The Recreance

The Recreance is the catastrophic event in Roshar's history when the Knights Radiant, en masse, abandoned their oaths, betrayed their Spren, and laid down their Shardblades and Shardplate, shattering the orders and plunging the world into an age without Radiants. It is one of the great mysteries and tragedies in the lore of The Stormlight Archive.

Description

On a single fateful day, the Knights Radiant across the orders turned away from their Ideals. They renounced their bonds and dropped their living Blades and Shardplate upon the stone, walking away from the powers that defined them. The consequence was horrific: the breaking of the Nahel bond killed the bonded Spren, whose corpses became the "dead" Shardblades passed down as heirlooms ever after. The screaming of these dead Blades is the cry of the spren slain that day.

Cause

The reason for the Recreance was long unknown and is one of the saga's central revelations. The Radiants of the time learned a terrible truth -- regarding the nature of Honor, the origins of humanity on Roshar, and the threat that their powers and the Voidbringers posed to the world. Believing that continuing risked an even greater catastrophe, they chose to betray their oaths and their spren rather than carry forward what they had learned.

Aftermath

After the Recreance, the orders of Knights Radiant effectively ceased to exist. Their Shardblades and Shardplate were claimed as weapons of war and parceled out among nations and houses, becoming the foundation of Roshar's martial aristocracy. The knowledge of Surgebinding and the true history of the Radiants faded into legend and suspicion, with the Radiants remembered by many as traitors.

Significance

The Recreance explains the absence of the Knights Radiant for millennia, the origin of the dead Shardblades, and the deep wound between humans and Spren that the reborn Radiants of the Archive must overcome.