Is is just me, or is humanity doing much better in this Desolation than they should?

[Biceratops]

Something that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while: the Desolations are described as dragging humanity on Roshar back to the stone age. Cities were destroyed, technologies were lost, etc.

And this time around, humanity is lacking quite a lot of what they had in previous Desolations.

1. There just aren't that many Radiants this time around, if Dalinar's visions are to be trusted. The Windrunners are the most populous order with ~50 members, and the Elsecallers have just 1.
2. Alethkar, Herdaz, Thaylenah, Azir and its satellite nations, and Tukar are the only ones actively fighting Odium's forces. Alethkar and Herdaz are occupied, and Tukar is a bit of a wild card.
3. The Heralds aren't being particularly helpful this time around.

In contrast, Odium's forces have some new advantages:

1. The Skybreakers are now fighting for Odium. Notably, this directly takes away from humanity's forces.
2. Half the nations on Roshar folded more or less overnight, so Odium's forces have a sizeable foothold.
3. The Fused have millennia of combat experience, something that the modern Radiants lack. 
4. The Everstorm means that the Fused come back every nine days or so.

 

Despite all of that, this Desolation has been...a standstill. As of RoW, neither side has really gained much since the Desolation started. But the way I'm reading it, Odium's forces should have an overwhelming advantage.

So what am I missing? Why isn't this Desolation just as bad as the previous ones?

[Lord Magire he/him]

From what I understand, it is mostly because of the long gap between desolations. I believe that the civilisation destroying nature of the desolations was mostly the cumulative damage of desolations happening faster and faster as the Heralds got weaker. The first few (when the Knights Radiant weren't a thing) likely were repulsed more easily as the societies had technology. Also, modern Roshar has much more advanced Fabrial technology thanany previous civilization.

In conclusion, I don't think the desolation isn't any weaker, it's more that the cumulative damage of desolations every couple of years isn't a thing.

[Treamayne]

4 hours ago, Biceratops said:

So what am I missing? Why isn't this Desolation just as bad as the previous ones?

3 hours ago, Lord Magire said:

From what I understand, it is mostly because of the long gap between desolations. I believe that the civilisation destroying nature of the desolations was mostly the cumulative damage of desolations happening faster and faster as the Heralds got weaker. The first few (when the Knights Radiant weren't a thing) likely were repulsed more easily as the societies had technology. Also, modern Roshar has much more advanced Fabrial technology thanany previous civilization.

In conclusion, I don't think the desolation isn't any weaker, it's more that the cumulative damage of desolations every couple of years isn't a thing.

So, there's a few things.

• as @Lord Magire mentioned, having thousands of years to develop has allowed humanity to surpass the level they were at for the first desolation
• When we are shown the Desolation effects - that was the end of a Desolation, after 10-15 yrs of war
• Humans were at (presumably) the Iron age at the start, lost some knowledge in the war, recovered, lost more, recovered - when Taln implies they may be below the tech level of casting bronze it's because after dozen(s) of Desolations they had been slowly pushed down the tech tree from Iron age to Bronze age to stone age
• Also a large percentage (possibly 50+%) of the Fused are also Mad now, so many of their warriors are also unavalable/ineffectual.
• Finally, the fighting isn't as widespread in this desolation (so far) because, as you noted, half the nations of man capitulated without a fight. We are barely one year into a war that, traditionally, lasted over a decade of constant warfare.

We have yet to see how bad it can get.

 

[Lighteyed Lieutenant he/him]

Quote

it is mostly because of the long gap between desolations

Yeah, Taln's resistance to breaking for so long gave humanity way longer to recover then previous Desolations. I believe at some point things were so bad that there were only a couple years (maybe even just one) between Desolations. While I don't believe that Fabrials are a big factor in the overall scheme of things, I do think they help the humans free up time and energy to do other things. 

Quote

We are barely one year into a war that, traditionally, lasted over a decade of constant warfare.

