[OB] What is the Last Legion?

[Frostlander]

Now that we’ve met post-Everstorm parshmen, it may be time to rethink our assumptions about the Listeners. I apologize if this has been discussed to death in a different way, but I wasn’t able to find anything challenging the idea that the term “Last Legion” was anything but positive.

It has seemed natural to assume that the Listeners (Parshendi is a nationality) are the correct or proper type of Parsh-Rosharan. They are represented by relatable, well-meaning characters and have a fascinating oral tradition that tells of a daring escape from Odium’s influence. We contrasted them with the enslaved parshmen whom they pitied for not having forms or hearing rhythms.

Now we have a second group traveling with Kaladin who, despite not having multiple forms or attuning to the rhythms, are just as relatable and intelligent as the Listeners. Is one group more “natural” or “better” than the other? 

What got me thinking about this is the title of the interlude that introduces us to Venli’s research and stormspren, “Last Legion.” It’s also the chapter where Eshonai’s mother describes the Listeners as the “Last Legion,” and we hear the story of how they escaped:

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“The day of the storm when the Last Legion fled,” Mother continued in song. “Difficult was the path chosen. Warriors, touched by the gods, our only choice to seek dullness of mind. A crippling that brought freedom.”…“Daring was the challenge made,” Mother sang, “when the Last Legion abandoned thought and power in exchange for freedom. They risked forgetting all. And so songs they composed, a hundred stories to tell, to remember. I tell them to you, and you will tell them to your children, until the forms are again discovered."

1

I think this is problematic in a series about the loss of knowledge and how it seems to have led humans to forget critical pieces of their history and set Odium’s plans in motion. Why not the Listeners, too? Eshonai even thinks:

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The songs left out so much. The Last Legion hadn’t known how to transform into anything other than dullform and mateform, at least not without the help of the gods. How had they known the other forms were possible? Had these facts originally been recorded in the songs, and then lost over the years as words changed here and there?

2

It’s possible that others have noticed that this history is a bit troubling, but now, especially after seeing the group traveling with Kaladin, there are red flags all over the place.

The Listeners believe that they are a self-sacrificing Last Legion, but given that this is also the interlude where we see the Listeners move toward bonding with stormspren, we should consider the possibility that the Listeners are actually Odium’s last legion (lower case). Much like humans have been manipulated over millennia, is it possible that Odium ensured that there was one last legion remaining when the future parshmen had their spiritwebs damaged? It would actually be easier for him to manipulate the Listeners, to trick them into believing that they had escaped, leaving just enough mysterious information for them to figure out how to discover forms that brought them progressively closer to summoning the Everstorm.

I’ve also grown increasingly suspicious of the rhythms, or at least the potential to “piggyback” on the signal and transmit information that helps Odium:

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Klade claimed that a voice—speaking to the rhythms—had led him to the man, who had confessed his skills when pressed. Venli had apparently been with Klade, though Eshonai hadn’t seen her sister since earlier in the day.

 

I’m wondering if the group with Kaladin would need to attune to the rhythms they are aware of—but don’t understand—before they could transform, even in the coming highstorm.

At any rate, I don’t think that we can be sure what these Parsh-Rosharans should look like, if they should have multiple forms, or what their relationship to the rhythms should be. Would the healed parshmen eventually die without a spren bond? Are they fine the way they are?

I do think we should consider the possibility that the Parshendi (and any other Listeners) were Odium’s unwitting last legion.

[Yata he/him]

I don't believe the Last Legion's flee was part of an Odium's Plan. They Simply took an opportunity.

Odium at that time probably doesn't care of losing some minion, in the great scheme loses some Listeners was not a great deal.

About the healed-parshmen, the so called "Voidbringers"..I believe they are stable as they are. Honestly I can't know if their status is the result of an bad made bond or if simply the Everstorm is unable to heal them and Bond them properly with a Voidspren at the same time. The second Everstorm's passate will be really relevant.

Butfrom the reports we had, some Listeners turned into Forms of Power.

So also if not automatic, some Parshmen turned into proper "Voidbringers" (unless those were DullForm Parshendi Hidden amoung the Parshmen).

For now, I believe a Little fraction of the Parshmen were in the right conditions to successfully change Form, the rest becomed some Void-Dull Form (without a Better term)...they messed with the Form's change and this is the result.

[Frostlander]

@Yata Can you explain a bit more why you don't think that Team Odium had some influence in the Parshendi ancestors' decision to revert to the most basic forms? Setting aside the chapter title, which is interesting in its own right, Odium would need a group of non-parshmen to summon the Everstorm. The parshmen weren't going to do it, and enslaved parshmen are more useful to Odium if humans don't even think about them and just continue integrating them into their societies. 

So much of this series seems to be about a long game that Odium is playing that depends on the players forgetting or not realizing that they're playing a game and that he's the enemy. If human knowledge has been erased or tampered with to further Odium's plans, why wouldn't this apply to Listeners?

As Honor says in Way of Kings:

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He’s realized that you, given time, will become your own enemies. That he doesn’t need to fight you. Not if he can make you forget, make you turn against one another. Your legends say that you won. But the truth is that we lost. And we are losing.”

 

This seems to apply to humans, but in many ways, it could just as equally apply to the Listeners. Based on their histories, they believe they have escaped their gods, although at least some of them still remember that they need to be vigilant. Eventually, though, some Listener--possibly with some encouragement from Team Odium--would start looking into more dangerous forms. This appears to have been Venli.

