2 sets of 5

[Messremb]

So I have been reading these forums for a few days, and it has sparked some questions. Please if this topic is being discussed somewhere direct me there. if not I think this is something that could be fun to talk about.

 

I was reading the WOB and he mentioned that he had wanted to do 10 day weeks for stormlight, but after working on WOT he decided to change it to 2 weeks of 5 days each, or 2 sets of 5. after reading Brandon's works it is hard to let repetitive numbers go by without looking for how they relate to the story. so as I have been looking through stuff I have seen frequent grouping of 2 sets of 5.

 

the books will be written in 2 sets of 5.

 

Heralds have 5 men and 5 women, this also means that the KR can be divided into 2 sets of 5 based on the herald they are lead by. that also lets you separate the magic system into 2 sets of 5.

 

now after thinking about this I was trying to figure out why it would be divided into 2 sets of 5. and I had a thought.

Wyndle talks about the night watcher as his mother. Syl talks about the storm father as her father (note that the edgedancer herald is female, and windrunner herald is male.) we know there was some close connection between the night watcher and cultivation, and the storm father is essentially Honors spren. we also know that Honor and cultivation had some sort of strong connection, as after honor was destroyed cultivation lost hope in men. this leads me to 2 possible ideas of what is going on. the knights radiant are utilizing a magic system created by 2 shards (similar to ruin and preservation working together to create people resulted in Feruchemy), or there are actually 2 different magical powers being used by the KR. either way this would explain why each order is granted access to two surges not just one.

 

some ramifications of this could be that we have yet to see either cultivations, or Honors actual magic system.

 

also, If working together they created the spren that bond with humans, it could explain how the spren have varying ideals, based on their alignment to a specific shard.

 

I don't know these were just some thoughts I was having that I hadn't seen any mention of, and wanted to see if other more informed fans had any input. 

[Moogle]

Surgebinding is indeed a combination of Honor and Cultivation:

Q:  So I'm just gonna run with that right now. Is Surgebinding in general a melding of Honor and Odium ala Feruchemy being in some senses being not directly of Ruin or Preservation?
A:  Honor and Cultivation is what you mean? Um, there are spren of all three shards. And those spren can work within the bounds of the magic that has already been set up on Roshar.
(source)

 

We've had discussions on what this means for the other two magic systems on Roshar, which are presumably the Old Magic and Voidbinding. (/shameless self plug) We even invented a framework to explain how Shards interactions combine to create magic systems called "intent meshing" (which could use a few edits now I think on it). Unfortunately it has poor predictive power. I'm currently going on the theory that Voidbinding is Honor + Cultivation + Odium and the Old Magic is Cultivation + Odium (making the Nightwatcher a combination of Odium and Cultivation), but this is by no means confirmed. Intent meshing theory only says that if there's three systems on the planet, one Shard must be involved in all of them and the two remaining Shards should each have their own system and one balance system (ala Feruchemy). By intent meshing theory, then, Odium can't be the Shard that's part of every system since Surgebinding is H+C. The possibilities, then, are:

• Honor is the 'meshed' Shard. Systems: H+C, H+O, H+C+O
• Cultivation is the 'meshed' Shard. Systems: H+C, C+O, H+C+O

At the moment I lean towards the second. And it's also possible Surgebinding is H+C+O, as the WoB is not completely iron clad.

 

This is a really interesting topic, and I'd be interested in more theories from you regarding it!

 

Also, we know the third system involves fabrials:

rags

You have told us there are more than 30 magical systems on Roshar. I am assuming there are 10 surgebindings and 10 voidbindings. Do the next 10 belong to another such classification? If yes, can you give us the name for it.

Brandon Sanderson
Fabrials are part of it.

 

(source)

 

This of course just further muddies the waters, as what the Nightwatcher does doesn't seem based on fabrials at all. So is the Old Magic not a system, and just the Nightwatcher's power as a spren manifesting, like the Stormfather can control storms?

 

Either way, I think we've got a workable theory in intent meshing, it's just applying it to Roshar that's the hard part.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Moogle