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  1. I had previously dismissed the power of Lightweaving, feeling that it was much weaker compared to Soulcasting. After starting this list, I've changed my mind; this is now one of my favorite Surges. Anyone and everyone feel free to pitch in and get us to the full 101 trick 1. Conjure a box/block/blindfold over the head of an opponent in battle to blind them. They can’t pull it off but it will make them blind as any physical obstruction. 2. Conjure a small mouse/Cremling to scurry around and grab a guard’s attention so you can subtly sneak past. 3. Make an illusory wall to run past during a chase to evade enemies while making a double of yourself to continue running in your place. They’ll run right past your location and after the illusion instead. 4. Make an illusory double to confuse opponents in battle and to mislead others. 5. Make an illusory arm or pair of arms to make it look like your hand are where they should be instead of being up to no good (like pick pocketing someone). 6. Make six extra illusory arms with some added substance to let you wield eight knives at once. Nobody could possibly block all of them, and since they are also partially illusory they won’t necessarily require anatomical precision (they won’t get in each other’s way as easily). 7. Make an illusion of an item you swiped to help you get away with it. 8. Make visible patterns for sound waves for a concert. It will make the performance all the better. 9. Use a Lightweaving to make visible instructions for friends or students, making it easier to impart information. 10. Use a Lightweaving to make visual representations for phenomenon you can’t see, making them easier to track and measure. 11. Make a functional laser to slice enemies. Who needs a Shardblade when you can make a lightsaber? 12. Make an ear-splitting noise (like a Chasmfiend’s screaming head) to distract, deafen, and harm enemies. 13. Increase the volume of your voice to get other’s attention. 14. Change your apparel to look spiffy for a fancy dinner party when you really just want to wear pajamas. 15. Create a magnifying glass, telescope, or other mechanical device that works via manipulating light. Since it works my meddling with light, it would probably work just as well as a physical object. 16. Same as above but with a sound system, like a boom box. 17. Create a fully transparent glass window that has substance. It’s invisible, but will stop anyone dead in their tracks during a chase. 18. Make an attractive disguise to get others to listen to you better. 19. Same as above, but make yourself horrifying in appearance to remove attention from things you don’t want them looking at (as Shallan did with Kaladin in OB). 20. Make yourself appear as an eight-foot tall six-hundred-pound guy with tons of scars to intimidate opponents. 21. Same as above but add substance to really be able to hit as hard as you appear to be able. 22. Similar/same as above, but make a fake illusory body with substance overlapping your own to absorb blows that would otherwise hit you. 23. Make an illusory stack of cushions with substance to break your fall. 24. Make an actual illusory stack of cushions that an illusory double of you falls on to trick pursuers (and if they jump onto them hunting you, all the better). 25. Make a giant illusory spiderweb or net with substance to catch or trip up an enemy. 26. Use a lot of Lightweavings to make your house look presentable after you've "forgotten" to clean up before guests arrive. That's all I can come up with for now, but many, many more should be possible.
  2. People have suggested that A-bronze could be used to help counter a Lightweaver's ability to hide, but what about Steelsight? Would, say, a Steel Inquisitor be unable to see a Lightweaving and therefore ignore it? Or, assuming that isn't possible, could they learn to have a sort of x-ray vision due to learning to ignore certain stimuli (more info on this topic here), therefore allowing them to automatically tell if a something is a Lightweaving or not? What are your thoughts on this matter?
  3. Can you soulcast a lightweaving image into, say, stone?
  4. If you were to take a microscope and look at a Lightweaving, would it hold up to inspection at a microscopic scale, or would you be able to use this as a method of checking whether someone's face was real?
  5. A small theory that I think got some solid support with RoW. So we saw in Rhythm of War that the Allomantic/Feruchemical/Hemalurgic metals have functions outside of the Metallic Arts and are one of three key components in fabrials alongside spren & gemstones. It makes sense, metal acts as a key for Allomancers to access Preservation's Investiture. Without Allomancy in your Spiritweb, you can't access that Investiture but you should still be able to use the metal to filter other Investiture that you do have access to. That is kind of similar to how the Polestones themselves function, why they can hold Lights Their small differences in chemical structure & colour is all that is needed for Investiture to distinguish them. An element's atomic structure absorbs and reflects different wavelengths of light (or Light), the light can be used to identify those atoms & molecules. A metal's structure is used as a filter for Investiture, the same probably goes for a gemstone. Colour is more important magically for gemstones but this is what the colour of an object means in physics & chemistry, their molecular structure would be a bit different. A metal acts as a filter and lets Investiture through and a gem both filters it (what gem you use does matter for Soulcasters and Artifabrians) and holds it. So, gemstones should, like metals, work across the Cosmere, and be able to hold other types of Investiture than just the Rosharan Lights. Idea came from here: Edit: we have confirmation that the Mists can be trapped in gemstones Edit: in the Brandon spoiler livestream at 33:20, Brandon confirms that Autonomy's Investiture can be stored in the Polestones but he isn't sure if that is something that could happen naturally (but it could definitely capture the Dor) and even if it does, it would be very ineffective, maybe it would store very little bit of charge that would only be perceptible to someone with the right instruments and it would soon dissipate. I've noted previously in discussions that White Sand requires surprisingly little Investiture to recharge. I think the oldest instance of this theory is here: While it takes four hours for black sand to recharge back to white sand on Taldain's Dayside, just proximity to Shallan's Lightweaving was enough to charge Hoid's white sand in OB, this happened when Kal, Shallan, Adolin and Elhokar went to Kholinar. In the very same section and following section that took place in Shadesmar, it is noted that Shallan's Lightweaving used far less Stormlight than Kaladin's Lashings. Keep this in mind. I do have an idea on why White Sand could apparently recharge from Taldain's sunlight or apparently even from very far from its starlight as per a prev WoB, but would be difficult to store in a gemstone. In RoW, we see Navani use a prism to separate the light emitted by Towerlight back into the bands of Stormlight and Lifelight, she notes that she didn't separate the Lights or the Investiture, just the "Investiture radiation". I think that's what Taldain's sun outputs: not gaseous Investiture but Investiture radiation. And that's why it outputs so little Investiture that it takes black sand exposure to direct sunlight for four hours in order to recharge and turn white again but Stormlight, even sheer proximity to a Lightweaving, which in itself is noted to use much less Stormlight compared to Surge of Gravitation.
