Surges and "Voids"

[Retsam]

This started out as a thought on comparison between Shallan and Jasnah's abilities, and attempting to address the question of exactly how the two are different. (A piece of my thoughts on this below)

But in looking into that question, I was studying the front and back book cover diagrams. General consensus seems to be that the front diagram is of Surgebinding, big circles being orders, smaller circles being surges. The back cover seems a little less accepted, but the common theory is that it's a voidbinding diagram, similar to the surgebinding one. So for now, I'm referring to the back diagram as the "voidbinding diagram" and the small circles as "voids" (but we'll get to that).

Comparing the two, I noticed something. The smaller symbols on both diagrams at a glance look unrelated. However, on both diagrams the smaller symbols (surges and voids) correspond with each other as below: (Numbering is just arbitrary. Thinking now, I realize I should have probably numbered according to our best guess at the orders, but I didn't think to do this)

(It's a little harder to see this correspondence, looking at the book, since both charts are oriented to face "inward" towards the book, so looking side-by-side the correspondence is mirrored)

Now, you might say "Huh, those look somewhat similar, but it's a bit of a stretch isn't it?" But let's put them side-by-side, and do a little coloring. (I didn't want to make this too big, so zoom in if you can.)

They aren't just similar, but there's a nearly perfect correspondence of shapes between the two. In fact, to generalize how to get a "void" image from a surge image, simply cut the image in half, flip the right half, and put back together. (Often times overlapping a middle section to go from two parallel lines to a single line as in 2,4,7,9)

This sort of correspondence can't be accidental. So what does it mean?

Perhaps nothing important. Not being accidental doesn't mean significant. Perhaps it's simply supposed to be a figment of the artwork, drawing the two systems with similar symbols, perhaps in the same way that some suggest that the Shadesmar map being a negative of Roshar is a figment of the artwork.

But, it's probably obvious that I doubt that. Instead, I believe that it means that each surge-void pair are related. I'm pretty much certain of that. However, what I really am starting to suspect is that they're more than just "related", I think they may be one and the same, that although the symbol varies slightly, there really are just 10 surges, repeated in both diagrams. (Or perhaps there's another more general name, and they're only called "surges" when used through surgebinding, but I'm going to keep calling them that)

I'm really not confident on this last point, but I think there may be some evidence to this.

Most significantly, Szeth. Szeth and Kaladin share the same abilities, and Kaladin is clearly becoming a Windrunner. Yet, it's confirmed that Szeth doesn't have an honorspren as Kaladin does and that his abilities are somehow different.

To me, this suggests that Szeth is a voidbinder, and Kaladin a surgebinder. Same surges = same abilites, yet fundamentally different in some way.

I also wonder this about Shallan-Jasnah. Common thought is that they're both surgebinders, but in different orders, but might one of them really be a voidbinder, not a surgebinder?

This goes back to the more general classifications of magic on Roshar.

From the Q&A on this site:

Q: 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.

A:Fabrials are part of it.

Yet, he also said in a previous Q&A:

So what do I mean by twenty or thirty magic systems in Kings? Hard to say, as I don't want to give spoilers. I have groupings of abilities that have to deal with a certain theme. Transformation, Travel, Pressure and Gravity, that sort of thing. By one way of counting, there are thirty of these—though by another way of grouping them together, there are closer to ten.

My thought is that the 10-system counting is that there are 10 surges. The 30-system counting is that there are 10 orders of surgebinding, and 10 orders of "other". Given that fabrials are in the "other" (or at least related, depending on how you interpret that answer), I suspect that the third group may be 'artificially' using the powers of the surges, without the contract of a spren used in surgebinding or ... whatever it is that voidbinding does.

But perhaps I'm getting too far afield here.

So yeah. The symbols are the same. I hope the reaction to this isn't "D'uh, we all knew that"; though I haven't seen it mentioned up to now. Thoughts?

Edited November 6, 2012 by Retsam

[FirstSelector]

What an excellent find! It seems reasonable that there are ten fundamental surges, and from them flow three separate magic systems. This is obviously similar to the magic on Scadrial - 16 base metals but at least 48 ways of using them. If we allow for some sort of atium-like surge that is similar to the others but stems directly from Honor, Odium or Cultivation, then the number of magic systems grows to at least 10. Additionally, the Old Magic may be unrelated to surges and thus increase the number of fundamental magics.

I had originally pegged Szeth as simply someone so honorable that he was able to take advantage of Honor's power (via the Principle of Intent), but this raises interesting questions.

