treblkickd

Wouldn't allegations of murdering and enslaving dark eyes in order to steal shards be much more likely to cause unrest or other problems? In my eyes that is the one of largest weakness in a utilitarian justification for Amaram's actions. Note that he didn't kill all the witnesses, and it's unlikely that all the witnesses had demonstrated more loyalty to him than Kaladin had, so Amaram is opening himself up to rumors started by his men.

I agree that it would cause a riot if all the dark eyes soldiers knew that this happened, but the chances of such a rumor getting out are awfully small. Given a scenario where a brightlord has a new set of shards and someone trying to spread a rumor that this brighlord took the shards from a dark eyes who killed the shard bearer, they'd have to overcome the hurdle of convincing people that a dark eyes did in fact kill a shard bearer, which happens almost never. It much easier to believe that a brightlord and his retinue took down a shard bearer. It's much harder in that scenario to buy into a dark eyes spearman killing a shard bearer. If, on the other hand, a brightlord admits that a dark eyes took down a shard bearer and then claims the dark eyes just *gave* him the shards, then I think the hardest-to-believe part of that story very quickly becomes the part about giving the shards away and the brightlord is likely to be called a big fat liar.

This is a preposterous, over-the-top assumption, which continues to ignore the point I asked you to address. I assume, then, that you have no answer to it? That being given three chances to respond, you have yet again chosen to just make personal attacks, claiming moral superiority, that you're "better" than the rest of us because you like Amaram, and the only possible reason someone might dislike him is because he's not a Mary Sue.

And for the record, if you'd bothered to read my posts, you'd've seen that I'm not calling for Amaram's head. I suspect that Kaladin will be faced with the opportunity to let Amaram die (which would be justice) or save him, and will choose to risk his life to save him, because honor isn't easy.

Whatever. You're ignoring my points that you can't argue against, and you're throwing around insults to everyone who disagrees with you.

I'm sorry you don't like how I reply to your points, but that's not the same as me ignoring them.

I really don't think it's an over the top assumption - it's stated multiple times in WoK that the common dream for a dark eyes soldier to claim a shard and move up in the world. You don't think that undermining hope would cause unrest? 

I'm not referring to your posts and yours alone, and I never said you were calling for Amaram's head (plenty of posts on this and other threads have, though). My posts on this thread aren't about you, so maybe don't take the fact that I disagree with you so personally? I think you're confusing my disagreeing with you as my insulting you. 

This, this, a thousand times this, welcome to the forums.

 

As I am now bringing up for the third or fourth time, Amaram was not faced with two choices. Amaram could have had the Shards, and left the people alive. All the supposed benefits to civilization in his mind would have happened exactly that way. He kill them for two reasons. First, he just assumed they were awful, awful people who would stir up trouble. Second, if they were those awful people... what exactly would happen? The Shard Police would have shown up and made him give them back? No. It would have been bad for his reputation, there was no legitimate risk of anything worse than that.

 

This is what it comes down to. He had the option to take all the good stuff that came from him stealing the Shards, and he didn't have to kill to do it; killing the people gained the world nothing but Amaram's own stellar reputation. This is why he's a repugnant person.

 

Moogle and... that other name, the one that starts with a t and has all the consonants and I can't pronounce it. You keep saying your same points over and over again, and neither of you have addressed this point. Would you mind? How does this fit into your theory that Amaram's a carebear with the tummy-tat of Mother Theresa?

1) I thought that WoK made pretty clear that perception would not have allowed for Kaladin to give Amaram the shards and go on his merry way - the trouble being that no one would have believed that this is what really happened. The response would have been, "Oh, right, the darkeyes just gave you the shards? Riiiiiight", with the common assumption being that Amaram stole them. That's the kind of rumor that could throw a brightlord's entire army into revolt, and a hunk of the kingdom into chaos. Kaladin's choice to refuse the shards is so contrary to what any normal dark eyes solider would have done that it threw everyone for a loop. And that's how Kaladin got Syl, and that's how we get to enjoy reading about them both. But also important is that Kaladin's choice is so contrary that it's basically impossible for anyone, Amaram, Restares, etc included, to believe that he really means it. It's like someone winning the lottery and then saying, "Nah, I don't want the money." It's more than reasonable to assume that this person will, at some point, look back and regret that decision.