If the Parshendi escape was not influenced by Odium & Company, why would a group of escaping Listeners include information in their own histories about how to find more dangerous forms? Eshonai thinks it's odd that the songs could even include such information/instructions without the help of their gods. This is why I think Odium made sure he had one last legion remaining to unwittingly help carry out his plans.

The idea that the ancestors of the Parshendi were just as bamboozled as humans seems more likely than the alternative at this point.

[Blacksmithki]

On October 14, 2017 at 1:40 PM, Frostlander said:

@Yata Can you explain a bit more why you don't think that Team Odium had some influence in the Parshendi ancestors' decision to revert to the most basic forms? Setting aside the chapter title, which is interesting in its own right, Odium would need a group of non-parshmen to summon the Everstorm. The parshmen weren't going to do it, and enslaved parshmen are more useful to Odium if humans don't even think about them and just continue integrating them into their societies. 

So much of this series seems to be about a long game that Odium is playing that depends on the players forgetting or not realizing that they're playing a game and that he's the enemy. If human knowledge has been erased or tampered with to further Odium's plans, why wouldn't this apply to Listeners?

As Honor says in Way of Kings:

This seems to apply to humans, but in many ways, it could just as equally apply to the Listeners. Based on their histories, they believe they have escaped their gods, although at least some of them still remember that they need to be vigilant. Eventually, though, some Listener--possibly with some encouragement from Team Odium--would start looking into more dangerous forms. This appears to have been Venli.

If the Parshendi escape was not influenced by Odium & Company, why would a group of escaping Listeners include information in their own histories about how to find more dangerous forms? Eshonai thinks it's odd that the songs could even include such information/instructions without the help of their gods. This is why I think Odium made sure he had one last legion remaining to unwittingly help carry out his plans.

The idea that the ancestors of the Parshendi were just as bamboozled as humans seems more likely than the alternative at this point.

Where do the songs say how to get the forms of power? The songs contain mostly information about how to not bond a voidspren if eon a storm with one it would seem, the song about (decayform?) said "hold dear the fears that fill your head" and almost every other one advised them to avoid something related to that form

[Frostlander]

2 hours ago, Blacksmithki said:

Where do the songs say how to get the forms of power? The songs contain mostly information about how to not bond a voidspren if eon a storm with one it would seem, the song about (decayform?) said "hold dear the fears that fill your head" and almost every other one advised them to avoid something related to that form

3

The forms that we become familiar with in WoR show up in the epigraphs as part of the Song of Listing. Some of them have vague instructions on how to find them, and the two forms that Venli was supposed to be working on, scholarform and mediationform, have mild warnings attached to them. More dangerous forms show up in the Song of Winds and the Song of Secrets. But there are huge gaps in their oral record, a point that Venli makes when she is arguing for the adoption of stormform in the Narak Interlude:

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"Enough people of that form,” Venli said, “could control a highstorm, or even summon one." 

"I remember the song that speaks of this form,” Eshonai said. “It was a thing of the gods."

"Most of the forms are related to them in some way," Venli said. "Can we really trust the accuracy of words first sung so long ago? When those songs were memorized, our people were mostly dullform."

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So, she's arguing that their histories are too unreliable to serve as warnings, but then on the next page, we learn how nimbleform was discovered with the help of a script she invented. (Venli also has the advantage of having control over the written version of the songs, so who knows what she's done there.)

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Venli and her team had spent five years recording all of the songs, learning the nuances from the elderly, capturing them in these pages. Through collaboration, research, and deep thought, they had discovered nimbleform.

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So, Venli will argue that the songs are reliable when they serve her purpose and dismiss them when they don't. We know that the Listeners discovered nimbleform after workform and warform (and after Gavilar's assassination), but we don't know where workform and warform came from. We know that both predated Gavilar's death, because Eshonai says that the Five had been all dullform, then all workform, and then they decided to have one of each form after Nimbleform was discovered about 2 years into the war. Although warform doesn't appear to have been part of the Five until after the war started, Eshonai notes its existence in the Oathbringer prologue:

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Humans didn’t have a choice. They hadn’t lost their forms as she’d first assumed; they only had one. Forever in mateform, workform, and warform all at once. 

The biggest questions might be: How did they make the mysterious jump from mateform and dullform to workform and warform? Eshonai seems to find the lack of information on this troubling. And did the sphere Gavilar gave Eshonai end up helping Venli discover nimbleform? If Venli was working with the gods in some way, did they also help her discover stormform?

Edited October 16, 2017 by Frostlander
Fixing an error about workform

[mattstocum]

On 10/13/2017 at 1:17 AM, Yata said:

So also if not automatic, some Parshmen turned into proper "Voidbringers" (unless those were DullForm Parshendi Hidden amoung the Parshmen).

I forgot about the dullform spies, this helps with my overall theory of what's going on with the parshmen and Parshendi. I think the Parshendi are descended from a group of Listeners who voluntarily gave up their forms and chose dullform and mateform. The parshmen are the Listeners who did not, and were changed to slaveform when the spren that Galivar was talking about in the prologue was captured, denying them their ability to become voidbringers. I think the Everstorm is changing Parshendi into stormform, but the parshmen just become effectively nimbleform. The dullform spies among the parshmen would explain why some became stormform, but most didn't.

 

On 10/13/2017 at 1:17 AM, Yata said:

The second Everstorm's passate will be really relevant.

The voidspren with Kaldin's Listeners seems to be trying to get them somewhere quickly. My guess is something needs to happen for them to become proper voidbringers, and the longer they stay in their current state, the greater chance there is that they will ally themselves with the humans against Odium.