  6. I was browsing at coppermind and neither the Order of Lightweavers page, nor the page for illumination mention anything of the form of lightweaving (and/or soulcasting) that gave the illusions wieght. Given how it was such a big part of the Battle of Thaylen Field, I believe it should be mentioned.
  7. So... I am still reading RoW. Been pretty busy and can't stay focused on things for too long but that isn't important. I am on page 668 where Renarin finally gets to speak and he says this "he'd (glys or Renarin?) captured this vision as it came, so they could study it" this begs the question. Is Renarin's visions/ "episodes" examples of illumination perhaps? He has said he can't illumination at all like shallan yet in this sentence, he does something exactly like what shallan which is capture a moment to then replicate it using her lightweaving. What if Renarins version of illumination is his ability to see the possible future?
  8. So I’ve been bouncing this idea around for a while, and finally decided to type it up. So we know that Pattern bonded Shallan when she was younger, to the point that she could summon her shardblade (to kill her mum). After this she regresses somehow, possibly due to her self-forgetting stuff. Another example we know much less about is Tien, Kaladin’s younger brother. We don’t know a lot about what he did in Amaram’s army, but it is implied that he had reached a point in his Ideals that caught the attention of the Skybreakers enough that Nale felt he needed to be eliminated. I personally think he was at the first Ideal, but have little proof to back that up. So: what are the common threads in these two young lives? My theory: not their own lies, but the lies of those around them. We know that (Pattern at least) Cryptics are very curious about humans. Lyrin was hiding the gem theft, and we know that this caused a lot of strife in Hearthstone. Shallan’s mother was involved somehow with the Skybreakers before her death, and Lin was dealing with political issues (or was that just after Shallan’s mum died?) as well as dealing with debts. Also maybe the Ghostbloods. We know that Pattern is interested in the lies of people besides Shallan. Shallan and Tien are both “the light” of their respective households. The Lightweavers have been described as the “spiritual sustainers” of the Radiants. They are both artistic, and very curious about the world around them. If Cryptics are the spren of natural forces and the laws of nature, the interests of the spren and the knight would align in this. A few other parallels I don’t think are relevant: Shallan and Tien each have depressed older brothers. They are both interested in the creatures around them. They like gentle rains. Please point out anything that I’ve missed!
  9. So I was sitting around watching Star Trek and something clicked in my head. I was wondering if a very experienced lightweaver could make solid illusions . I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid . So I know illusions come 3 types . Auditory , visual , and tactile. The best illusions are ones you can touch hear and see . Kind of like the solid holograms in the Holideck on Star Trek . So I got to wonder if a lightweaver had enough stormlight and was skilled enough to soulcast air could they make a solid illusion by blending the two surges together. During the battle of Thaylan City with all that Stormlight Jasnah was wondering if Shallan was doing just that . Shallan is not very good at soulcasting but I bet the Herald that was a lightweaver is . So anyways does anybody think that it’s possible for a lightweaver to make a solid illusion? Let’s say a knight with a sword or better yet a great shell that was solid . I don’t have to explain the potential of being able to do so . You could literally kill somebody with quasi - stormlight illusion . Thoughts ???
  10. Can you use Breath to awaken a light-weaving? The more something is in the human shape the easier it is to awaken, so if you have a light-weaving of a person could you awaken it? Maybe you could even get a character like "The Doctor" from Star Trek: Voyager, a hologram with sentience.
  11. I was up late one wondering about whether soulstamps that rewrote the past of the recipient could potentially get rid of Hoid. Of course you would also have to convince him to use it daily, but that shouldn't be overly difficult. And then I realized something. Hoid would know of this threat, and likely take action to prevent it. I think i figured out what he did to make it an ineffective tactic to use against him. I think that it is possible that the reason Hoid wanted to become a lightweaver was not the power it granted him, but the oaths. When you rewrite some one's past they retain any powers they had, therefore radiant would continue to have their spren. A lightweaver's spren would know their radiant's darkest secret's, because of the truths. Their spren could then remind them of their past and convince them to stop soulstamping themselves, causing them to return to normal. I am looking forward to seeing this theory being torn to shreds.
  12. As we see in the Oathbringer epilogue, Hoid appears to bond a cryptic (Elhokar’s to be exact). But Hoid is also very weird. It is relatively common knowledge that spren are only able to bond with someone who has cracks in their spirit web, which allows the spren to “slip in” and meld the Radiant and spren’s Spiritual aspects into one. Another important fact is that Hoid has crazy healing abilities. Brandon has literally described it as “healing the soul itself.” Obviously Hoid would have healed any spiritual wound instantly, or at least within a few days since he can repress this ability. So how is Hoid able to bond this spren?