However, I feel that Shallan and Jasnah are simply two adjacent orders of surgebinding that share Soulcasting. Jasnah was able to quickly recognize Shallan's power and did not immediately react in a negative way. I think it would be a reasonable assumption that Jasnah, if faced with a fellow Soulcaster whose abilities she did not recognize as "good" would react rather differently than she did. However, this speculation is intimately tied with how much we think Jasnah knows.

Either way, very nice find! I noticed the rotational symmetry but never thought to look more.

[happyman]

That's a very good find on the relationship between the two sets of symbols. I don't know what it means, exactly, but I have no doubt whatsoever that you have found a real symmetry in the magic systems. Not surprising that it's there, really, but congratulations on finding it.

[hoser]

Very nice work and thoughts! I believe that the split half-inverted glyphs have been noted before, but, despite what Hoid might say, I don't think it devalues your observation.

The voidbinding for Szeth idea is interesting in that the voidbinders seem to have been accompanied by screaming and he seems to have a similar audio hallucination. It is odd in that he seems to know more about voidbringers than most people in-world and seems very opposed to the voidbringers.

The other possibility for Szeth is that he is getting his abilities from the sword or some other artifact.

Personally, I think that Shallan, as apparent murderer, thief and liar, is being used to confuse us. I think that her actions will turn out to be fundamentally honorable. Her "murder" will end up being a defense of someone from her father's wrath and the desire to protect her family will partially negate the lying and stealing. The lying and stealing are obviously not honorable, and will need to be fixed before she advances as a Radiant. Her brother has an unexplained injury, so he is an obvious candidate for Shallan's father's victimhood.

Back on topic, though, I wonder about voidbringing. With 10 base abilities, I believe that there are 45 possible ability pairs. The Radiants use 10 of them.

Do voidbringers work off the same 10 base abilities?

If so, do they work with the same pairings?

Are the voidbringers' abilities inverted somehow? As in pressure vs. adhesion, where we know Kaladin can do adhesion and his counterpart voidbringer would be able to do repulsion. Although I think that Kaladin has really been doing repulsion also.

There is talk of predicting the future being the essence of voidbringing. Is that Sunmaker nonsense imposed on Vorinism, or is it really related to Honor's and Odium's intents? In Dalinar's visions, Honor doesn't seem to have philosophical problems with looking into the future.

So many questions ...

[Retsam]

I think it would be a reasonable assumption that Jasnah, if faced with a fellow Soulcaster whose abilities she did not recognize as "good" would react rather differently than she did.

Personally, I think that Shallan, as apparent murderer, thief and liar, is being used to confuse us. I think that her actions will turn out to be fundamentally honorable.

Personally, I think I'd question the usual assumption of "voidbinding is evil", which seems to be the implication here. Granted, the whole connection with the voidbringiners and the Desolations is possibly a strong argument, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that the powers themselves are bad, or that only those associated with voidbringers can have those powers.

And if either of the two, Jasnah or Shallan, is actually a voidbinder not a surgebinder, I'd put my money on Jasnah, at this point. Jasnah responds to Shallan's question about the symbolheads by replying that the Radiants drew their power from a connection to spren. This answer seems to indicate that Shallan is a surgebinder. (More precisely, it indicates that either Shallan is a surgebinder, or Jasnah is Aes Sedai)

Jasnah's exact quote is:

"You see beings like this? In Shadesmar? [...] I had assumed that you ... but no, that obviously wouldn't make sense, I see now. [...] Suffice it to say that each Radiant's abilities were tied to the spren."

Jasnah makes an assumption about Shallan's abilities, but then revises that assumption when she finds out about the spren, and then it's "obvious". If Shallan's simply a different order of Radiant, why would Jasnah (who isn't known for jumping to conclusions) so quickly assume that Shallan is in the same order as her, rather than having an even chance of being in the other order. In fact, this is a stretch, but the quote almost indicates that Jasnah is surprised that Shallan sees spren at all, not that she sees a different type than Jasnah.

What if, instead, Jasnah is originally surprised because she wasn't aware that the Radiant orders were returning, because Jasnah isn't one of them? Perhaps this is why there seems to be no evidence of Jasnah interacting with spren when she performs her abilities (as far as I know). Heck, perhaps this is where Jasnah's atheism comes from; being born with what are considered by her religion to be "evil" powers would certainly make it not very surprising that Jasnah turns out to be not so fond of religion.