2) I certainly never said that Amaram was a hero, or even an edgy/tatooed carebear. No one is saying he necessarily made the right, or best choice. He made a bad choice, and did a bad thing, which people do. In Amaram's case I don't think it requires an excessive amount of empathy to understand the circumstances that drove him to make a bad choice.

3) #2 above does not condemn Amaram as a bad person. I actually think that Amaram is nicely positioned to start down the path to become a Knight Radiant precisely because he made a bad decision that may have broken him a little. Imagine you've got a guy, Amaram, who's pretty decent - an honorable enough brightlord ("one of the good ones") - but he was never really faced with a hard decision before. Then when faced with a tough choice, he makes a the wrong call and that breaks him a little. "Cracks in the soul", isn't that the expression in the dust jacket cover?

4) I am turned off by all of the bloodthirsty Amaram revenge fantasies. As if anything other than his head on a pike would be a travesty of justice. What we have in Amaram is a minor character with the potential for a complex and fun plot arc. I will very easily admit that I don't limit myself to rooting for the Mary Sue characters.

edit: spelling

 

 

I think judgement has to be based on actions, as intentions and greater good arguments can be used to justify anything, and greater good arguments are unverifiable. 

I would argue that judgement requires context. A greater good argument doesn't have to be verifiable - the point is that there can be more than one interpretation to the best possible moral outcome of a decision. There isn't always (or even generally) a simple "right" answer. Down with determinism, I say. Moral determinism is unacceptable.

 

Do we know Amaram would have given Kaladin the Shards if he had accepted them?  Could the offer have been a trap to ease the tortured justifications in Amaram's mind? 

What if Amaram had said "I will kill your men, enslave you and steal the Shards if you don't take them?"  I think Kaladin would have taken the Shards to save his men.  He could always give them away later. 

Amaram had choices and justifications, but potentially offering the Shards and wrestling with the decision seem to me irrelevant to any judgement. 

Well of course we don't *know* the outcome of this hypothetical, but I don't think we have any good reason to believe that Amaram disingenuously offered the shards to Kaladin multiple times. Amaram is painted as a good, honorable guy, and his guilt and defensiveness at what he's doing is in line with a person who wants to do the right thing.

You're basing this all on the baseless assumption that he is, in fact, feeling guilty about it. Before the bodies have finished bleeding, he's already telling Kaladin how this is all for the best, and telling Kaladin was a terrible person he is. "You would have come back for them."

 

He's not "dealing with the guilt" by respecting the dead or bearing a burden or anything; he's dealing with it by telling himself, and Kaladin, "I did the right thing, so there's nothing to be guilty about. You're lying when you say I could have had the Shards, and rather than trust these men, who risked their lives for mine, I've chosen to kill them so I can silence them forever."

 

As I've said. The only thing that would have been damaged if Amaram had let them live was his own reputation. He would never have had to give up the Shards, it would have had zero impact on his ability to "aid Alethkar". Simple solution: Buy the Shards from Kaladin. Get him to sign a document. Sure, people will know that you purchased them instead of earning them. Amaram's pride is the only obstacle in his way, and he made the choice to kill men because of it.

 

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree - to my eye Amaram's guilt is in plain view in the scene, and I'm far from alone in acknowledging that. No one, including Amaram, is happy about what he's done. Amaram says straight up that he believes he is sacrificing a few dark eyed soldiers to save thousands. I think it requires some serious cynicism to flatly assert that Amaram is just lying about his reasons and motivations. He doesn't have to convince Kaladin of anything; if he just wants the shards, then he can just say so. The fact that he offers the shards to Kaladin multiple times is clear evidence that shard-wanting is *not* his motivation.