  13. Hey hey hey! For starters, slight Oathbringer spoilers here.. Ive been thinking about the final fight scene of Oathbringer and Shallans Lightweaving that apparently had.. weight..and how these illusions had apparent substance, based on how the insane Alethi turncoats fought these illusions as uf they were real (unlike the previous scene where Adolin got stabbed). Now I know in world Jasnah said investiture has a small amount of weight (hmmm, like atoms do maybe?) And also insinuated that Shallan was maybe soulcasting into her illusions. Now im thinking that this may have something to do with the "Soundweaving" the lightweavers can do.. Hear me out, i dont know if you guys have been at a music concert and stood near one of those speakers and noticed how the sound was trying to crush your chest but to get my meaning, play something with some heavy base and put your hand next to the subwoofer and imafine that x100. Moving on from that I was thinking how this could be used in an OP way. Imagine: ( all the people..) ** ahem, sry ignore that bit about people ** * Soundweaving a thunder clap * incredibly low base that crushes organs and bodies or even shakes apart buildings or armour * hmmm, could it be used to create a pocket if soundlessness for sneaking maybe? * other possible applications? (Your input would be nice ) What do you guys think? Eh.. Eh..? !~ HIF ~!
  14. Ok, so based on what we know about lightweaving perception. And how Shallan must draw something before she can lightweave, do you guys think that Wayne would have to wear someone’s hat before he could become them via lightweaving?
  15. So, something I've wondered about. And before I continue I would like to warn of spoilers for WoR, because I don't booksellers of any kind, so please make sure you have read the second stormlight book before continuing :). Please forgive me if I don't have all my facts right. But it is my understanding that to become a surgebinder, you have to be 'broken' Anyway, I'm wondering why Shallan was able to become a lightweaver. Yes, she has a pretty broken up past, but I want to bring up one thing. I always assumed her broken past was her ordeals with her father. But in WoR when we get to see her backstory, it is revealed that she formed a bond with Pattern before the death of her mother. So my question is, what else happened to her that makes her eligible to be bonded with a spren? Am I missing something? Or am I just not getting my facts right? Someone with more experience, please help me understand what's going on.
  16. I'm about 3/4 way done Oathbringer at this point, and I'm definitely enjoying it. That being said, however, I have found myself pretty concerned about Shallan. Her change in personality when portraying Veil was cute in WoR, but in Oathbringer she changes so wildly from Shallan to Veil to Radiant, altering her personality, self-control, confidence, conscious thoughts, and how she views other characters. This is textbook DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). She also behaves pretty wildly, stabbing herself in the leg with scissors, stabbing a mans' hand through her own, and purposely exposing her safehand to Kaladin, Adolin, and King Elhokar. Do you think Sanderson purposely portrayed her as mentally ill as a way to highlight her suffering as a child?
  17. Shallan is a Lightweaver, whose abilities are Transformation (soulcasting) and Illumination (lightweacing). However, I was confused because it seems that Shallan can also visit Shadesmar (The Cognitive Realm), and has done so on a few occasions. This is the ability of Transformation, which belongs to the Order of Elsecallers, which is what Jasnah Kholin is. Does Shallan really have all three abilities? And would that make her both a Lightweaver AND an Elsecaller?
  18. So we recently found out that the essay prefacing the White Sand sections in AU referred to Autonomy as "she" and thanks to some intrepid sharders like emailanimal we recently got this WoB on Reddit: This has lead to discussion in a few threads that she might be a Dragon or another non-human shapeshifter since she has so many male and female personas spread across the Cosmere. I would like to argue that instead her MO can be explained by her being or having been a Yolish Lightweaver. This doesn't preclude her from being a Dragon or a member of the third sentient race on Yolen of course, since we don't know what the requirements for initiation into investiture was back there. But she could also be a human. Consider what the two Lightweavers we know best actually do, not in the specifics of their magic but what they use it for: Shallan has used it to both make her self look more impressive and to create and use the persona of Veil. Hoid has shown up as a beggar, a smuggler, an informant, a storyteller, and two different flavors of court jester. Both have used only human personas so far, and always the same gender ones but I don't necessarily think this is limit of the power as opposed to how the two have thus been seen using it. And this bent towards using their powers of illusion and disguise in a way to become someone/something they are not may refer to an innate mindset that Hoid referred to in WoR as "the nature of lies" and Pattern's very nature as "liespren" supports.This is why even the times we have seen Hoid use more mundane methods for disguise I believe underpinning them is still this mindset that seems to come from being a Lightweaver. The WoB says Bavadin has a gamut of personas to the point where multiple pantheons are just her in different guises. To me this seems like the Lightweaver penchant for being able to become someone else, even multiple someone elses!, taken up to deific levels. Her still having/using lightweaving is irrelevant since from Ruin becoming Reen in HoA we know Shards can change how they appear to mortals even if the Vessal is not a natural shapeshifter. What matters is that her being/having been a Lightweaver means she understands the nuts and bolts of running all these various personas of her across the Cosmere (again the whole Nature of Lies thing). This also may explain the animosity Hoid has towards her, he explained why he's against Rayse: he finds him to be an evil man given a power that makes him even more evil and destructive. But never really touches on Bavadin in the letter to Frost besides mentioning her. But if she was another Yolish Lightweaver who used her powers in a way Hoid found to be at odds with his belief on how they should be acting. Well, that's one of the few things in the Cosmere that might really upset him: one of his own turned bad.
