Desolation

The Desolations are the great cataclysms of Roshar's religious history, part of the world's common lore. Vorinism teaches that again and again in the ancient past the Voidbringers fell upon humankind, and that each of these wars left civilization in ruins: populations slaughtered, cities cast down, learning lost, the survivors rebuilding from rubble until the next onset. The Heralds, the Almighty's ten servants, are said to have led humanity through every one. According to the church the cycle is finished: the final Desolation, called Aharietiam, ended some four and a half millennia before the present day, with the Voidbringers defeated and the Heralds' work complete. In the present day the Desolations are scripture and history, invoked in sermons, art, and oaths.