Ascribing the worst possible motivations to Amaram requires mental gymnastics and only serves to paint him in a simplistic black/white way; BS tends to write characters that are more complex that.

 

No one, anywhere, on the internet or off, has the right to tell someone, "I know what you're thinking." 

I just made a guess at what was motivating your interpretation of a scene, which is very much my right. Right now I don't have to guess that you're acting very self-righteously. 

I'm not quick to dismiss someone's religious beliefs in the Cosmere.  They've been proven right before.  There may well be a very good reason that Szeth behaves as he does.  Especially since Stone Shamanism seems to be relatively on the ball.  

 

Or, as you say, he could simply be insane.  At which point, it's very hard to hold it against him (especially as insanity has, in the Cosmere, been shown to open you up to influence from what are essentially Gods).  Insanity would, under most modern legal systems, make him literally no longer responsible for his actions.  

Fair enough, but the trouble here is that  I don't think it's clearly religion that is driving Szeth's choices. Most of his references to Stone Shamanism come up with respect to walking on stone, or how stormlight is used, and in most of those contexts he's flaunting his Stone Shamanism beliefs. Whatever is driving Szeth's choices, I don't think it's his religion (it actually seems to be causing him to undermine his religion, as well as assassinate hordes of people).

--

I'm not sure I agree.

 

For Szeth, we just don't have enough information.  It's very hard to make a judgement without knowing more.  

 

But for Taravangian, I think the argument is relatively easy to make.  Yes, both are choosing the lesser of two evils, in their own mind, but the difference between the two greater evils is vast.

 

Taravangian genuinely thinks that he has some way insight into the Desolations and how to stop it, or how to best prepare the world for it.  And remember, when he came up with this plan, he was most likely at his best - a genius.  He's doing terrible things yes, but if Dalinar's flashbacks are to be believed, he stands to save as much as 90% of the population.  Of the world.

 

By contrast, Amaram kills a group of loyal soldiers so that next time he gets into a meaningless fight with a neighbour, he can be marginally more efficient at killing them.  It's just so... insignificant, which is what makes it so much worse.  It's very hard to see the gain as worth the cost.  Especially when the "gain" is only really time - A year or two's training in Shards would probably bring the new bearer up to Amaram's skill.  From the PoV chapters with actual Shardbearers, I don't see the skills being that transferable. 

The "greed" thing that's getting thrown around is just as absurd as the psychopath label. There's nothing in the text to indicate that Amaram is driven by greed for shards - he very explicitly is guilty about betraying his men, and very clearly agonized over his choice. This also relates to all the talk of "the ends don't justify the means", which I think is a phrase that is being misapplied here. Intent matters. Meaning well matters, and no decision is truly made in a vacuum. Killing people is bad but there are obviously circumstances where most of us would consider it ok. Stealing is bad but there are obvious circumstances where most of us would consider it ok. Morality isn't about obeying a discrete list of rules - it's *far* more complex than that.

I think Amaram and Taravangian compare rather well, though the scales of what they do are quite different. What matters is that they've both made choices, and they both feel remorse and guilt regarding those choices despite having come to the conclusion that they're doing what's best. The point is that from all the evidence that we have, they are both weighing consequences and attempting to make a good choice. Taravangian is luring sick people to a hospital and then mass murdering a bunch of them. He thinks he can save the world by doing this. Whether he's right is irrelevant, just it's irrelevant whether Amaram is right about weighing the value of a few soldiers' lives against him wielding a shard in the process of doing whatever it is he's doing behind the scenes. People are wrong (ie., mistaken, misinformed, etc) all of the time and terrible things can happen as a result, but being wrong in and of itself doesn't make those people bad people. I don't think it requires too much imagination to at least understand the how and why of Amaram and Taravangian's decisions (where understanding them is not the same as condoning them). 

