Fifth of Daybreak

Can you be more specific? I posted a lot of quotes.

Nooooo! Not the familial embarrassment in front of Brandon! I went to Gen Con this year, and while I didn't go to any of his officially scheduled events, I raced to his booth to make sure I was able to sign my brother and myself up for his Thursday night magic draft. Unbeknownst to me, while I was busy drafting my cards and building my deck, my girlfriend and my sister had caught up with us. Patty, my girlfriend, isn't much of a reader, but Kelly has read through the original Mistborn trilogy. So at this point, all I've done is managed to get a bunch of selfies of me making crazily excited faces with Bradon right behind me, but I come to find out later that Patty has walked right up to Brandon and told him "my boyfriend talks about you and your books more than he talks about me." Then Kelly walks up to him "my brother has pretty much gotten our whole family into your books." I don't know any of this, I'm just trying to build a good deck because, storm it, I wanted my name in a future book (that was the prize.) Later on, my brother and I get our chance to play a game of two-headed giant against Brandon and Steve Argyle. We got thrashed so hard that Brandon actually tweeted about the game. (John, my brother, actually passed him one of the really big cards. John hadn't played in a very long time.) https://twitter.com/BrandSanderson/status/898395191576416260 But while we were playing, John looks over at me and says "did you tell Brandon that he's your inspiration?" I went redder than Shallan hearing a dirty joke. In my head I started screaming play it cool John, this is BRANDON SANDERSON. I hadn't even realized that I had already been picked out of the crowd by Patty and Kelly. So John starts talking about the book I'm writing and how it's obvious that he can see Sanderson's influence on my writing and I'm trying not to dig a hole through the floor to hide in. Come to find out later about the other two singling me out. It's just so incredibly unfair that I got to hang out with my hero for an extended period of time and I was the one who played it the coolest. Like, c'mon guys... (Also, butting heads isn't a bad thing, there's a reason I described it as coming home to a fire! ) Also, Patrick Rothfuss complimented my Last Airbender Cabbage Merchant Cosplay. That was pretty cool.

I've been Feather/Renarin adjacent, but the Maxal/Adolin discussion was like coming home to a lit fire in the hearth when I showed back up after a few years. There's a couple threads buried where Maxal and I had some long discussions about Adolin from 2014. I'd guess that Maxal and I are more aligned in terms of interest in topics of discussion than I am with Feather so we just never butted heads as much as I did with Maxal. Since I'm here again, I'm really storming excited for Rysn, Pattern and Sebarial.

We can write this fanfic.

You're thinking of Gary Paulsen. This a fight club reference. But man that's a throwback. I haven't thought of those books since elementary school. I think Sixth of the Dusk already shows that's not enough to protect them.

With the first ideal all but ruled out, perhaps we can make individual cases based on Order specific ideals that we already know. WR/SW- We can assume they actively chose to break their oaths under this theory because the actions of the order we're incompatible with their own moral codes. Bondsmiths- "I will unite instead of divide, I will bring men together." Assuming the theory is true, their actions divided the KR by ostracizing the SW and WR breaking this Ideal. Edgedancers- “I will listen to those who have been ignored." If the edgedancers we're aware of how the Listeners felt about the spren and the Nahel bond, severing them from their ability to bond could be interpreted as not listening to those who have been ignored by the spren. Have to admit though, them knowing that information seems like a huge stretch. Lightweavers- I'm at a complete loss here. Anyone have any ideas?