  19. (Warning: The following contains inexact and possibly completely wrong descriptions of certain Physics concepts. I am not a physicist. Do not base your Physics homework on the Wikipedia-based ramblings of a code monkey on a fantasy fiction forum on the Internet.) Lately I've been thinking about generalizing my Unified Surge Theory into a theory that encompasses every single type of Investiture. The basic idea for this is that Adonalsium's Power of Creation is akin to the theoretical unified force of Physics, a force that splits into multiple separate forces under specific conditions. This means that each Invested power is like some sort of quantum field, and there's a way to unify all those magical fields into a single field. But that sort of theory generalization is just too simple for me, I'm afraid. It doesn't have that bullje ne sais quoi that I've come to expect from my own pet theories. So now I'd like to do something a little bit more... fancy. As I said before, it looks to me that Brandon is really into modern physics. I think it's possible that he based some fundamental Cosmere concepts on certain modern scientific ideas like quantum mechanics. If you think this is unlikely, let me show you this quote from his recent Q&A in Chicago: That makes a lot of sense. If your world follows the laws of quantum mechanics, and at the same time has magic, then it's natural that the magic in your world will have quantum properties. I love this concept of making magic an integral part of the physics of a fantasy setting, breaking down the barrier between "natural" and "supernatural". Since quantum field theory is part of quantum mechanics, and since the unified field theory is considered by many as the ultimate goal of quantum field theory, this therefore lends credence to the unification of "magical fields" in the Cosmere that I described above. But... there's more to modern physics than the quantum field theory. In fact, many physicists seemed more excited about another theory (at least until recently when the Large Hadron Collider gave disappointing results) that promised to unify the entirety of what we know about General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into a single mathematically and conceptually elegant framework, a "theory of everything" where all particles are just specialized versions of a single type of object. I'm talking of course about String Theory. Part I: The Lightweaving of Strings I know many of you already know what "string theory" means (I checked), but for the rest here's a quick summary: A string theory is any proposition that the fundamental elements making up the things around us are not point-like or zero-dimensional, but are instead one-dimensional vibrating elements. For the sake of convenience, physicists call these things strings. In a string theory, each string has certain properties (e.g. how it vibrates/oscillates, its length, its orientation, whether it is closed in a loop or open-ended, etc.) that differentiates it from other strings. This is cool because it can give us a clearer picture of what makes one particle different from another aside from vague concepts like "charge". As a kid I watched a Discovery Channel show about String Theory featuring Michio Kaku. Dr. Kaku is a popularizer of science, meaning his presentations are often not very technical and are meant for a wide audience. I remember him comparing the vibration of a fundamental string to the musical note coming from a stringed instrument. He then described the whole universe as a grand orchestra of fundamental strings all vibrating together. That, of course, was a rather fanciful way of looking at it to say the least, but it most definitely worked on me. The notion of a musical universe, that everything is made of music, is just so fascinating that it makes String Theory seem almost... magical. In fact, it sounds like the creation myth used in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth stories. Ainulindalë, a holy music performed by angelic beings called the Ainur and their god Eru Ilúvatar, was how Arda (Earth) was created. I'm not saying that Tolkien borrowed from string theory (obviously not, as his stories were written before the earliest string theories were developed). What I'm saying is that the concept of a musical universe, or at least a universe where waveforms have a fundamental role, is not alien to the world of fantasy. It's possible to create a String Theory-based magical setting. Could this be what Brandon plans for the Cosmere? I say yes. After all, we already have one possible manifestation of waveform magic: We know that Lightweaving can affect waveforms other than light, including sound and possibly other oscillating manifestations, e.g. vibrating strings. If the Cosmere exists in a universe that follows a string theory of Physics, then the Power of Creation could simply be the ability to manipulate these strings. In other words, the Power of Creation is just Lightweaving applied to fundamental vibrating strings. Before you barrage me with a stream of objections to the crazy idea that Adonalsium was just a glorified Lightweaver, read this curious little WoB: So even before Brandon wrote about Hoid's backstory, even before the other Yolish magic systems were developed, the manipulation of waveforms (a.k.a. Lightweaving) was already on his mind. If everything is made of vibrating strings, it's not too farfetched to think of a god-like being as someone who can manipulate the waveforms represented by these strings, like a divine musician using the Cosmere as his stringed instrument. This is what I call the L-Theory of Realmatic Strings (not to be confused with the L-theory of mathematics). One thing that "L" stands for is "Lightweaving". I'll explain the other meanings of "L" (there are several) later on. But meanwhile let us talk about a possible implementation of Realmatic String Theory. Part II: The Cosmere as a Braneworld What kind of cosmology would a hypothetical Stringed Cosmere have? Many string theorists in real life believe that the fundamental strings of nature move in ten- or eleven-dimensional hyperspace. Eleven dimensions! That's a lot more than the three spatial dimensions that we experience with our human senses. Some believe these extra dimensions are too small and "curled up" to detect. Others say that the space that we humans can see is just a large three-dimensional "D-brane" existing in a hyperspatial universe with other D-branes. A D-brane, by the way, is a part of theoretical hyperspace that serves as a boundary for fundamental strings that aren't closed loops. Like the bridge part of a guitar, D-branes are where these strings are attached to. I believe Brane cosmology is the perfect candidate for our Stringed Cosmere cosmology. Imagine the Spiritual and Physical Realms as multidimensional D-branes. All fundamental strings in the Cosmere originate from the D-brane called the Spiritual Realm. These include not just the strings that make up the fundamental Physical entities (leptons, quarks, etc.) but also strings that make up fundamental Cognitive