[happyman]

Personally, I think that Shallan, as apparent murderer, thief and liar, is being used to confuse us. I think that her actions will turn out to be fundamentally honorable. Her "murder" will end up being a defense of someone from her father's wrath and the desire to protect her family will partially negate the lying and stealing. The lying and stealing are obviously not honorable, and will need to be fixed before she advances as a Radiant. Her brother has an unexplained injury, so he is an obvious candidate for Shallan's father's victimhood.

I actually have a different approach to this. Although I agree that the exact nature of the murder is still a big question mark, the "thief" and "liar" bits are definitely true. On the other hand, it seems wildly unlikely that the symbol-headed spren she sees are the same type as Syl. They seem to be attracted to Honesty rather than Honor. This may seem odd, given the "thief and liar" bits, but I suspect that it is an intellectual honesty, rather than honesty with other people, that attracts them. That is, by her nature and actions, she is a scholar who tries to find the truth no matter where it leads. Thus her behavior is consistent with attracting these very different kind of Spren. After all, not all Spren are as discerning as Honorspren.

[Kurkistan]

Some background information. Yes, they are actually the same symbol, most likely representing the same "surges."

Link

Lexie

Are the symbols going to be further explained throughout the series?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, you want me to- let me open this up *opens WoK* what she’s talking about are the symbols right here, this does relate to the magic and to the Knights Radiant. I will eventually explain what it is but for right now it’s just there to be interesting and to look at. It should be telling that one of them ended up on the front of the book, this is actually the same symbol as one of these, just done in a slightly different style. This is what we call in the books the glyphs, the writing system, they actually can be read phonetically, but they are also partially art.

The inspiration for these that I gave to the artist was the Arabic writing, where people actually, often take words and will do them as designs and these beautiful works of art, changing the words, and that’s what happened with the-you probably can’t see that very well- the embossing on this but that’s what happens with the writing system on this world and so the glyphs will usually will write them in the shape of something and that’s one of the glyphs written in the shape of a sword. So that will be explained eventually, it is something for the entire series, every book will have the same end pages like this so slowly over time you will understand that and I haven’t said anything at all about the one in the back, and I don’t intend to for quite a while.

Perhaps Voidbinders use the second set because it represents a fundamentally different approach to the things the glyphs represent? Either way, we know that both sets of symbols are fundamentally referencing the same concepts.

EDIT: So yeah, it kind of is "D'uh, we all knew that." You threw in some original thought as well, though, so we'll forgive you.

EDIT 2: The set on the back does matter, though, because Brandon is being so close-mouthed about it.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Kurkistan

[StormAtlas]

Hey awesome stuff man. WoK is my favorite book but I listened to it as an audio book while right after I had gotten eye surgery so I never really got to look at the symbols too much, so even though a lot of this is kind of what I assumed or had read its really cool to actually see, specially the way you break everything down

Thanks

[Manscher]

Considering you regrow plates when they break, it is possible the "Fabrial" part is cultivations side of the 10 surges. To grow/cultivate these surges into Fabrials that can be used by people.

[Retsam]

Considering you regrow plates when they break, it is possible the "Fabrial" part is cultivations side of the 10 surges. To grow/cultivate these surges into Fabrials that can be used by people.

Personally, I doubt that fabrials are related to Cultivation, at least what I remember of the translated fabrial diagrams.

The fact that fabrials seem to be powered by imprisoned spren makes me doubt that it's really "Cultivation" in any sense.

See the diagrams here.

Edited November 10, 2012 by Retsam

[Windrunner]

Spren are not tied specifically to Honor, some are all Honor, others are all Cultivation, and the rest are a mixture between the two.

[Retsam]

Spren are not tied specifically to Honor, some are all Honor, others are all Cultivation, and the rest are a mixture between the two.

Right, I should probably have been more clear about what I meant. I wasn't implying that fabrials couldn't be Cultivation because they are spren-powered, as much as I was implying that the process itself, of trapping something and harnessing its energy, seems very opposed to the idea of Cultivation. Cultivation seems to imply the idea of building up and a symbiotic relationship, whereas the fabrials seems to be a more parasitic idea.

If anything, I might suggest that fabrials are of Odium, in the same way that people have suggested that Shardblades might be.

[FlashWrogan]

Spren are not tied specifically to Honor, some are all Honor, others are all Cultivation, and the rest are a mixture between the two.

Citation? I don't remember reading anything that confirmed this. Sure Syl is supposed to be honorspren, but we don't know for sure if this is actually true and if she is associated with Honor. It does seem like the spren may be of Cultivation, but I have never seen anything that confirms it.