I'd actually argue that the Skybreakers are the one order for whom the ends don't justify the means as much as others. They are unwilling to break laws to achieve an end. If the ends justified the means for Nalan, Lyft's pardon in her interlude wouldn't matter to him, as the ends of preventing the desolation would justify the means of killing her without legal authority. The WoB say they'd let one find a home, but that doesn't mean that a Machiavellian can run around Willy nilly doing whatever they like because they are chasing an end. Skybreakers actually seem to be even more restricted by a code since they are bound by laws, they just aren't bound by moral precepts as some other orders are presumed to be. I think we're looking at this lens of 'means justify the ends' too simply. It can't be a black and white thing or we'll run into the same problem as applying the First Ideal uniformly across all the orders. There's a means and an end each order wouldn't be willing to cross, and ones they are. Shallan is willing to join the Ghostbloods in order to find knowledge. Kaladin is willing to blackmail, bribe, threaten, steal and desecrate the dead to keep his men safe. Jasnah is willing to commit pre-meditated vigilante murder to get murderers off the street. Dalinar is willing to beat the ever loving storms out of his nephew to convince him that Dalinar isn't trying to kill him. Each of those things is something the other wouldn't be willing to do. Jasnah thinks using strength of muscle is base. Dalinar would never involve himself with the Ghostbloods. A skybreaker would never break the law to protect. Shallan wouldn't put herself intentionally in danger to lure someone into attacking her allowing her to act in self defense.

This is only reinforced by what we see in edgedancer with Nalan. One of the initiates also mentions being the only order.

That's a very cogent point. I wish we knew around when Nalan went back for his Blade. I do still feel pretty confident about the Last Legion portion of the theory though. The evidence all fits very nicely.

I'll say it before and I'll say it again, I've missed way too much in my absence. This is a really great thread, thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Btw, if there's any other good ones you think I might be interested in/benefit from, feel free to send them to me via direct message.) I very much like how elsecallers were specifically mentioned, as it brings to mind Jasnah's philosophy lesson with Shallan. That had a "ends justify the means" vibe to it, but at the same time, Jasnah still had to satisfy her own moral code in order to put herself in a position to act. If multiple orders are interpreting the first oath in different ways, and then take different actions to achieve victory, it might cause them to have broken their oaths for different reasons. For instance, with evidence of Jasnah's temperament, we might make the assumption that the elsecallers value sapience and would consider the magical lobotomy a fracture of that first oath. Another order might consider a preemptive strike on the pre-shattered plains a violation. I definitely do agree that this seems to put a large wrench in my proposed theory though. I have to start adding a lot of moving pieces to start to account for this. Perhaps a simpler explanation is that the order that survived is the one order that would've been accepting of this action as not breaking their oaths. With the Radiants that we've met and know well, I just personally have a hard time reconciling them being ok with condemning an entire race to slavery and loss of conscious thought to win a war against supernatural forces that can essentially possess their bodies and minds. It speaks volumes to me that Shallan's first interactions with Parshmen after learning what they are is to ask them if they want to be free.

Do we have evidence of this from onscreen or WoB? 'The ends justfies the means' seems to be exactly the opposite from 'journey before destination.' My OP's language accounts for one order not destroyed, even if it doesn't specifically address which order and why.

@Naerin The grammar of that passage from the diagram makes me think that the secret is an object and not knowledge. Normally you keep a secret, you don't hold it. In this instance, he could be referring to Gavilar's sphere. Even if not, it would still be pretty relevant to know that your order caused the mental genocide of an entire people who were already being pressed into military service against their will be voidbringers.

There are three constants in the universe, death, taxes, and maxal's fixation on Adolin Seriously though, after three years of waiting I'm glad you're finally going to be getting some answers.