This is also a big point. The largest and most devestating wars on Earth lasted for decades. (30 years war, 100 years war). Even shorter ones such as WWI and WWII, though only 4 and 6 years respectivly, were devestating because they were world-wide. On Roshar, there isn't fighting on all fronts everywhere, just around a few specific countries/areas.

[Lord Magire he/him]

Also, I'm not aware of Honor playing an active part in fighting the desolations in the past (except through the oathpact etc.) whereas Dalinar, who has a reasonable portion of Honor's power through his bond to the stormfather, is actively fighting/refueling Radiants in combat. I don't know how much of an effect that has, but it might be relevant.

[alder24]

4 hours ago, Biceratops said:

Something that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while: the Desolations are described as dragging humanity on Roshar back to the stone age. Cities were destroyed, technologies were lost, etc.

And this time around, humanity is lacking quite a lot of what they had in previous Desolations.

1. There just aren't that many Radiants this time around, if Dalinar's visions are to be trusted. The Windrunners are the most populous order with ~50 members, and the Elsecallers have just 1.
2. Alethkar, Herdaz, Thaylenah, Azir and its satellite nations, and Tukar are the only ones actively fighting Odium's forces. Alethkar and Herdaz are occupied, and Tukar is a bit of a wild card.
3. The Heralds aren't being particularly helpful this time around.

In contrast, Odium's forces have some new advantages:

1. The Skybreakers are now fighting for Odium. Notably, this directly takes away from humanity's forces.
2. Half the nations on Roshar folded more or less overnight, so Odium's forces have a sizeable foothold.
3. The Fused have millennia of combat experience, something that the modern Radiants lack. 
4. The Everstorm means that the Fused come back every nine days or so.

 

Despite all of that, this Desolation has been...a standstill. As of RoW, neither side has really gained much since the Desolation started. But the way I'm reading it, Odium's forces should have an overwhelming advantage.

So what am I missing? Why isn't this Desolation just as bad as the previous ones?

There are many factors to this. You're right, humanity is doing much better than before. But the first problem is why they weren't doing so well in previous Desolations - time in between them. While the separation between first Desolations was very long, hundreds of years, it changed dramatically the closer to the Last Desolations you look. Between a few last Desolations, only several years was between each Desolation, the worst was before the Last Desolation, as less than a year passed after the previous one had ended. This means that humanity barely won a Desolation, had no time for rebuilding and advancing tech, and another Desolation was already starting - that's why those Desolations were so devastating, pushing technology back to the stone age. They had no time to rebuild.

This time however humanity had 4500 years to advance, to rebuild, to increase their population and create stable countries with professional military. They have steel now, advanced fabrials, advanced science, great logistics and communication capabilities (spanreeds are a massive advantage) and huge cities with walls. Like Taln said "It's an amazing gift Heralds gave them, this time they stand a chance".

Secondly, for the last 2000 years Singers, the primary force of Odium, were enslaved and without their mind and identity. They lost everything, and now they've just regained themselves. They are in no shape to wage a planet wide war. None of them knows how to fight, none of them was trained to fight, none of them is disciplined, none of them knows who Fused are, who Odium is and what Voidspren are. They just can't fight like that. They need to train first and be educated. To make Singers a capable fighting force they need months, if not years of training - only available teachers are Fused. This isn't something that ancient Singers had to worry about, they were ready to fight and had their minds intact.

Moreover one of their Unmade - Ba-Ado-Mishram - was imprisoned as well. We don't know what she was doing during previous Desolations, but she was regarded as a Highprice among Odium forces. It's likely she played an important role back then, and her absence restricted Odium's forces to some degree. Another Unmade, Sja-Anat, is now plotting to change sides and join humanity in their fight against Odium. She has already acted directly against Odium by Enlightening Glys who bonded with Renaring (giving him the ability to see the future and cloud Odium's vision, which significantly impaired Odium's planning), and saved Shallan and Co from Kholinar trap. Third Unmade, the Thrill, was imprisoned within a few first months of Desolation, and is now lost. This effectively means that 3 out of 9 Unmades are unavailable to Odium and possibly a few more haven't been active yet. 