I'm not sure what is meant above about not having enough information about Szeth. He goes around murdering people en masse because a guy holding a rock tells him to. There are plenty of Szeth PoVs that make this pretty clear. He thinks to himself that it's bad to murder people, and he seems to be sad about it, but he keeps doing it. Why? Because the guy holding that rock says so. Szeth's apparent lesser-of-two-evils choice is between obeying the guy holding his oathstone, and, well, apparently anything else? That strikes me as delusional and/or insane, and I think makes Szeth one of the more unsympathetic characters in the book.

tl;dr - I think a lot of folks would be well-served to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Generating a strong emotion response is fine, but words have meanings and you shouldn't just go around throwing the word "psychopath" at things because you don't like them. It's just confusing.

It's really fascinating to read the wide range of (often very strong) opinions on Amaram, especially considering how little screen time he's had up to this point.

Like many of the character's we've met so far, Amaram has done some bad things. So far he's got a lot in common with Szeth and Taravangian in that he shows an awareness and/or remorse, but believes at some level that he's choosing the lesser of two evils. I think you have to construct an extremely contrived argument to place Amaram into a more extreme category of "badness" or "unforgivable-ness" than Szeth and Taravangian. In terms of sheer scale, both Szeth and Taravangian have probably been significantly "worse" than Amaram (though this kind of comparison is pretty silly given that "worse" here is wildly subjective and not well-defined, and not to mention the whole difference in screen time). Personally, I find Szeth to be the least sympathetic of the three, by far, just because it's not at all clear what would compel him to stick to this ridiculous "Follow orders, no free will." behavior.

It's also baffling to see some of the posts in various threads that have labeled Amaram as a psychopath. There has been no psychopathy in what little we've seen of Amaram - quite the opposite actually. He very clearly expressed remorse and empathy when he screws Kaladin over. I guess we can chalk this up to how strongly folks seem to identify with and want to "stick up for" Kaladin.

I suppose what I mean is that..... it is hard to put into words. It feels to me like the union of Honor and Cultivations magic is what the spren are, but the different aspects of them will be part of Honor or part of Cultivation. I think that my wording for things and perspective of this stuff are confusing. It got Aether and I confused before, too. 

I think of it more like Cultivation and Honor each put in ingredients, and the process that is Cultivation's involves spren, and the process that would be Honor's involves more surgey stuff. The result is Surgebinding via Nahel bond, with some resulting spren being balanced more toward one than the other. Sorry if that is really confusing again. 

Ah, ok, I think I follow you here. That said, the Brandon quote talks about it being possible (even easy?) to tell which spren are more of Honor vs more of Cultivation. Taking the fact that some spren are primarily Honor or Cultivation, your interpretation seems to imply that some spren (the Honor-y ones) would make surgebinders that are better or more powerful (or something along those lines). That's not a crazy idea, but it also does not strike me as having any particular evidence to support it.

Mine is not a popular opinion, but I think that all spren are of Cultivation. I think that Honorspren is of the same nature as truthspren. The Nahel bond would be a combinination of Honor and Cultivation to create/control surgebinding. Again, not popular, but yeah, I think there will be lots of types but all under Cultivation.

The word of Brandon quote about spren being of Honor and Cultivation seems pretty straightforward. There are a couple words annoyingly missing from the transcription, but context pretty strongly implies that something like "entirely" is what belongs in place of the first "(something)".

quoted from Aether's post on the previous page:

ZAS

Nohadon mentioned that "All the spren aren’t as discerning as honorspren".

.

BRANDON SANDERSON

So there has been dissension among them about who gets to call themselves honorspren, if that makes sense, and there is some disagreement among scholars about which ones are really, you know "This is what defines an honorspren".

.

But the spren you are running into are all (something) of either Honor or Cultivation, or some mixture between them. And you can usually tell the ones that are more Honor, and the ones that are more Cultivation. That should be able to be (something).