entities and the fundamental Spiritual entities (whatever those are). All these strings begin their existence from the Spiritual Realm. This corresponds to our understanding of the Spiritual Realm as the place where conception and motivation happens. Some of these strings begin and end in the Spiritual Realm, but some extend outward and connect to another D-brane, the Physical Realm. Since only the endpoint actually exists on the D-brane (meaning the rest of the string is oriented away from the Physical Realm's dimensions), such strings only appear as point-like particles in the Physical Realm. These are the fundamental components of what we call matter (i.e. things with rest mass, like quarks and leptons). What about the Cognitive Realm? I propose that the hyperspace between the Spiritual and the Physical Realm, where all the actual string vibrations occur, is the Cognitive Realm. I'll explain why in Part III. From this description of the Three Realms, it's easy to understand how objects can exist in the Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual Realms simultaneously by visualizing an object as a bunch of strings vibrating between the Spiritual and Physical D-branes. Well, it's sort of easier. Admittedly it's kind of tricky for us humans to imagine more than three dimensions. This might be why Brandon said only Shards or Splinters can truly comprehend Realmatics; beings with three-dimensional senses cannot imagine hyperspace except via analogies. Nonetheless, a stringed model of Realmatics makes it easier to grasp many Realmatic concepts. For example, the Spiritweb can be seen as an actual web of Spiritual strings making up the soul of a person. The bindpoints of the Spiritweb are simply the points where the Spiritual strings and physical strings are joined. A Connection (with a capital "C"; a Spiritual attribute) can be seen as a string connecting other strings to each other in the Spiritual Realm. This means we can consider stuff like Nahel bonds, Duralumin Connections, Ironlines (basically every single type of connection in the Cosmere) as actual entities. The only reason these entities aren't normally visible is because they only exist on a D-brane outside of the Physical D-brane. Note that some things that are usually considered "physical" in the real world, like gravity, electromagnetism, and other "physical" forces could simply be Connections on the Spiritual Realm in the Cosmere. For example, as the WoK Ars Arcanum says, the gravitational pull between objects is spiritual in nature: (We'll return to physical forces in Part IV.) Realmatic strings can also explain Identity. When the Connection strings between a bunch of strings is strong enough, the oscillations of all the strings in the bunch can result in a single complex oscillation, like a musical chord. This is how Identities emerge. An Identity can therefore be defined as a single oscillation arising from the different oscillations of multiple Connected strings. This implies that there can be nested Identities, emergent oscillations making up an even bigger emergent oscillation (which is how, for example, Soulcasters can transform just the blood of a person instead of his whole body; the blood is a sub-Identity within the person's Identity). Interestingly, a stringed Cosmere can even explain why solid land appears as ever-moving on Shadesmar. What actually happens is that the mind of a Worldhopper interprets the complex hyperspatial oscillations of Identities into something compatible with human senses. For example, on Roshar he would see it as an undulating sea of glass beads. This fancy way of seeing the Cognitive Realm is therefore just an illusion, a Cosmere-wide Lightweaving created by Adonalsium and targeting every single "thinking" object in the Cosmere (more on this in Part III). As for why bodies of water appear as a solid mass on Shadesmar... well, I'm not sure. My best guess is that the gravity waves on the surface of lakes/oceans/etc. might be making oscillation in the Cognitive Realm less apparent somehow, but I have no idea how that would work conceptually. (Edit: SmurfAquamarineBodies has an alternative explanation here.) Part III: Loops and Consciousness Speaking of the Cognitive Realm, how about things like sentience and intelligence? How would a string theory explain the phenomenon of consciousness? Unfortunately, physicists do not yet have a model to explain this, but Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of Cognitive Science (also a Ph.D.-holder in Physics), has some very interesting speculative thoughts that he first published back in 1979 regarding why people have subjective experience, and it involves loops. Hofstadter believes that consciousness arises from self-referential abstract concepts he calls "strange loops", which he claims naturally emerge from the neural activity of humans. Feel free to read "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "I Am a Strange Loop" to know the details, but here I'll present a simplified and "Cosmerified" interpretation of Hofstadter's idea by defining a strange loop as a type of Connection that connects an Identity to itself, forming a literal loop. Under the cosmology I described in Part II, this self-referential Connection loop also vibrates in the Cognitive Realm, but its vibration is more dynamic than other strings because it reflects the dynamic thoughts of the thinking Identity. This dynamically vibrating strange loop, I believe, is what consciousness is made of in the Cosmere. (Sidenote: A probably-unimportant but interesting thought just came to me regarding loops. String theorists predict that gravitons are closed loops that can freely travel between D-branes. I don't know how this can be incorporated into L-theory, but I'm leaving this note here in case someone else thinks of a cool idea for it.) If you look closely, it appears that every Identity in the Cosmere has some level of consciousness. The window in Shai's prison was aware of the concept of beauty. The Wind's Pleasure was aware of its crew and was loyal to them. Somehow, objects in the Cosmere all have strange loops. This fact should be no surprise to us Cosmere theorists because Shai already revealed it to Gaotana in the Emperor's Soul: One important consequence of this is that Shadesmar is a much wider place than it would be if only "living things" had thoughts and perceptions, because the Shadesmar "reality" (more like the Shadesmar illusion) only exists where thoughts exist, and now things like rocks and sticks and even planets can participate in this galactic play (or a galactic musical, one might say). But wouldn't it be nice to know why everything in the Cosmere has this awareness? Is Identity and Consciousness necessarily linked by some fundamental principle? Or is consciousness intentionally being given to each Identity by some outside force? In order to solve this mystery of pan-Cosmere consciousness, we need to delve deeper into Lightweaving. There is one aspect to Lightweaving that was shown in Liar of Partinel that was not apparent in WoK and WoR: Lightweaving can grant consciousness. I