To add even more, most Fused are now insane. Repeated cycle of death and rebirth has broken their mind and they are unable to aid in most ways except for fighting (how well we don't know). This severely limits what Odium can do with them and 4500 years of waiting didn't help at all. The longer a Cognitive Shadow like Fused is alive, the more broken their mind becomes. They can't help Singers in training and rebuilding. In my opinion their presence even harms the morale of Odium’s army.

Another factor is that the True Desolation just started. In OB it was said that most of Fused haven't returned yet - this is still the case in RoW as Pursuer was just awoken and got back on Roshar. As of the end of RoW, there are still 2 types of Fused that haven't returned yet. Fused weren't fighting at full force yet.

As I already mentioned, modern Roshar has a very advanced military compared to what they had in ancient times. With integrated use of Soulcasters their army can march without supply trains, they have complex formations and tactics, well disciplined and trained troops with steel equipment, and very experienced commanders. Spanreeds allows them to gather information from all across Roshar instantly, which improves their scouting and intelligence to levels not present before (this is very important in a war). They are ready for war, not on that scale but they can adapt much faster than Odium's forces and mount a successful defense. They were able to predict where Odium forces were going to strike in OB, and counter that effectively. Moreover there are more than 100 Shardbearers with Shardblade and Shardplate around Roshar, while they aren't Radiants, they are still very deadly weapons, capable of instantly killing any Fused and Regals. With limited numbers of Fused who Returned, this levels the fighting field. 

And of course, spren are back and are forming bonds with humans again. The number of willing spren is low for now, but few individuals managed to appear early enough (Kaladin, Shallan, Jasnah etc) to guid and train a wave of new Radiants, so they won't struggle as much as they did. 

Even Odium might be a small factor in this Desolation - he might purposefully slow down his army advances because he wanted to have Dalinar on his side, he was preparing him to join his Fused and he wanted to slowly break him rather than risk getting him killed. He attacked Alethkar first, and then dug in and waited there to show Dalinar that his home was lost. After his plan failed, he got bound to an unwanted contest, he had to be careful with his actions so he wouldn't risk meeting Dalinar again, who could enforce on him date of the contest, to which Odium wasn't ready.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

In addition to what already has been mentioned,
I would like to point out that much of the culture of the regular Singers, is now a very human one, through Connection. A lot of Singers don't even want a war at this point. They just want to live their lives..maybe with humans as slaves or servants, and maybe not. Odium could have a worldwide rebellion on his hands if he pushes the masses to hard. I would say that having your main fighting force not be motivated for war would be the largest difference between this desolation and ever other previous one.

[Diomedes]

I would like to add it`s not a fight of Humans vs. Singers this time around. Quite a lot of Humans fight on Odium`s side (Sadeas` army, the Iriali, Jah Keved) and some Singers fight on Dalinar`s side. So it is a whole different kind of conflict compared to past Desolations.

Odium`s (Rayses) game plan was to draw as many Humans to his side including Dalinar due to the difficulties you mentioned. As he mostly failed doing so regarding the Alethi, that plan did not work as well as intended. But we`ll see, I guess King T will be better at that job. 

Btw. I had similar ideas as you did and wrote a theory based on it a while ago, that Odium intended to draw Humans to his side by inciting anti-Singer Hatred. I guess I will need to update that one in some time to come. 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Diomedes

[Letryx13]

On 6/28/2023 at 7:04 AM, alder24 said:

Even Odium might be a small factor in this Desolation - he might purposefully slow down his army advances because he wanted to have Dalinar on his side, he was preparing him to join his Fused and he wanted to slowly break him rather than risk getting him killed. He attacked Alethkar first, and then dug in and waited there to show Dalinar that his home was lost. After his plan failed, he got bound to an unwanted contest, he had to be careful with his actions so he wouldn't risk meeting Dalinar again, who could enforce on him date of the contest, to which Odium wasn't ready.

