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[OB] Surgebinding VS Voidbinding


ZenBossanova

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If we compare most magic systems, they are all very different. Allomancy and the Metallic Arts are nothing like Awakening, which is nothing like what happens on Sel. Etc, etc, etc. 

But if we compare Surgebinding and Voidbinding, they are almost identical. There are some differences, but they are very small in comparison with any other magic system. 

So why is Voidbinding so similar to Surgebinding? 

We do know that dustbringer spren used to be voidish. And one Unmade may switch sides. The red we see in many cases, is due to one magic system running another system. 

I wonder if there is a lot more to the history of Odium and Honor and Cultivation. 

Edited by ZenBossanova
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@ZenBossanova First, could you please add [OB] to the front of the topic title?

Also, the reason Voidbinding and Surgebinding are so similar is because of the same reason that Allomancy is similar to the rest of the Metallic Arts. It's a combination of the Shard(s)'s Investiture and the planet interacting, and in the case of Roshar, that manifests itself as the surges (but we know that the Surgebinding and Voidbinding abilities/orders do not match up perfectly). 

Also, a very popular theory is that the Fused are not using Voidbinding but are using Stormlight but hacked to be fueled with Voidlight. The Surges the Fused use feel too similar to the Surgebinding Surges to be Voidbinding.

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I think that we've only seen the tip of the voidbinding iceberg at this point, my guess is that Listener forms of power are numerous, and that they are the real meat and potatoes of voidbinding. Some one speculated that the Fused are surgebinding Savants, seeming to only have access to one surge, and this makes a certain amount of sense. They are returned cognitive shadows that have merged with a sapient host (destroying the vessel in the process). I have been speculating that the Fused might not be Ancient listeners, but rather KRs that have been corrupted by Odium, maybe the process of returning the Fused gives them access only to their primary surge.

The forms of Power though from the Listeners songs, seems like their might be something on the order of 99 forms (based on the stanza numbers for the Song of Listing:

Quote
"Artform applied for beauty and hue.
One yearns for the songs it creates.
Most misunderstood by the artist it's true,
Come the spren to foundation's fates.
"
—90th stanza[7]
"Dullform dread, with the mind most lost.
The lowest, and one not bright.
To find this form, one needs banish cost.
It finds you and brings you to blight."
—final stanza[8]

It seems that each stanza refers to a separate type of basic form, and we know from Venli that it is possible to bond two separate spren in the same gem heart. So my guess is that the forms of power are a combination of one void spren and one normal spren, yielding a voidishly augmented base listener form. This would make Voidbinding far more interesting than what it currently looks like, which is just a weakened form of Surgebinding accomplished with VoidLight.

I know that Venli is currently in Envoy form, which seems to be based on capturing only a high order void spren in her gemheart, but the fact that she has also has second spren in her gemheart shows that gemhearts can accomodate multiple spren. I like the idea of one uncorrupted spren giving a Listener a particular intent, focus,  and base form being combined with another voidish spren that corrupts the original intent, controls the listener and augments the listener's power.

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To be fair we don't really even know what voidbinding is yet. Are Listener forms with voidspren voidbinding? If so how would they fit in to the voidbinding chart we have. I think it's safe to say Renarins future sight is voidbinding, but what about the Fused? they've been using the conventional surges so far. Maybe anything involving Odiums investiture is considered voidbinding?

23 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

I have been speculating that the Fused might not be Ancient listeners, but rather KRs that have been corrupted by Odium

that wouldnt make sense for most of them. We know that the Fused have existed longer than the KR orders themselves; Venli has to speak to them in the Dawnchant (the ancient singer language); they express disapproval towards the new singers for acting like humans; and you know their desire to exterminate all of humanity...

Edited by Arch
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1 hour ago, Arch said:

that wouldnt make sense for most of them. We know that the Fused have existed longer than the KR orders themselves; Venli has to speak to them in the Dawnchant (the ancient singer language); they express disapproval towards the new singers for acting like humans; and you know their desire to exterminate all of humanity...

