawnshard]

I think people are forgetting some of the other surges. Regrowth seems ideal for this. Cultivating and growing bacteria maybe with organic fabrials can make some probably horrendous diseases. If they wanted to kill people on a mass scale just look at what times we are living in.