 

source

 

Yeah, Stasis sort of works, sort of doesn't, and you're right that it could lead to a road where Growth/Stasis are both related to time (de-/ac-)celeration. The other I threw out there was Entropy, and the use of that could actually also be thought about in terms of (de-/ac-)celerating certain processes. The issue with Entropy is that is could overlap or conflict with the existing surge of Division (depending on exactly how you interpret the meaning of "Division").

The trouble with all of this is that while Brandon tries to ground his magical effects in science (or at least think about the physical implications and of possible mechanisms for various magics), it's very unlikely that he ever comes up with systems that are sufficiently straightforward to be reconstructed from sparse evidence.

Like allomantic metals, i think each surge has a companion that it is opposite to in intent.

Growth-Division

Pretty straightforward, one controls creation the other is most likely more destructive

Illumination-Transformation

One deals with changing something entirely (heavily cognitive) versus changing appearances (heavily physical)

 

Friction-Pressure

One makes someone (possibly objects they invest into as well?) very slick whereas the other can make things stick together

 

Travel-Gravity

This one might be more of a reach, hard to tell as how travel works is pretty unknown, but I think the correlation is a safe bet.  Really all depends on how Travel is performed.

 

So this leaves us Surface Tension or whatever he decides to call it.  My understanding of what this would do is strengthening a material, making it more rigid (possibly used in the creation of blades and shards?).  The opposite of this would be a surge which I am going to call Dissipation.

Oooo, interesting idiea. It's true that it's not at all obviuos how the Transportation-Gravity pairing would make sense, but we don't know enough about them to really say anything definitive.

That said, I think a better pairing with Surface Tension would be Division, which leaves Growth as the one missing it's pair. Surface Tension and Division make sense to me, as one holds things together and the other separates them. In this scenario, Growth needs an opposite, and I could imagine it being something like Entropy, oh or maybe going in another direction something like Stasis.

I'm afraid 'dems are fightin' words.

 

Kalak's order has Transportation. What does Transportation have to do with a Bondsmith? Nothing, I say! Bondsmiths are clearly Order 10, which has Pressure (which Szeth and Kaladin use to bind things) and Surface Tension (which can be used to make cloth rock-hard or something?). 

 

Also, this appears to confirm Dalinar as a Radiant.

Ha, I actually voted for Dalinar as an Order #10 Bondsmith at the top of this thread - the builder-like language just got me feeling a little less sure. Hopefully Dalinar will start showing some powers (maybe a spren? ohpleaseyesaspren) in WoR and help us out on this point.

The new WoR jacket flap text (link, with a nod to gruntle pointing it out) provides some nice hints that Dalinar is a Bondsmith and uses the world 'rebuild' that sounds soooo Order #8/Kalak.

Yeah...I have no idea what I'm even looking for past the first obvious one (can't even tell if the pages are filled w/ typos or if that's all intentional for some strange reason).

That does help, thanks! I'm a little confused about what you mean by, "This site has a scavenger hunt that may get you a code."

Holy crap, I've been unable to keep up with this stuff for a while now, only stumble back and hear about all the steelhunt and preview chapter stuff. Is anyone willing and able to help a guy navigate through this to read the preview chapters???

This is a really fascinating question, and a topic that came up in a long rambling post from earlier this year (old thread).

A few other distinctive features that are mentioned in the WoK are

Babatharnam: veins visible beneath the skin

Natanatan: blue skin and white wooly hair

Also, a few points from the older thread, and my own brain, that I might be worth reiterating here:

1 - What exactly does Shallan mean when she says that there are "eight kinds of blood"? It could be as simple as A/B/AB/O positive and negative, or it could refer to clear species distinctions (e.g. red human blood, orange parshendi blood, and six?! others).

2 - Distinct hair/skin/nail colorings are one thing, but the list of possible racial/regional features goes way beyond this in a few cases (namely the Siah Aimians polymorphing and casting shadows the wrong way!). It requires us to ask, which one of these is not like the other? One of these things just doesn't belong!