I think it's a combination of pretty much everything that has been mentioned, but this is undoubtedly a huge part of it.  Odium was really banking on having Dalinar under him, which would he believed would result in his freedom.  He threw pretty much everything he had at that plan, and when it failed, he was left to scramble.  There are real world examples of such things happening in wars.  

That, combined with other previously mentioned factors are what's keeping the war so balanced.  The fact that Odium's forces couldn't break Taln dragged out the time far longer than would have happened otherwise.  Which gave humans more time to progress and the Fused more time to lose themselves.  

[Hatman he/him]

On 6/28/2023 at 6:31 AM, Lighteyed Lieutenant said:

Yeah, Taln's resistance to breaking for so long gave humanity way longer to recover then previous Desolations. I believe at some point things were so bad that there were only a couple years (maybe even just one) between Desolations. While I don't believe that Fabrials are a big factor in the overall scheme of things, I do think they help the humans free up time and energy to do other things. 

This is also a big point. The largest and most devestating wars on Earth lasted for decades. (30 years war, 100 years war). Even shorter ones such as WWI and WWII, though only 4 and 6 years respectivly, were devestating because they were world-wide. On Roshar, there isn't fighting on all fronts everywhere, just around a few specific countries/areas.

I think Stormfather said that it was less than year between the last two. 

[Treamayne]

On 6/28/2023 at 6:31 AM, Lighteyed Lieutenant said:

 I believe at some point things were so bad that there were only a couple years (maybe even just one) between Desolations.

9 hours ago, Hatman said:

I think Stormfather said that it was less than year between the last two. 

Yes, less than a year. Oathbringer Ch 38:

Spoiler

Dalinar could see what had happened. It seemed so obvious. “They were tortured, weren’t they?”

HORRIBLY, BY THE SPIRITS THEY TRAPPED. THEY COULD SHARE THE PAIN BECAUSE OF THEIR BOND—BUT EVENTUALLY, SOMEONE ALWAYS YIELDED.

ONCE ONE BROKE, ALL TEN HERALDS RETURNED TO ROSHAR. THEY FOUGHT. THEY LED MEN. THEIR OATHPACT DELAYED THE FUSED FROM RETURNING IMMEDIATELY, BUT EACH TIME AFTER A DESOLATION, THE HERALDS RETURNED TO DAMNATION TO SEAL THE ENEMY AGAIN. TO HIDE, FIGHT, AND FINALLY WITHSTAND TOGETHER.

THE CYCLE REPEATED. AT FIRST THE RESPITE BETWEEN DESOLATIONS WAS LONG. HUNDREDS OF YEARS. NEAR THE END, DESOLATIONS CAME SEPARATED BY FEWER THAN TEN YEARS. THERE WAS LESS THAN ONE YEAR BETWEEN THE LAST TWO. THE SOULS OF THE HERALDS HAD WORN THIN. THEY BROKE ALMOST AS SOON AS THEY WERE CAUGHT AND TORTURED IN DAMNATION.

“Which explains why things look so bad this time,” Navani whispered from her seat. “Society had suffered Desolation after Desolation, separated by short intervals. Culture, technology … all broken.”

 

[cometaryorbit]

 

On 6/28/2023 at 6:04 AM, alder24 said:

Moreover one of their Unmade - Ba-Ado-Mishram - was imprisoned as well. We don't know what she was doing during previous Desolations, but she was regarded as a Highprice among Odium forces. It's likely she played an important role back then, and her absence restricted Odium's forces to some degree. Another Unmade, Sja-Anat, is now plotting to change sides and join humanity in their fight against Odium. She has already acted directly against Odium by Enlightening Glys who bonded with Renaring (giving him the ability to see the future and cloud Odium's vision, which significantly impaired Odium's planning), and saved Shallan and Co from Kholinar trap. Third Unmade, the Thrill, was imprisoned within a few first months of Desolation, and is now lost. This effectively means that 3 out of 9 Unmades are unavailable to Odium and possibly a few more haven't been active yet. 