I. The Wicked Thing Of Eminence What is the secret that caused the Knights Radiant to break? What could cause nine orders of Knights with separate oaths to have broken them all at once? What is that wicked thing of Eminence? I'd like to present a theory to answer these questions. With the advent of the preview chapters, a lot of expectations I had were laid on their head, namely how human the newly sapient parshmen are. With this information, and the information Gavilar presented in the prologue, I think that the wicked thing of Eminence was the capturing of whatever crucial spren it was that gave parshmen that sapience. We know from WoB that the Desolations are somehow tied to the Heralds and how long they remain. This could be related to Melishi. I am proposing that Melishi's strategy was to somehow use the bondsmiths to capture this spren and break the bonds between the parshmen and the sapience allowing spren, forcing all of then into their "dull form" and preventing them from forming any bonds with voidbringers, defeating the voidbringers indirectly by attacking their hosts. We can see why this would be considered a "wicked thing of Eminence" by the Windrunners already in OB. Already Kaladin sees a moral dilemma in fighting them, and that's if his side is not directly responsible for their condition. But this wouldn't have been the only problem. In order for this strategy to work, they would have also had to have destroyed the remaining fused. I propose that this was also in tandem with a deadly attack that caused the shattering of the plains: These excerpts both give the impression that the Listeners lost people in the shattering of the plains and they were not responsible. If there were normal parshmen in the city when it was attacked, it would be another reason for the Stonewards and Windrunners to abandon their oaths as they would not be willing to risk innocent lives in a mass attack to end the war. II. Oathbreaking The Oathbreaking on the part of the WR and SW is pretty obvious, they gave up protecting the regular humans from the voidbringers, in this theory under the presumption because of a mass attack that took innocent lives followed by the robbery of free will of the parshmen. But what about the other seven orders? In the vision, Tanavast tells Dalinar "they are the first and they are also the last." There would also be many more Shards, as we haven't even accounted for all of them at Feverstone if the other orders broke their oaths in a similar fashion. I'm proposing that the WR and SW Oathbreaking was separate from the other orders, and wouldn't leave shards behind. In orchestrating a large scale attack that took innocent lives, and then robbing the parshmen of sapience even though they are not the voidbringers, the other orders fundamentally broke the first oath by putting the destination before the journey. They sacrificed others to fight their enemy, a running theme from the first book. They didn't turn away from mankind like the other two orders, but were destroyed after acting against the very basic tenets of their core ideology. Normally, if a spren's bonded dies, it's an emotional event, but not a lethal one (quoting my own question ^.^) but if they had broken their oaths it would have killed spren en mass. III. Last Legion So here, the last legion, most people's freedom dead, has been set to fight in the farthest plains in a nation that is now rubble. This seems to parallel very well with this line from the in world WoR "This act of great villainy went beyond the impudence which had hitherto been ascribed to the orders; as the fighting was particularly intense at this time, many attributed this act to a sense of inherent betrayal; and after they withdrew, about two thousand made assault upon them, destroying much of the membership." The last legion, feeling betrayed that the KR would use a weapon of mass destruction and then destroy the ability of the regular people to think, felt inherently betrayed beyond the influence of the voidbringers, and destroyed much of the Knights Radiant membership. And then they fled and adopted dull form. Maybe it was the precedent taught be whatever method the KR used that allowed them to do it, maybe it was the flare of emotions at seeing the plains shattered, maybe it was the destruction of the Knights Radiant, but after completing their counter attack, the Last Legion adopted dull form and fled deep into the shattered plains, founding the Civilization of the listeners.

Full results here, but I'll post one of the WoB https://wob.coppermind.net/basic_search/?query=Wood+bridges

We don't know what kind of stone they're soulcast into so we don't necessarily know this. Some types of stone, such as Limestone, are very porous and and as such aren't very dense. We already have evidence that Brandon has created new types of material to allow for soulcasting and creating new physics to allow the universe to work on Roshar.(Wood used for Sadeas's bridges)

This seems consistent with the first Soulcasting we see. Shallan even mentions reading about mass discrepancy. Emphasis mine.