won't go into spoilery specifics, but suffice to say Hoid can create illusions that can think for themselves. Somehow, a Lightweaver not only can make strings oscillate whichever way he likes, he can also form strange loops, granting consciousness to things. So imagine what a Lightweaver with an Adonalsium-level of power can do. Can he, perhaps, grant consciousness to every single Identity in a very large area? Say, a whole galaxy? Imagine that event in the early Cosmere when billions upon billions of objects of all shapes and sizes suddenly gained self-awareness. It must have been as if the whole galaxy suddenly awoke from slumber, turning its cognitive night into day, its blindness to vision, its opacity to clarity, its darkness to light. This is the second meaning of "L" in "L-Theory": Strange Loops. It could also mean Lucentia, which has philosophical associations with eyes, clarity, and transparency. I believe that one of Adonalsium's greatest acts is to grant "eyes" to everything in the Cosmere. By that I mean he made everything able to perceive things. And he did this via a special Lightweaving that constructs strange loops for every Identity that appears in the Cosmere, a Lightweaving that still persists even after the Shattering. Part IV: The Investiture of L Bosons At long last, we arrive at the most important part of L-Theory: What is magic in the Cosmere made of? If everything is made of fundamental strings, then naturally magic would also be made of fundamental strings. These strings would serve as the "quanta" of magical energy. Since magic is a force, these quanta of magical energy would be force-carriers, and are therefore gauge bosons. Let's call them the L bosons. One important characteristic of L bosons is that they can interact with any type of string, whether physical or not. When a string absorbs or emits an L boson, its oscillation mode changes depending on the energy and the waveform of the L boson it absorbed or emitted. Interactions involving some L boson waveforms can transform matter, similar to weak interactions. Except unlike W bosons, an L boson is stable and massless (and therefore a luxon). You could say the L boson is a photon-like thing with W boson-like effects. (Coincidentally, photons and W bosons carry forces that physicists have already unified under a single electroweak force.) Other waveforms of the L boson can transform Connections in the Spiritual Realm, including strange loops (which means they can also change the cognitive aspect of things). It's possible that the only limitation for L boson-based transformation is the energy requirement for a particular transformation, since energy is still conserved in the Cosmere. Again, all this is possible because everything in the Three Realms of a Stringed Cosmere is defined by the properties of strings and their various fundamental interactions. We are simply theorizing that magic is just another fundamental interaction of a string, a transformative interaction mediated by the L boson. But this raises the question of how these L bosons come about. Where do L bosons come from, and how do they obtain their different waveforms? I propose that the waveform of L bosons can be "shaped" by strange loops. In classical Cosmeric terms, Intent comes from a Cognitive aspect. This Intent determines not only the type of transformation being carried by the L bosons, but also the target of the L bosons, shaping them to only interact with a particular type of Identity in a certain way. The Intent could theoretically be anything as long as the strange loop has absorbed enough L bosons to meet the energy requirement of the intended transformation. After shaping the L bosons with an Intent, a strange loop can then emit them upon a target. This is what is classically known as Investiture. The relationship between strange loops and L bosons is two-sided. They shape each other. An L boson's initial waveform could affect the strange loop absorbing it, but the strange loop might in turn change the waveform of the L boson, or even reject the L boson completely. This is why objects can reject Soulstamps, and why Shardworlds can influence the Investiture of Shards. On the flip side, given enough L bosons, the Intent of Investiture can be powerful enough to override any resistance offered by a strange loop. This is why Shard holders eventually succumb to the Intent of their Shards, and why a mist-powered Ironpull can affect pierced metals that normally resist Ironpulls. L bosons can of course be very beneficial to a strange loop target, expanding its abilities in one Realm or another. For example, there is an L boson waveform classically called "the Spark of Life" that can allow a strange loop to affect its host Identity's motion. This ability to move at will, granted by a certain type of L boson, is what differentiates "living things" and other types of objects. In other words, Life is a form of Lightweaving. The phenomenon of living things is caused by a special interaction between Lightweaving and a Cognitive aspect. Part V: The Lightweaving of Godhood By now it should pretty obvious what Adonalsium is under a Stringed model of the Cosmere: He was an Identity whose strange loop once contained a huge portion of all the L bosons in the Cosmere, granting him three divine properties: The sheer amount of energy contained by Adonalsium allowed him to emit large numbers of L bosons shaped with arbitrarily complex Intents, making him omnipotent. Adonalsium's strange loop is incredibly vast in size, meaning his consciousness and intellect is incredibly vast as well. This makes him practically omniscient. Omniscience and omnipotence rendered physical presence completely optional. Adonalsium could detach his Identity completely from the Physical Realm, or he could attach a part of his Identity to the Physical Realm in any physical form anywhere in the Cosmere (i.e. omnipresence). When Adonalsium Shattered, the gigantic strange loop suddenly separated into sixteen big strings representing sixteen huge segments of Adonalsium's mind. Since a strange loop vibrates dynamically, each of these sixteen loop remnants would have its own vibration mode different from the rest, reflecting sixteen different cognitive states. The L bosons coming from these remnants would have Intents based on the remnants' vibration mode, and would also be very powerful given the size of each remnant. This was of course an extremely dangerous situation, and the fastest way to avert galactic catastrophe was for sixteen individuals to take up these remnants, becoming part of these powerful Identities and experiencing the same three divine effects described above, though to a lesser degree. Thus, the sixteen Shards of Adonalsium came to be. But what of Adonalsium's origins? It's possible that he had always existed as a divine being from the beginning of time, like the gods of most theistic religions. On the other hand, there is another possibility related to Brandon Sanderson's own religion, and I would like to explore this one further. