Jump to content

[OB] Whose Side Were the Thaylens on in the Past?


Recommended Posts

Full OB Spoilers Below!

 

Their Phenotypical Traits

The Theylans do not resemble the other heritage groups of Roshar. While we know certain heritage groups have unique features do to Human/Singer crossbreeding, and the Shin perhaps being more "historic" traits, we don't really have an explanation for Theylans' long eyebrows. These eyebrows are quite a divergence from every other humanoid trait, and we haven't been given an evolutionary reason for why the Theylans have this.

The Shin and the Iriali are different refugee populations to Roshar, so are the Theylans another wave of refugees brought in to Roshar? How many refugee populations have ended up here, and if so, where are the Theylans from? 

 

The Passions
The Theylan religion is "polluted" with non-vorin ideas: the passions being the most obvious. It seems that Vorinism was mixed with the idea of the passions and this has left a bit of conflict between the Vorin Church and the Theylan Church.

in OB, Queen Fenn is not unfamiliar with teleportation like the Oathgates, and she says that her legends speak of "One with passion could open up portals between worlds; every girl dreamed of being that person". Is Fenn speaking of Oathgates, Regal Braize interactions, or Refugee history between worlds.

The Theylan's also believe in passion as a force of nature. This isn't too different from the devoterees, but the passions do sounds like a corruption of the devotees of Vorinism.

Yalb says "But I do know the Passions. You win when you need it most, you see." This little line reminds me more of the Thrill than anything else in-world. 

 

Location:
The Shin and the Iriali were granted lands on the edge of the Rosharan continent where the Storms were weaker. Likewise, the Theylans were given land in the South where the winds are much weaker and more suited to human inhabitance. This to me makes the location seem more like a reservation than a naturally inhabited region (to humans). 

 

What are your thoughts: Where did the Thaylen's come from? Are they new-er to Roshar than certain humanoid ethnic groups? Did they follow Odium in a previous desolation? 

Edited by teknopathetic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We know the Thaylen language is part of the Vorin language family, which means that it had to have diverged at some point during historical times but it's not a completely separate family, unlike Iriali (its own family) and Shin (part of the 'Dawnate' family). So the linguistic evidence says they're not latecomers to the party. Their religion definitely sounds like it's connected to Odium even if they've forgotten the connection; possibly they started out as a sub-group of the humans who became the broader Vorin peoples and were among the ones who gave Odium more of an ear after he arrived. And then it eventually became irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as humanity wound up becoming primarily 'of Honor' while Odium became associated with the singers.

Humans did fight for Team Odium throughout the cycle of Desolations (there were some in the Aharietiam vision, surprising Dalinar) but we know that the people who became the modern Thaylens were firmly on the side of Team Honor before then as one of the Silver Kingdoms was Thalath, encompassing modern Thaylenah. So they might have followed Odium at one point but assuming that's so, they certainly haven't consciously been doing it for a very long itme.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We really don't know a whole lot about the Thaylen religion beyond the obvious implications of it being called "The Passions", but I did think that there was something interesting at the end of OB. The Thaylen Shardbearer that Adolin fights alongside says "Great Honor in you, Adolin Kholin. Great Passion in me at this aid" when Adolin gives him Maya to fight with. It stands out to me that he used a capitalized Passion and Honor--making this one of the most Shard-aware religions we know of, even if they didn't completely understand what they were referencing.

I don't really have much to contribute directly to your questions, but this gives me something to think about. They may initially sound like they were heavily influenced by Odium, with all their talk of Passion, but perhaps we'll find they're more balanced as we see more of them. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brandon has said there's no magic to the Thaylen Passions. It's just a religion, and a somewhat recent one, too.

Quote

Questioner

Navani’s emotion fabrial, are those correspondent to the Thaylen Passions in any way?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, but the Thaylen Passions would’ve come second to some of this.

Questioner

So through a cultural filter?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. There is no magic to the Thaylen Passions, they are a religion but with no magical component. Sometimes a religion is just a religion.

source

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/5/2018 at 10:49 AM, MadhavDeval said:

Also, the winds are pretty strong on Thaylen Island- it’s on the eastern edge so there are no wind breaks and  the winds hit them full force.

Its definitely not a place particularly suited for human life is my point.

It's my understanding that the island itself is the windbreaker, Thaylen City is on the west coast of the island and dosnt suffer from the Highstorms as much. Unfortunately this turned out to be a double edge sword when the Everstorm came.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 07/07/2018 at 4:41 PM, DocHoliday said:

It's my understanding that the island itself is the windbreaker, Thaylen City is on the west coast of the island and dosnt suffer from the Highstorms as much. Unfortunately this turned out to be a double edge sword when the Everstorm came.

Well that’s the very western edge then, not enough for farmland to support a sedentary population, meaning the thaylens have needed to have a global reach for trading in order to survive 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, MadhavDeval said:

Well that’s the very western edge then, not enough for farmland to support a sedentary population, meaning the thaylens have needed to have a global reach for trading in order to survive 

And Thaylen's are almost universally thought of in relation to trade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Calderis said:

And Thaylen's are almost universally thought of in relation to trade.

Well yeah, all I’m saying is that if they were placed there because of supposed shardic influence or deliberately choosing a place on Roshar to settle, you would expect it to be more central or self sufficient 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Chaos locked this topic
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...
https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/70511-ob-whose-side-were-the-thaylens-on-in-the-past/
www.17thshard.com
CC-MAIN-2023-50
219537
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:WXZ4WX6E2QPKUOTOGVBB33XO4S64IHGC
<urn:uuid:63ada756-1d4d-4119-b5b9-d7373a2e72b1>
2023-12-04T09:59:37Z
104.26.6.217
text/html
sha1:VFCZ5P4IF4NC5I55OL7VPOEGBD7EJDJJ
<urn:uuid:8312c792-ac94-4787-8fdc-f5272ee828e5>
https://www.17thshard.com/forums/topic/70511-ob-whose-side-were-the-thaylens-on-in-the-past/
response
<urn:uuid:b9a18fbd-bf27-4d3d-8dc6-3106d4ca54ae>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-50
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-169
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.5-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/