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If you aren't familiar with my previous theorizing I highly recommend reading my Spiritual Realm threads, and my Alcubierre Drive theorization. This is somewhat based on that. Some more context for this, is that this is my 4,000th post. I won't be getting to 5,000 posts before I leave on my mission and leave the community for two years, likely missing the release of SA4 and whatever else we happen to get in that time. So, I want to leave one last little gift for the fandom in terms of my theorization before I leave, and what better to do it than on my 4,000th post? Anyway, one of the major questions raised specifically by my theorization on the Alcubierre drive is, what kind of FTL would Taldain have? And furthermore, what kind of FTL would any other minor shardworld have, that doesn't have the dramatic power of Roshar or Scadrial? After all, we know that So, in other words, Taldain was going to be first to space- and by extension, first to FTL tech. And there is no way that they were going to achieve FTL tech by stealing allomantic tech from Scadrial or something like that. Further evidence is brought up by Sixth of the Dusk, where we see that the Ones Above have a sort of Prime Directive, where they aren't allowed to directly trade with the people on the planet until they achieve a similar level of technology, which includes FTL tech. In other words, in order to have the expectation that the people of First of the Sun could achieve FTL, FTL needs to be achievable without outside interference- and without allomancy or surges or anything. And there is no way that either grubs or sand is going to achieve FTL tech by themselves. Therefore, a conclusion needs to be made- There must be a FTL system that is achievable through universal cosmere principles, that isn't associated with a single magic system like the Allomantic Alcubierre drive is. It'll likely involve a deep understanding of the Cosmere, and of investiture, and will be fairly complex. HOWEVER, if this hypothetical unknown drive is based on universal cosmere principles, while we may not have enough information at the present to predict the details as to how it could be constructed or how it works, we do have a solid enough base in the cosmere that we should be able to predict what this might look like. So, what will this look like? I'm going to take a major leap here, but first I want to give some context to my leap. First, I made the jump that the Alcubierre drive would require the mechanization of allomancy to be more powerful than normal allomancers. There is precedence for this. In the recent episode of Shardcast, it is pointed out that the Lord Ruler created a body that is able to output allomantic power far more than even a lerasium mistborn can. In other words, he altered his own spirit web to squeeze way more juice out of his metals than would otherwise be possible. This assumption, that they would be able to do this with mechanized allomancy, means that they will have significant ability to alter and enhance spirit webs, which is important for my leap in logic. Second, the idea that Allomancy and Surgebinding didn't exist at first. They are things now, but they didn't start off being a thing. Instead, these shapes in spirit webs do things now, where before no ability existed at all. I don't know for sure that specific shapes will always do specific things no matter what, as that's a pretty long jump to make in generalizing about the cosmere, especially as I'm pretty sure Allomancy only exists in the form it does because Harmony allows it to happen that way, due to the fact that the metal isn't the source of power, but simply the key to power. Regardless of the whole "key" business, the effects the investiture drawn from Harmony have are quite specific and interesting. And those abilities didn't exist originally, so I'm going to generalize here and say that, certain shapes in spirit webs can do certain things with investiture, and that it is likely there are general interactions with investiture and spirit webs that haven't been discovered yet. It is a problematic generalization, but one I need to make in order for this to make sense. All those confusing assumptions and generalizations aside, here's my pitch: I think the key to the future of the Cosmere, and universal investiture based FTL drives, is the ability to create spirit webs from scratch. Now hear me out before you boo me off the stage and convince Chaos to bring back downvotes just to downvote this theory. There's a lot of hints in the cosmere at more specific interactions with the spiritual realm being very important in the future. First example, hemalurgy looks like it will be important in the future of the cosmere. It can rip out pieces of spirit webs. Then we have shardblades, which can cut spirit webs. Another unexpected thing that can interact with spirit webs is breath, as per WoB: The moment he is mentioning here is when in Warbreaker, Vasher teaches a command to a child, and she is able to excise her own memories with this command. So breath isn't really out of the question as a tool to directly interact with spirit webs, with the right commands, in the future. But if these future people are going to be CREATING spirit webs, they're going to need some other tools. Breath could fit the bill... but I'll be honest, I'm at a bit of a loss trying to guess how this would work. This does lead me to turning to one of my questions from my original spirit realm thread, where I wondered how the spirit webs of children are created from scratch. They've got to be templates from investiture. Another thought, spren are basically made from scratch investiture, are they not? They start off as concepts before the Stormfather or whoever makes them into new spren, going to a special place or something like that. And clearly spren have spirit webs of some sort, right? I theorized upon how the Nahel bond changes the web of both spren and Knight, changing each to be more like the other. So perhaps a process like that might be viable. But however they actually create the webs, they aren't going to be doing this spiritual realm manipulation on humans. I'd imagine a mad scientist or two might try it, and then it'll be outlawed for being inhumane or something like that. No, rather they would do it on robots! Or, just tech in general. Which, incidentally, could lead to a very Asimovish question about whether these artificial webs count as being alive or not, and where the line between human and nonhuman really lies. Future plot threads aside, I'm going to make a second giant leap and say these artificial webs will eventually reveal that you can make certain things happen with investiture, using web shapes not normally seen in living creatures, that are not associated with a single magic system. Specifically what I'm imagining is something like a spirit web construct that you can program to connect with different places, and the other side is connected to the ship. Then, you pour investiture into it from your sand batteries or whatever, and once totally powered up, it activates, and folds space to bring the two things it is connected