3 - From the information that we're given it doesn't appear as though the Heralds fall into any of the (very clearly distinguished) racial/ethnic groups on Roshar. So it appears as though whereever the Heralds originated from, it probably isn't the same place as the humans who populate Roshar.

I think that you're refering to the different gems being used for different types of soulcasting, but what Jasnah is talking about is an inability to perform complex soulcasting that creates organics, she is capable of soulcasting organics, she does it at least once in the books, but she repeatedly comments that she isnt very good at soulcasting organics, hence the objections to order 5

The point still stands that it doesn't make sense for a given soulcaster (as in a person who can soulcast innately) to have strengths/weaknesses that are determined by their Knight Radiant Order. We know that only two Orders could soulcast, and soulcasting strengths/talents/whatever you want to call them being tied to Order precludes the existence of innate soulcasters who are skilled at soulcasting 8 or the 10 categories of stuff-which-can-be-soulcast (SWCBS - bam - it's an official acronym now). That seems ridiculous.

Looking more broadly at the issue of heralds and orders being tied to specific gemstones, it's not clear what's going on. Kaladin, for example, doesn't seem to have any particular affinity or special use for sapphires, which are the gemstone tied to his apparent Order, nor does he do anything that makes direct use of translucent gas or air, which are the soulcasting properties sharing a column with Jez/Windrunners (other than the word "Wind" appearing in the order name, which is about the flimsiest connection ever). Kaladin has powers/abilities tied to pressure and gravitation, neither of which seem to have anything to do with sapphires or translucent gas/air.

Ah! I knew I forgot a quote.

This quote is very important.

First off, it says that Alakavish was a Surgebinders, where Surgebinders end up being Knight Radiants.

Second, we can assume from this that at least some Surgebinders had Nahel Bond Spren.

From this quote from Jasnah:

We can amend that to all Surgebinders having Spren (presumably Nahel Bond Spren).

Third: Not all Nahel Bond Spren are Honorspren. There's a difference, otherwise Nohaden wouldn't make the distinction.

From this, I think we can say that since not all Surgebinder spren are Honorspren, the Symbolspren that Shallan sees are (probably) not Honorspren.

I'm editing the above into my original post.

As for the number, I don't know. Perhaps it isn't a one for one relationships for all the Nahel spren. Perhaps Soulcasters have several (up to ten?), one for each Essence. I'm not sure. My guess is that the Nahel Spren does not work exactly the same way for each Order, but the idea of "give and take" seems to be similar for both Syl and the Symbolspren.

Excellent quote, Zas - it was what I thought of when I perused threads today and saw this "honorspren is a generic term" idea propagating around. I think that theory falls completely apart when you examine all of the spren-related info (as you did in the original post).

It seems clear that Surgebinders are a generic group, who gain powers through the Nahel bond; the Knights Radiant were a group of Surgebinders who built a structured organization around the ideals. It also seems as though the Knights Radiant may well have tapped into a way to gain additional abilities by way of the Nahel bond (e.g. Kaladin's Level Up when he speaks the 2nd Windrunner idea).

This is a very good point. The chapter headings aren't something I'd considered before, but they do seem to strongly indicate that Shallan is in Order 6, and Jasnah Order 5.

As for Soulcasting organics, there's no reason that being in that particular Order would have any effect on her ability to Soulcast organics. Yes, number 5 on the Soulcasting chart is aligned with plants, wood, and moss, but that doesn't necessarily mean that being in Order 5 grants any special abilities with Soulcasting that Essence. Soulcasting is a Surge all on its own; it probably functions the same way regardless of which Order someone is in. The different Orders must gain access to it from a different kind of spren-bond, but the actual act of Soulcasting is probably the same for both Orders that can do it.

In chapter 72, Jasnah comments that it's harder to Soulcast something that isn't the pure form of an Essence. Presumably, you need a better comprehension of what it is you want to transform when you're working with something that isn't an Essence, and Jasnah simply doesn't know a lot about biology.