[Windrunner]

I'm not really sure why you'd think Syl is wrong about being an honorspren, but there's no way that honorspren are unconnected to the Shard Honor. Saying so would make very little sense, and needlessly complicate things.

4. Zas: A question related to that. There’s an ideagoing around that all the spren that can Nahel Bond, all Knight Radiant sprenare called Honorspren, and then Nohaden talks specifically about Honorspren. Is that the case? You know, is it just the Windrunner spren, or is it all the spren?

Brandon: I’m going to deal with this in the next book. So I’ll just go ahead and let it be a literal RAFO. It is coming.

(interruption, leading Brandon to lose his train of thought)

So what we are dealing with here is that all Spren are indeed all pieces of the one who has gone, so those spren are all- except the Windrunner spren, the spren like Syl, have certain umm.

Zas: Nohaden mentioned that “All the spren aren’t as discerning as Honorspren.”

Brandon: So there has been dissention among them about who gets to call themselves Honorspren, if that makes sense, and there is some disagreement among scholars about which ones are really, you know “This is what defines an

But the spren you are running into are all (something) ofeither Honor or Cultivation, or some mixture between them. And you can usually tell the ones that are more Honor, and the ones that are more Cultivation. That should be able ot be (something).

[Wonko the Sane]

*Grumble grumble* You guys didn't seem this interested when I noticed this.

I am intrigued by the glyphs in the front and back of the hardcover. I would like to compile a list of everything we have learned or seen of them thus far, as it is obvious that they will play a key role in the story. I will start with what comes to mind, in no particular order:

- The small glyphs in the front represent the various Surges, or forces, that Knights Radiant and other magic-users can manipulate. These include Pressure, Gravitation, Transformation, and Travel. We do not yet know precisely which Surge is represented by which glyph, except that the top-right and the right-top represent Pressure and Gravitation, though it is unclear which is which.

- The large glyphs in the front represent the Orders of the Knights Radiant. These include the Windrunners and the Stonewards, as well as perhaps the "Soulcasters," a name which follows the same pattern as the other Orders. It seems more likely, however, that Soulcasting is just the name of one use of the Surge of Transformation. The top-right large glyph represents the Windrunners.

- The thinner lines on the front cover connect an Order to the Surges it can manipulate. These lines also connect adjacent Surges, or those that share an order.

- The larger lines ont the front cover connect Orders to various other Orders. The connections include Orders that share a Surge, Orders on opposite sides of the circle, and two connections that seem unrelated to the rest, between the top-right and bottom-right and between the top left and bottom-left.

- The large glyphs seem to be arranged such that the "Chapter-header" faces on the border are more or less in a relative position with the Order they might be associated with. It has been heavily speculated that these are the heralds.

- These faces also surround the Silver Kingdoms map. Could they be in some relative position with the kingdom they could be associated with.

- The sword on the front of the book, along with those behind the Part titles, are stylized versions of the large glyphs.

- Shash, which, by some theories, would be the bottom-left glyph on the front chart, is a symbol that warns of danger.

- The back cover seems to be depicted in analogy with the front cover, including various parallels such as the same general shape.

- The large glyphs on the back cover ar depicted in the same color as their front-cover counterparts.

- If you take a small glyph from the front cover, split it in half vertically, flip one half upside-down vertically, and make som minor modifications, you end up with that glyphs counterpart on the back cover.

- The third glyph clockwise on the right is depicted on the map of Kharbranth on page 454.

- just a personal, potentially meaningless observation: several of the back-cover glyphs seem resemble some sort of fairy or angel.

I'm sure that there's plenty more, but that's all that comes to mind right now. Your thoughts?

*sigh* I am a little hurt at your betrayal, but I will get over it with time. And cookies. Time and cookies.

Anyway, on to serious discussion.

Personally, I doubt that fabrials are related to Cultivation, at least what I remember of the translated fabrial diagrams.

The fact that fabrials seem to be powered by imprisoned spren makes me doubt that it's really "Cultivation" in any sense.

See the diagrams here.

Why not? I've mentioned elsewhere that while Cultivation could be used to refer to nature, the actual meaning actual meaning of the word is the harnessing of nature, chaining it in order to further human survival. This seems to fit right in with fabrials.

I had not heard that fabrials were a magic system all of their own. This fits right in with my Radiant Machines theory. If fabrials follow a similar schematic to surgebinding, it makes sense that they would have similar abilities.

And looking back at this post, I realize the whole thing looks like some sort of personal ad campaign. Oh, well. You all deserve it for making me feel so unloved.