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that God was once a man. Here's a relevant quote from the religion's founder Joseph Smith: Or as Mormons like to phrase it: "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be." If we conjecture that Adonalsium was also once human, like the seventeen humans (sixteen from Yolen, one from Scadrial) who Ascended to Godhood later on, then we must ask how this person obtained so much power. I am working under the assumption that the conservation of energy still applies in the Cosmere, so the L bosons that were absorbed into this person must have come from somewhere. I think the idea of a person using hyperspatial technology to harvest the Spark of Life of other people to gain power is possible, but this method seems more fitting for the supposed enemy of Adonalsium. I think another possibility is that he transformed something that was inside himself. Specifically, I think he turned part of his bodily energy into magical energy by manipulating photons emitted by the particles inside his body into becoming L bosons containing his own Intent. Now, this wouldn't normally work on regular types of particles because you'd need pre-existing L bosons to manipulate these particles, but what if (and here's another major speculative leap)... what if photons aren't regular particles at all in the Cosmere? What if photons are L bosons? If a photon is just an L boson with a "null Intent", this means light can directly be shaped by a strange loop into other L boson waveforms. Once this secret, that a person can turn light into magic, was discovered (perhaps via some sort of Buddha-like Enlightenment process), it was only a matter of time before our hypothetical pre-Adonalsium guy would start continuously converting photons into active L bosons, until finally he reached a critical point and became the first Ascendant Being in the Cosmere. In other words, a man wove Light to become the god known as Adonalsium. Conclusion: Why "L-Theory"? More than two decades ago, string theorists had a problem. They wanted string theory to be a single "theory of everything", but they've ended up with as many as five versions that seemed to be self-consistent but also very different from each other, which was kind of embarrassing. They tried to find ways to reconcile these differences until finally, in 1995, a guy named Edward Witten conjectured that the five superstring theories were all just limiting cases of a single theory he called "M-theory" that used an eleven-dimensional hyperspace. This spawned what is now called the "Second superstring revolution". When asked what "M" stands for in "M-theory", Witten said it could mean "magic", "mystery", or "membrane" (referring to brane cosmology). People were free to choose whatever meaning they wanted. While working on this Cosmere theory, I was thinking of just naming it the "Realmatic String Theory". But after reading about M-theory and Witten's explanation for the name, I decided to err on the side that's awesome and name my theory "L-theory" instead. In this post I've tried to describe the various meanings for "L": All magic systems in the Cosmere are just specialized forms of fundamental string Lightweaving. All Identities in the Cosmere are granted Strange Loops via Lightweaving that give rise to conscious perception. This reality of all things having strange loops that act as "eyes" is symbolized in Cosmeric philosophy by the Essence of Lucentia. The fundamental force carrier of Lightweaving is a Luxon (which I call the L boson) whose properties can be shaped by strange loops. The Spark of Life is a form of Lightweaving granting intentional motion to an Identity with a strange loop. Light particles (photons) are just neutral L bosons. Knowledge of this secret is what allowed a person in the Cosmere's distant past to become Adonalsium. Like M-theory, my aim for L-theory is to become a "theory of everything" for the Cosmere... at least until WoB comes along saying string theory has nothing to do with Cosmere cosmology (which I sure hope won't happen soon! ). Also like M-theory, L-theory is still incomplete. I welcome any comment, suggestion, or constructive criticism that might help me develop it further. Edit: Added stuff suggested by SmurfAquamarineBodies and Emerald101.
  20. It's not much to go on, but I still remember the section of the plate from WoA where he wrote: "Some of you may know of my fabled memory. It is true; I need not a Feruchemist's metalmind to memorize a sheet of words in an instant." There has to be a deeper explanation to this than the simple fact that he had an amazing memory. This is Brandon Sanderson we're talking about. This leads me to think that somehow, Kwaan was a Lightweaver. He has a mnemonic ability very similar to Shallan's, and it is mentioned in WoR that Lightweavers did, in fact, all have varied memorization skills. I'm not sure how solid this is, as this is the only section that got me thinking on it. Kwaan was a Worldbringer, a scholar, and as far as we know, not an artist. That breaks with the pattern somewhat. Does anyone else have another possible explanation? EDIT: Sorry, I probably should have posted this in the Mistborn section. Honest mistake.
  21. Reading over the Ars Arcanum in Words of Radiance, there is a phrase that I've remarked on many times, as have many others. In the bit about lightweaving, it states: Today however, I remarked just how important this sentence is, because of all the things it implies. I was blinded by the whole "Yolish" red herring - the chapters of Liar of Brandon's website made me go 'ah, yes of course it is to' and I never really read the phrase. But there is so much more in this one tidbit. The first important bit is: the most similar ability to the original Yolish variant. This implies a few things. The magic is similar to the abilities on Yolen. 'Most similar' implies that there are many other abilities similar to Yolish magic, more than a few It also implies the author is familiar enough with them to make comparisons. The use of the words similar and variant show that that Yolish abilities all worked slightly differently As a conclusion, I think this a strong supporting phrase for the "Yolen has all magics" school of thought that has been bandied about from time to time. BONUS INFO: The Ars Arcanum author is highly familiar with Yolish magic of multiple types. How else could they make comparisons, and speak so authoritatively? How could they qualify it as the most, unless they had at least a casual understanding of the majority of the others? If they visited Yolen post-shattering (and if Yolen is still around), then how did they know it was the original? This strongly implies the author is from Yolen, or has associated significantly with someone from Yolen. Our current leading Ars Arcanum author is Khriss, who is super knowledgeable but isn't from Yolen, and is many many years to young to have been on pre-shattering Yolen. Nazh, another favoured contender, is highly suspected to be from Threnody, so same arguments apply. It is of course possible that they were simply taught about Yolish magic. But it is interesting to note it.