Granted, this is conjecture, but it seems logical to me.

Oh! This last thought is excellent!

Imagine that Jasnah and Shallan are of the two different Soulcasting orders (or at least have the same powers that function in the same way). If Jasnah were order 5, then her orders virtues would be Learned/Giving, and if Shallan is order 6 then her virtues would be Creative/Honest. Well, we already know that Shallan's art and telling truths are crucial to her Soulcasting and interacting with her spren. It would then stand to reason that Jasnah's soulcasting would be related (in admittedly what is likely some abstract way) to her own orders's virtues, which includes "Learned" (I'm setting aside "Giving" for now just to focus on one thing at a time). It would then follow that in order for Jasnah to soulcast, she must have a deep understanding on the thing(s) that she is trying to soulcast, and it is her education then which defines her strengths/weaknesses with respect to things that she can or cannot soulcast efficiently.

Shallan and Dalinar will be our next two backstories. And it seems pretty glaringly obvious that Jasnah, Szeth, and Taln will get their backstories told eventually too. (Taln's will be the last book, I'm guessing.)

Actually there is a signing report on the board with the same name here at 17th shard (link-to-thread) that has information straight from Brandon about the order of the first five of the Stormlight Archive books (apparently it's actually two sets of 5-book arcs). The first five books have the following character foci:

1. Kaladin

2. Shallan

3. Szeth

4. Navanni

5. Dalinar

She also drained two of her spheres and cracked another. I don't know about you, but soulcasting during combat seems to cost a lot of stormlight.

Agreed - I'd also point out that in a situation where you're fighting (potentially) armies of giant rock beasts and who knows what else, mobility is perhaps the most important thing to possess in terms gaining the tactical advantage necessary to stay alive.

We've already seen via Szeth how the Windrunner abilities can be used to maneuver around a fight very effectively, and IF (this is hugely speculative) the Stonewardens' surge-based powers include something to the tune of super speed/strength (possibly seen in a mild form when Dalinar saves Elhokar by moving faster and more gracefully than a man in shardplate should be able to do) then that would also make a lot of sense as an ability that's useful for staying alive in battle.

Personally I still believe that they were disgusted at being used in "ordinary" wars. Perhaps they had an oath not to take power themselves but follow their rulers, and as they where spread over different countries, perhaps they got fed up with knights radiant being asked to fight knights radiant?

Had it just been the blades and plates being tainted, they could have just dropped those and continued to be knights radiant. A windrunner such as Kaladin or(possibly) szeth is quite formidable even without plate and blade, bet the other orders would be too. So I dont think soemthing happening to the plates and/or blades can explain it.

I agree with dyring's view above. In a world with regular Desolations, and an obvious enemy in Odium to focus on, the Knights Radiant served a very clear purpose. But when you take away the Desolations and let a lot of time pass, then it seems intuitive that the Knights Radiant purpose would erode, and they'd be looking at a best-case scenario of becoming something like the Jedi circa the Old Republic.

Oh, one other thought about the Recreance scene - which is actually a thought that Dalinar himself has while viewing that scene - is where are the other orders of Knights Radiant? Why do we only see the Windrunners and Stonewardens, but never the other orders? I could imagine that perhaps the Windrunners and Stonewardens are the orders that were tasked with the frontline fighting while the other orders specialized in other areas, but it's still strange that we never see a peep out of the other KR orders - just those two.

Along this line of thought, it actually makes a lot of sense to me that only a subset of the KR orders would really specialize in combat, while others would have powers that focus them on other areas (healing, communication, etc.). There is certainly one order (Vev) with the attribute "healing", which could easily imply an order that is focused on curing people as opposed to running around on battlefields fighting, and there could be other logistical roles that were the focus of other orders that we don't know much about. Soulcasters, for example, aren't necessarily an obvious choice for front-lines fighters (Jasnah's badassery not withstanding).