Bands of Mourning Spoilers

@The One Who Connects Seems like this is the most relevant place to put my thoughts. @Rest of the thread, I've also had the thought that the Skybreakers are responsible for the cleansing of documents from the Hierocracy, though not in quite the same flavor as proposed in the OP. I have to admit, once I started digging in, I was incredibly disappointed at the lack of information available. I was hoping that with the advent of the arcanum I might be able to find some juicy WoB on the Hierocracy, or at least about the Sunmaker, but it seems that we're limited to what little on-screen discussion we've been given. I'm going to post everything I think is relevant in a spoiler tag (to save space) first, then reference as I go. @The One Who Connects, just want to give you a heads up, this is going to rely far more on supposition, selective interpretation of individual passages, and personal feelings than I would like. Adolin talks with Kadash Jasnah's first scholarly work: Jasnah speaking with Shallan So, my reasoning is as follows, and I'm going to lay it all out there also in the hopes that you will correct any lingering incorrect assumptions that I'm holding onto from several years ago. I'm still operating under the belief that the other Herald in the prologue with Nalan is Ishar. Nalan mentions Ishar in Edgedancer. Looking at Adolin's conversation with Kadash, we see that during the Hierocracy, we see the church moving to seize control and restrict the flow of knowledge to regular people. With the theory tha the Heralds are all becoming corrupt versions of their ideals, it's a possibility that he was actually the driving force behind this change. This would definitely be a direct corruption of his ideals of Pious and Guiding. This led Nalan to realize about the corruption and develop the idea that they need to develop a code and follow it to prevent the new insanity.This is supported by that quote from Edgedancer. (The discussion board is gone so I assume spoiler tags are no longer needed.) So Ishar creates the Hierocracy, but then Nalan finds out about the corruption and together they figure out a way to fight the corruption by following a code and then they try to prevent future desolations which involves preventing the return of surgebinding. The first part of this would be to change history and opinion on the Knights Radiant to make it easier to hunt down surgebinders. If they are regarded as traitors and not heroes, then it is easier to get official permission to hunt them down, as is Nalan's normal modus operandi. This isn't as easy to do, because Vorin doctrine is founded on the basis of the authority of the Heralds who worked with the Knights, so there are conflicting tales and stories, such as with Teft. Part of the way to account for this was to forge documents and give the appearance that the Knights Radiant never had powers to begin with, but rather those were just fabrications of the church in order to control the population. This is reinforced as we see evidence of visions by truthwatchers, or by Shallan sketching Yalb and Shalash, so it might not have been just ardents pretending. Creating the illusion that it was an act serves the purpose of both demonizing the surgebinders as well as making it easier to justify the conflicting information from the rewritten documents. In Jasnah's book, she also mentions that the Vorin church controled most of eastern Roshar. Now, this is another portion that is selective interpretation, but Kharbranth does not seem to be as far under Vorin control in modern days as other cities, at least by the fact that they don't have a soulcaster, King T is able to get away with his shenanigans, and he was not afraid of alienating the church by entertaining Jasnah. It is technically in the Eastern hemisphere going by the map you linked me to on one of the other threads, but it is far more central than eastern. Nalan has proven to be active in all levels of government across all portions of Roshar and has been active for centuries. If this assumption holds true-that the Vorin church didn't have the reach to change records in the Palanaeum, it would make sense that Nalan would have the resources to make this happen here, and in other places such as the Grand Indicium. (Iirc, the ardents do seem to take care of the books, which could be evidence against this assumption, however, as property, this could also just be a task assigned to them.) I think that about covers it. Like I said, this is far more flimsy than I would like. I definitely would preface this as a question had I been the one to make it a topic since I don't think there's enough evidence behind it to make a more assertive claim. What do you think?

We don't, (I assume) I'm spitballing possibilities.

This has been our version of camping out front of the store weeks in advance. *Makes another few s'mores for his answer*

We don't know the cost of that though. She lost a gemstone Soulcasting the boulder in Karbranth to smoke, and it seems like that's where her talent is focused. I have to think that the she's going to shatter a number of them in order to accomplish that great feat. Versatile, but you have to weigh the benefits vs the costs.

I think you nailed it right there. By the time we see Sadeas it's too late. He's far too committed to himself as the pinnacle of Alethi strength.

Dalinar wants to change.