to together. Not too far fetched, right? These hypothetical "Spiritual Folds" fit the bill in a couple different ways. They're based on cosmere mechanics, specifically breath, which... sort of makes spirit webs when you awaken things? I'd argue that Nightblood definitely has a spirit web, which would have been 100% created from breath, so that works. But I'm sure there will end up being more universal ways to play with investiture, that any planet could use to manipulate spirit webs. This technology would also be sufficiently advanced, leaps and bounds beyond what anyone is really doing at the moment, and really so far beyond our ability to predict in the Cosmere that there's no way for me to know whether I'm on to something genius or whether I'm just totally off my rocker. I will also note that this isn't ruled out by our knowledge that Sleepless are important in Era 4, because it suggests that it might be possible to connect all the ships directly. I'd imagine however you create a web, once you create it, it's not easy to change, and with new spaceships being made all the time, altering a connection spirit web to facilitate adding every new ship sounds a lot more difficult than just sticking a sleepless bug on board, to connect to all the other sleepless bugs. So what are the problems with this? Other than breath, we don't really have any examples of people doing this. Which makes sense, given my idea that it will only be possible with a much more advanced understanding of investiture and how the spiritual realm works in directing investiture to do specific things, but it is still problematic because we don't really have any solid indications that this is where it is going to go. Also, there's the problem that we have absolutely any idea if it's actually true that there are certain identities or web shapes that would direct investiture to do something like fold space. That's a guess and a leap of logic at best. So in all seriousness, what else does this theory actually have going for it? Or is it really just crazy speculation that is unlikely to ever actually happen? I give you one last piece of evidence: a pitch for the actual story of Era 4. We know it will have crossovers between worlds, with space opera and FTL and... and Hoid. So let's say we have this technology, they are now truly able to create spirit webs from scratch. It isn't easy, but doing so creates useful things. It also calls back to Dragonsteel, because one of the magic systems in that (and no, I haven't read Dragonsteel, I just know about this from this one WoB) can manipulate spirit webs. And in further interesting WoB news, I'll just stick this one in as well, because fission reactions are always fun. Now this is a story I look forward to hearing :-) Brandon Sanderson One of the first magic systems I designed for the cosmere was based on the manipulation of sub-atomic particles, and involved the ability to look directly at atoms and interact with them. I decided to back off on this, as it was a whopper of a magic system to get right with my limited (at the time) writing experience. It was fun, though, and is still a canonical Cosmere magic. Stormlight Three Update #4 (Oct. 19, 2016) And what do we know about Hoid's motivations? We know he wants to do something perceived as totally impossible (as per the Traveler excerpt and the letters in SA), and it has been strongly suggested by many in the community, including myself, that his endgame involves bringing back Adonalsium. I also went fairly into depth in my original Spiritual Realm thread as to why that's unreasonable and totally impossible. Except maybe it isn't? If they're able to make spirit webs, perhaps Hoid interprets this as the way that he can finally achieve his goals and recreate Adonalsium. And recreating Adonalsium would involve a spirit web that has connection to pretty much everything, right? So that would involve a lot of travel from world to world. So I'm pitching that Era 4 will be a world hopping adventure on a space ship with Hoid, where they deal with stuff on each place they go to, all in order to gain the requisite connection on the spirit web Hoid is attempting to make. They'd probably also need to collect investiture from all 16 shards, which... I would not mind seeing . And of course, they'd have to prevent any rogue Hemalurgists from coming and spiking the web for their own nefarious purposes. Is it actually possible for Hoid to accomplish this goal? Honestly... I have genuinely no idea. But would it be a compelling and interesting story and quest? Absolutely. And what would be the consequences if Hoid actually attempted this? I'm not 100% sure, but my instinct says that at that point, recreating Adonalsium is a bad, bad idea. It would screw up all the magic systems, and what would really be the benefit? Well, I'm not here to theorize about Hoid, I'm here to theorize about spirit webs and FTL tech. And while I admit that this idea, creating spirit webs that don't do things we've ever seen before and that aren't possible with any known magic system, seems a little crazy. But at the same time, from where I stand today in my knowledge about investiture and the spiritual realm and FTL, I don't really see any alternatives. Could it be that we literally just don't know enough yet to predict accurately what these universal FTL drives must be using? Absolutely, and if we learn stuff in Era 3 of Mistborn that makes this entirely irrelevant, that's great. But I feel it would be a compelling story, a way to facilitate the end of the story of Adonalsium, which has puzzled me as to how that could get a resolution for a while now. It would also allow us to see all parts of the cosmere in this quest to slowly build the Web of a God. I for one would totally be up for reading something about that. But of course, I could be totally wrong about this. I just wanted to try one last time to pull some great theorizing out of my brain, and this is sort of the natural conclusion to my realm of theorization. So, feel free to rip it to shreds or praise it or whatever. I've poured a lot of thought and WoB research into this, so I'm hoping I'm not missing a single WoB that totally topples this theory. Commenters, I'd be happy to hear your own ideas about how a universal method of FTL could be achievable, because obviously I might be missing something here. Furthermore, it is quite possible that in the next two years in which I am gone, we'll get some WoBs that shed light on the topic and totally invalidate this. But this is what I have to offer, one last time, to the 17th Shard. It's been fun theorizing and obsessing over the Spiritual Realm and FTL tech. For those who actually read all the way through this beast of a post, congratulations, you're a trooper. I'll miss being able to drop things like this on you guys while I'm on my mission, and it'll be a while before I can do things like this after I come back, since I'll be so behind on cosmere knowledge. Until such a time, I'll call this post good, and thank everyone for making a community where a nerd-scientist like me could thrive enough to output crazy nonsense such as this, and have it not be the weirdest thing on here.