To add even more, most Fused are now insane. Repeated cycle of death and rebirth has broken their mind and they are unable to aid in most ways except for fighting (how well we don't know). This severely limits what Odium can do with them and 4500 years of waiting didn't help at all. The longer a Cognitive Shadow like Fused is alive, the more broken their mind becomes. They can't help Singers in training and rebuilding. In my opinion their presence even harms the morale of Odium’s army.

Another factor is that the True Desolation just started. In OB it was said that most of Fused haven't returned yet - this is still the case in RoW as Pursuer was just awoken and got back on Roshar. As of the end of RoW, there are still 2 types of Fused that haven't returned yet. Fused weren't fighting at full force yet.

Re-Shephir may also be unwilling to confront Radiants (or at least any group of Radiants that might include a Lightweaver) now.

The Unmade also are at risk now in a way they weren't in previous Desolations. Humans know how to imprison them now, and after Nightblood perma-killed a thunderclast at Thaylen Field, Odium might be being way more cautious with them. If Szeth had been in Kholinar, Ashertmarn would probably be gone.

Yeah. Radiants are rare, but there are not that many actually functional Fused currently available either. Only about 30% have arrived as of RoW, and if say half are nonfunctional... Odium really only has 15% of the total Fused force actually available.

And even the highly functional ones are not reliable for Odium. Leshwi outright betrayed him, Lezian ignored strategy to pursue a personal vendetta, Raboniel cared more about ending the war than which side won.

The Skybreakers and some Dustbringers are probably going to be more valuable (especially for T-Odium) than the Fused. The execution of Lezian at the end of RoW might show that T-Odium has realized that the Fused are often more a liability than an asset.

(Also, Raboniel's claims to Venli aside, 3rd+ Ideal Radiants are vastly more powerful than Fused on an individual basis. Two Surges + combination effects vs one; far more effective healing; inherent live Shardblade... at 4th ideal, Shardplate makes it ridiculously one sided.)

The Radiants developed slowly over the Desolations; in Nohadon's time, they had Radiant-style Surgebinders but not full Radiants yet. Those early Surgebinders (IMO) probably lacked things like Shardplate and the other "cousinspren" based effects (like Kaladin splitting the storm).

Full modern powered Radiants probably didn't appear until the Desolations were very close together; otherwise they would have made them far more one-sided than we see (and the Heralds basically obsolete). I'm pretty sure that the Fused never had to go up against a False Desolation-era setup with probably thousands of Radiants, mostly 4th ideal, plus more thousands of Squires, trained and organized into Orders.

That would have been very one-sided; the Fused would just have been whack-a-moled upon respawn until the singers gave up seeing these laughable failures as gods (and thus giving up their bodies).

A single 4th ideal Windrunner could probably kill a huge number of Heavenly Ones without anti-Light or similar; their Stormlight-drain fabrials wouldn't work through Shardplate, so the Windrunner is incredibly hard to hurt, while one hit to the gemheart and the Fused is dead (bypassing healing). Soulcasting Radiants in numbers would make mundane logistics essentially irrelevant for any center of power. Etc.

Edited July 5, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

37 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

I'm pretty sure that the Fused never had to go up against a False Desolation-era setup with probably thousands of Radiants, mostly 4th ideal, plus more thousands of Squires, trained and organized into Orders.

I agree with most of your response but not this part. Before the False Desolation most spren weren't bound, they reacted to incoming threat and started to bond just as the False Desolation was starting (just like with all Desolations) - I wouldn't say most of Radiants were of 4th Ideal, it's usually hard to get there (as per Skybreaker's words, very few gets to swear 4th Ideal and it takes decades to achieve). To add more there was only a single Bondsmith during the False Desolation, so I think it's ok to say that the amount and the level of Radiants before the False Desolation wasn't so far off what they used to be in previous ones - we saw in prelude and Dalinar's flashback multiple 4th Ideal Radiants.

How many were of 4th Ideal and above? We know 2000 Honorspren bonded during the False Desolation, and at the Feverstone Keep 100 of them left their Shardblades and Shardplates - that's at minimum 5% of all bonded who were able to climb that high in their Oaths. And I don't think many more Windrunners were able to swear 4th Ideal.