The I-2 Interlude with Ellista shows that the Dawnchant was the written lingua franca after Aharietiam, prior to that there are really no written records, so we have no proof that the Knight Radiant's didn't speak in dawnchant. Actually, we have positive proof that they did, Navani was able to crack the dawn chant when scribing Dalinar's vision (I believe it was even the Fever Storm Keep Recreance vision), this proves that the KRs did speak in Dawn Chant because Dalinar was always using his Spiritual Adhesion in the visions to interact with the simulacra that Honor created of the people in the visions.

The desire to exterminate all humans might be because these cognitive shadow KRs have been broken by Odium, because of their high level of investiture they linger longer in the Cognitive Realm before transitioning to the Great Beyond, and because they are Invested with Odium (they are his people) he is there when make the transition after death from the Physical Realm to the Cognitive Realm, and instead of letting them slip off to the great beyond he shoves them into his Damnation shard pool (which is like Dante's Inferno). Then over time he corrupts them, in a similar way that he broke the heralds, he lets them leave eternal damnation if they agree to Return and be his agents. That is my argument, it is total speculation but I think that it has great potential. It would explain the limitation of surges by the Fused to a single savant like surge (the KR's primary surge) and it would also add another aspect to the reason for the Recreance, that the KRs realized that the more investiture they had (the higher up the Ideal chain they were) the more likely they were either to suffer eternal damnation or be corrupted into an agent of the Enemy.

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3 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

The I-2 Interlude with Ellista shows that the Dawnchant was the written lingua franca after Aharietiam, prior to that there are really no written records

Nope. We know more about the Dawnsingers now then Ellista did in that interlude. Besides that not what she said... She said that by the time of the Aharietiam people had already stopped speaking the Dawnchant for milennia (she assumes that it was written by humans, but by part 4 we know that isnt true). Also, where are you getting the ''no written records'' thing from? The Dawnsingers wrote the Eila Stele (the oldest know document on Roshar) so that can't be true

Eila Stele

Quote

These Voidbringers know no songs. They cannot hear Roshar, and where they go, they bring silence. They look soft, with no shell, but they are hard. They have but one heart, and it cannot ever live.

It's probable that humans adopted parts of the Dawnchant later on to form their modern day languages though.

16 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

The desire to exterminate all humans might be because these cognitive shadow KRs have been broken by Odium, because of their high level of investiture they linger longer in the Cognitive Realm before transitioning to the Great Beyond, and because they are Invested with Odium (they are his people)

Maybe its possible he started doing this later on, but that's definately not the origins of the Fused. Like I said before we know that they pre-date the KR.

also doesnt explain why the Fused care some much about ancient Singer culture...

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12 minutes ago, Arch said:

Nope. We know more about the Dawnsingers now then Ellista did in that interlude. Besides that not what she said... She said that by the time of the Aharietiam people had already stopped speaking the Dawnchant for milennia (she assumes that it was written by humans, but by part 4 we know that isnt true). Also, where are you getting the ''no written records'' thing from? The Dawnsingers wrote the Eila Stele (the oldest know document on Roshar) so that can't be true

Eila Stele

Quote

These Voidbringers know no songs. They cannot hear Roshar, and where they go, they bring silence. They look soft, with no shell, but they are hard. They have but one heart, and it cannot ever live.

This passage from the Eila Stele has been used to refute more than one of my speculative theories, but I posit this, we are viewing the history of Roshar through the glass darkly, much is being obfuscated to create the exact uncertainty that we are disputing here.

There have been multiple waves of human immigration to Roshar, at this point we know enough from WoB to unequivocally say we don't know enough. The only thing that the Eila Stele explicitly proves is that the Voidbringers were not Listeners. This comment about them lacking carapace could have applied to the 2nd, 3rd or 4th wave of immigrants to Roshar. At this point we don't have information.