  22. For me, one of the best things about Words of Radiance is that we got to know a whole lot about Shallan's powers. I'd like to discuss an aspect of this that's not as showy as transforming a whole ship into water, or creating very realistic illusions to fool Cosmere-aware enemies, or even making perfect drawings from memory. I'm talking about Shallan's ability to "transform" the personalities of people around her. She first does this with Bluth. That one started with a drawing: And it ended with Bluth fighting bandits until he was killed. At around the same time, she does it again with the Alethi deserters led by Vathah, who've been committing acts of banditry as they traveled. This time, Shallan didn't draw them, but merely spoke to them of what they could be: Soon enough, the deserters were off fighting bandits. Now, you'd think that all this had nothing to do with magic, that those people were simply inspired by Shallan's actions. But Pattern thought differently: Then there's this epigraph: We could debate all day as to the real nature of this ability, but instead I would like to simply posit that this ability reflects what I believe the Order of Lightweavers was really about: They were all about changing temperament, whether of the people they fooled/inspired with Lightwoven illusions, or of the Shadesmar Identity beads that they convinced to transform during Soulcasting. It was their specialty to change others' minds, or more importantly, change their hearts. ... So... what has all this got to do with the Essence of Blood? *replaces Cosmere nerd hat with Wikipedia geek glasses* As it turns out, people in the past (starting from as far back as the Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks) believed that blood was a very important thing when it came to understanding behavioral changes in people. Not only is it directly linked to the heart, which was believed to be the seat of all emotion, it was also a central part of humoral theory. According to the ancient theory of humorism, the human body contains four different kinds of "humors", which are bodily fluids (not jokes ) that govern health and temperament: phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood. An imbalance between these humors were said to result in sickness, or at least a change in personality. Each humor is associated with a certain type of temperament: calm/unemotional (for Phlegm), bad tempered (Yellow Bile), melancholic (Black Bile), or passionate (Blood). They were also associated with the four Classical Elements: Water for Phlegm, Fire for Yellow Bile, Earth for Black Bile, and Air for Blood. Here's where it gets a bit more interesting (if you're a Cosmere nerd and a Wikipedia geek): Apparently blood has a special place among the humors. People who believe in humorism believe that since the other three humors travel through the body via the bloodstream, blood must also carry the Elements of Water, Fire, and Earth. So Blood has all four Elements. It has also been suggested that the very origin of humoral theory might have something to do with blood, specifically how blood in a container looks like after it has been left to clot. After a while, the blood starts to separate into four layers: the bottom layer containing platelets (representing "black bile"), then a layer of red blood cells ("blood"), then the white blood cells ("phlegm"), then the blood plasma ("yellow bile"). Even when we look at "real" Science, we can still find links between blood and temperament. While we now know that the "seat of emotion" is actually in the brain, emotions are also influenced by certain endocrine glands, which produce hormones that travel via... you guessed it... the bloodstream. *puts back Cosmere nerd hat* After reading about all these little coincidences, I now believe Brandon used this concept of humorism, associating body fluids with temperament, when he designed the Investitures related to the Essence of Blood. This makes me wonder if Shallan is unconsciously changing the blood chemistry of people she "transforms", or if Jasnah's "eight kinds of blood" is actually just normal human blood with varying amounts of behavior-changing hormones mixed in. As a final note, I'd just like to mention the Parshendi, whose Rhythms are related somewhat to their temperament. I theorize that these Rhythms actually originate from their heart, and are thus Blood-related as well.
  23. In TES we hear hints that the spirit world exists in part as a huge network of connections between objects and ideals. By altering these spiritual connections, Soul-stamps can cause physical and cognitive transformations to occur for the objects affected. With this in mind, there are some interesting implications to pull out of the Ars Arcanum of WoR. "this method [of Lightweaving] has a powerful Spiritual element, requiring not just a full mental picture of the intended creation, but some level of connection to it as well...I wish to delve more into this ability, with the hope to gain a full understanding of how it relates to Cognitive and Spiritual attributes" So lets look at a specific Lightweave: Shallan drawing herself in Ch 36. "She saw only the drawing, knew only the emotions she bled onto the page. Jasnah's determination. Tyn's confidence. A sense of rightness that she could not describe, but which she drew from her brother Heleran, the best person she'd ever known. It all poured from her into the pencil and onto the page." When she actually did meet with the Highprinces, Shallan became a different person. It was more than just a visual illusion, she acted differently, thought differently from the girl we knew before. She started to exhibit the attributes she had infused into her drawing. We know from WoK she can pinch off "soul-buds" and infuse them into her artwork. I believe this is the way Shallan's mind interprets the formation of spiritual connections. It seems she actually formed links to these attributes in the spirit realm while creating the drawing, then used Lightweaving to apply them to herself during the meeting with Dalinar. There are obviously many differences between the two magics. For example, Soul-stamps can be permanent, cause physical changes, and require a certain plausibility to function. Lightweaving requires a mental focus, needs active use of Stormlight to maintain, and can't create tangible changes. It will be interesting to see how Yolish Lightweaving compares, since the Ars hints about a spiritual element there as well.
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