[cometaryorbit]

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

I agree with most of your response but not this part. Before the False Desolation most spren weren't bound, they reacted to incoming threat and started to bond just as the False Desolation was starting (just like with all Desolations)

Oh, I agree most spren weren't bound during the long peace between Aharietiam and the False Desolation. But the real Desolations would have created just as much threat, and I still don't think the Fused ever fought hundreds of highly organized 4th Ideals, except maybe in those last two or three Desolations- and likely not then, since Radiants were probably dying quick and there wasn't time between Desolations to train everybody up or rebuild the organization of the Orders.

5 hours ago, alder24 said:

How many were of 4th Ideal and above? We know 2000 Honorspren bonded during the False Desolation, and at the Feverstone Keep 100 of them left their Shardblades and Shardplates - that's at minimum 5% of all bonded who were able to climb that high in their Oaths. And I don't think many more Windrunners were able to swear 4th Ideal.

Hmmm. I had figured since all the ones in that vision had Plate, that 4th ideal was basically standard in that era. Maybe not.

But even if not, 3rd ideal likely came very quick, and a couple hundred 4th + 1500 or so 3rd + a couple hundred 1st/2nd + probably 10,000+ squires would be an insanely powerful force. And that's just one Order (admittedly, one of the most numerous ... but the Stonewards were major soldiers too, and back them up with Division artillery, Progression healing, etc...)

I mean, how numerous are the Fused? I severely doubt there's more than a few thousand, and it might even be high triple digits (there are apparently 100 "important" ones, 30 of whom are available on Roshar early in RoW).

Edited July 5, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[alder24]

10 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Hmmm. I had figured since all the ones in that vision had Plate, that 4th ideal was basically standard in that era. Maybe not.

But even if not, 3rd ideal likely came very quick, and a couple hundred 4th + 1500 or so 3rd + a couple hundred 1st/2nd + probably 10,000+ squires would be an insanely powerful force. And that's just one Order (admittedly, one of the most numerous ... but the Stonewards were major soldiers too, and back them up with Division artillery, Progression healing, etc...)

I mean, how numerous are the Fused? I severely doubt there's more than a few thousand, and it might even be high triple digits (there are apparently 100 "important" ones, 30 of whom are available on Roshar early in RoW).

Yes, number wise Radiants were very powerful, even if just 5% of them were at 4th Ideal, 3rd one with Shardblade would be a great adversary to most Fused (but some, like Fused of Regrowth, have their way of dealing with Shardblades). Radiants were likely having a numerical advantage over Fused but we have to also count Regals into that, as they would also be a troublesome opponent for Radiants, especially in large numbers supporting their Fused. We still don't know most of the Regal forms. While not as powerful as Fused, during the False Desolation, they were able to push with considerable force towards Rall Elorim, and cause very intense fighting - it's clear that Regals used to be much more capable Radiant's enemy then what they are in this Desolation. Therefore counting both Fused and Regals together, they would exceed numbers of Radiants with squires, making it a much more even fight.

[cometaryorbit]

I think the issue in the False Desolation was that every singer alive (except the Listeners) was made into a Regal by BAM. So while the Radiants were ridiculously superior individually, they were probably outnumbered by a colossal margin - a couple thousand Radiants and maybe 10k squires against millions, maybe tens of millions, of Regals.

And even then, I don't think the issue was that the Radiants were actually at risk of outright losing.

I think it was that:

- they couldn't protect everyone everywhere, being too outnumbered (though Oathgates and rapid flight would help a lot with that)

- and more importantly, they couldnt use the Oathpact this time. So until Melishi came up with something, there seemed no way to end the war without killing all the Regals, which as far as they knew would have meant the entire singer species (I don't think they knew the Listeners existed). The epigraphs in WoR make it sound like they thought they were going to have to, until Melishi.

Edited July 6, 2023 by cometaryorbit