The pre Aharietiam days are referred to as the Shadowdays for a reason. They are obscure and scarecly documented. One of the oldest extant writings on Roshar is the Way of Kings, which only survived because it was the guidebook for the KRs. If the dawnchant was phased out before Aharietiam why can Navani use the utterings of Dalinar in the throes of his vision to crack the Dawnchant if he isn't in fact speaking in the dawnchant?

18 minutes ago, Arch said:

It's probable that humans adopted parts of the Dawnchant later on to form their modern day languages though.

The whole point of the Ellista interlude is to show that the Dawnchant, at the time of written records, was used exclusively for writing. Local dialects and languages already existed, they were being phonetically transcibed into the dawnchant because that was the syllabic language that was common to Roshar. All I'm trying to say is that the fused could potentially be KRs, and I don't think the dawnchant or the Eila Stele disprove this theory. You got an upvote because it's having someone smart to argue the other side always makes a theory stronger.

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44 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

we are viewing the history of Roshar through the glass darkly, much is being obfuscated to create the exact uncertainty that we are disputing here.

True, but there are things that we know with certainty 
1. the Dawnchant the oldest known language on roshar

2. It was the language the singers were speaking when the humans first arrived

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/175-oathbringer-houston-signing/#e8356

44 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

The whole point of the Ellista interlude is to show that the Dawnchant, at the time of written records, was used exclusively for writing. Local dialects and languages already existed, they were being phonetically transcibed into the dawnchant because that was the syllabic language that was common to Roshar. All I'm trying to say is that the fused could potentially be KRs, and I don't think the dawnchant or the Eila Stele disprove this theory.

Yes this is true, but you said was that there were no written records before the Aharietiam and we have more than enough proof to know that this isn't true. I mentioned the dawnchant intially because it seems more plausible the KR wouldn't be speaking it, but I'll admit that that claim is hard to prove so I'll drop it.
 

My main argument is that the Fused pre-date both the KR and the Oathpack. For your theory to work you have to adress that. The most plausible case I see for this theory is that the insane Fused are the former radiants, but even that is really speculative.

44 minutes ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

If the dawnchant was phased out before Aharietiam why can Navani use the utterings of Dalinar in the throes of his vision to crack the Dawnchant if he isn't in fact speaking in the dawnchant?

Not sure. Honor prepared the visions so maybe it was intentional. You yourself have said that the people all over Roshar were speaking in different dialects and languages yet, no matter where he goes, Navani hears it on the other side as ''The Dawnchant''. 

Edited by Arch
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24 minutes ago, Arch said:

Not sure. Honor prepared the visions so maybe it was intentional. You yourself have said that the people all over Roshar were speaking in different dialects and languages yet, no matter where he goes, Navani hears it on the other side as ''The Dawnchant''. 

This is not true, one of the keys to breaking the dawnchant was that Dalinar slipped into a different dialect during the Purelake vision where they were chasing a corrupted spren (and we got our first view of living thunderclast).

My whole point is that the chronology of everything is at this point, I think intentionally, squishy at best. This is the history of Herodotus not the history of Thucydides. I think this is by design, i think that this is necessary to obscure what is really going on. I for one am onboard for whatever ride brandon has set out for us, becuase he is both a genius and a serious outliner. I am SO looking forward to the big reveal about what the Recreance acutally is, but we realistically have 4 years to wait for that revelation, so like the poor miserable sods that we are...err I mean scholarly thoughtful individuals that we are, we will pick incessantly at the small crumbs he has left scattered across all that he is written (at this moment, some one is probably upending a garbage bag full of dirty nappys, coffee grounds and precious secret WoBs on post it notes he wrote to Peter).

Holy crap, mountain out of a mole hill is a very good description of our work here. But the thing that is satisfying is that in the Cosmere Mountains truly are built out of mole hills. Another upvote for you good sir, let us investigate this mole hill more thoroughly.

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Hello people I have part of a WoB you may find interesting-

Dawnate: A varied language family with distant roots in the dawnchant. Shin, parshendi, Horneater. They share grammar, but they diverged long enough ago that the vocabulary is very different.

So yes the Shin are the humans that took parts of the dawnchant into their language so the key to cracking the dawnchant probably came from some proto- shin language 

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As to why Voidbinding and Surgebinding seem so similar... It's because I don't think we've seen Voidbinding yet.

The only Voidbinding that we've seen so far is Renarin's future sight, the Voidbinding use of illumination. 

The Fused seem to be using plain old surgebinding, hacked to run on Voidlight. 

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17 hours ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

This is not true, one of the keys to breaking the dawnchant was that Dalinar slipped into a different dialect during the Purelake vision where they were chasing a corrupted spren (and we got our first view of living thunderclast).

Yeah, you're right I forgot about that. In my defense it was just a quick guess.
 

Like I said before. If you can't explain why the Fused have existed for centuries before the Knight radiant then your theory doesn't work. This is one thing we know with certainty. Your reasoning about a current loose understanding of the timeline doesnt work here.

 

Anyways this thread was supposed to be about voidbinding and I don't want to hijack it with this topic anymore. If you ever work out what I said above and want to formulate your theory in to a thread, feel free to tag me. :) 

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59 minutes ago, Ookla, the Incalculable said:

As to why Voidbinding and Surgebinding seem so similar... It's because I don't think we've seen Voidbinding yet.

I agree with this. @Windrunner pointed out in the Coppermind Discord that the last time the word voidbinding was used outside the Ars Arcanum was WoK Chapter 18. 

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7 hours ago, Arch said:

Anyways this thread was supposed to be about voidbinding and I don't want to hijack it with this topic anymore. If you ever work out what I said above and want to formulate your theory in to a thread, feel free to tag me. :)

Point well taken, and taken well, gave you an upvote for your troubles.

7 hours ago, thegatorgirl00 said:

I agree with this. @Windrunner pointed out in the Coppermind Discord that the last time the word voidbinding was used outside the Ars Arcanum was WoK Chapter 18. 

It would seem that our only concrete source materials about voidbinding are the ars arcanum entry and the Surgebinding and Voidbinding charts. Here's Kriss' less than clarifying comments on Voidbinding:

Quote

I'm not certain how the ten levels of Voidbinding or its cousin the Old Magic fit into this paradigm (the 10 essences table), if indeed they can. My research suggests that, indeed, there should be another series of abilities that is even more esoteric than the Voidbindings. Perhaps the Old Magic fits into those, though I am beginning to suspect that it is something entirely different.

Here are the charts for comparison too:

stormlight.jpg?type=vertical

So we know Voidbinding accesses the same 10 fundamental surges as Surgebinding, voidbinding has 10 "levels", and that Voidbinding is esoteric (but not as esoteric as another set of abilities (possibly forms of power?) that are possibly related to voidbinding (the phrasing of the Kriss' entry is quite esoteric itself).

I think this is a clear case of not enough information.

I have a feeling that we are going to see the true Voidbinders in book 4, coming from the Origin and Like Puuli's grandfather says in the I-1 interlude:

Quote

They'll come with Light in their pockets...They'll come to destroy, but you should watch for them anyway. Because they'll come from the Origin. The sailors lost on the infinite sea...
They'll arrive when night is darkest.

One thought I just had while typing this up is, "The sailors lost on the infinite sea" strikes as a possible metaphor for the problem with Roshar's afterlife. What if this is a metaphorical description of souls after death being unable to go to the great beyond? I really hope that Kaladin and/or Szeth go and investigate the Origin early on in book 4.

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I believe the Fused doesn't Voidbind but rather they used simply Surgebinding (that I assume, they used in a Fabrial-like way) fueled by Voidlight rather than Stormlight

So in theory (with the possible exception of Renarin) we didn't see the Voidbinding yet.

Edited by Yata
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