Voidus Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 I just finished another readthrough of WoK and I kept thinking about the prayer-burning in Vorin beliefs I think someone started a discussion a while ago wondering whether this might be based off of the metal-blindness we saw in the Scaralian Shards and so would be Roshars focus, I don't think we really came up with anything but I was reading it again trying to think of what the focus might be and I came up with one of two possibilities given other hints from the little magic on Roshar we've seen. 1. The focus is light, the fire produces a light which blinds Rosharian shards, obvious other examples are stormlight, spren frequently glowing in some way, glowing glyphs on KR Plate. 2. (This one is much weirder and probably less likely) The focus is cognitive aspects, we know that Spren play a part in all magic systems we've seen so far, Soulcasting seems to rely on cognitive aspects, it's behaving honourably which grants you Surgebinding (Honour can only be described in terms of cognitive beings) not sure how that plays into the burning messages thing unless it's because it no longer sees itself as a message and so then Honor could have seen it? Anyway this one seems really weird and unlikely but it was one of those persistent thoughts while I was reading, it came from when Navani burned her massive glyph and mentioned sending it's soul to the almighty, got me thinking about realmatics So thoughts? disproofs? any input would be great. Cookies for all speculators! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarontos Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 (edited) there is another possibility, gems they are the apparent power store for magic. On Scadrial metal is the power source or at least focus of the metallic arts. Edited January 2, 2013 by Tarontos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Observer Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 Another interesting fact is that the Alethi burn their dead to send them to the afterlife, so burning seems associated with the soul and its return to the spiritual realm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nepene Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 I think you may have meant a discussion I was involved in. One thing I mentioned for consideration is this. In Scadrial metals are the focus. And as such we have this lovely diagram. http://www.crafty-games.com/files/image/Preview-Allomantic%20Table.jpg And for Roshar we have this diagram pointing to the focus being the symbols. http://brandonsanderson.com/images/wok/tWoK_ENDSHEET-FRONT-1-webres.jpg So the focus could be any of the things in the table in the Ars Arcanum- the gemstone, the body focus, or the divine attribute. I think your second idea, that there's a cognitive focus on ideas, is most likely. That is called the divine attribute in the table, so it is the most godly thing on the list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arondell Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 Another interesting fact is that the Alethi burn their dead to send them to the afterlife, so burning seems associated with the soul and its return to the spiritual realm. As I recall Alethi prefer to have the bodies soulcast to stone if they can afford it. This is referenced once in relation to Roshone's son and once when Bridge 4 is searching the chasms and they come across a lighteyes body. "Sometimes the bodies of fallen lighteyes would be recovered from the chasms by special teams so the corpse could be Soulcast into a statue. Darkeyes, unless they were very wealthy, were burned." Chapter 17 "Chasm Duty" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Observer Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 Giving us another chance to relate to Szeth and his "Return to the stones". Yay relevance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voidus Posted January 3, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 there is another possibility, gems they are the apparent power store for magic. On Scadrial metal is the power source or at least focus of the metallic arts. The Parshendi don't seem to use gems for switching forms and in every other case it's the stormlight that the gems contain that was used, not the gems themselves. Although it is possible as they do affect Soulcasting quite a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThunderClassy Posted January 4, 2013 Report Share Posted January 4, 2013 What about the body focusses? Like Inhalation, and so on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voidus Posted January 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2013 What about the body focusses? Like Inhalation, and so on Someone asked Brandon that once, I think we were given a 'yeah, kind of' so probably not exactly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nepene Posted January 4, 2013 Report Share Posted January 4, 2013 The Parshendi don't seem to use gems for switching forms and in every other case it's the stormlight that the gems contain that was used, not the gems themselves. Although it is possible as they do affect Soulcasting quite a bit. The magic of the fabrials depends on which gem you use. Roshar could be weird and have three focuses. Concepts, body focuses, and gems. Surgebinding would presumably be dependent on concepts like Syl, fabrial forging on gems for obvious reasons, voidbinding on body focuses by reason of elimination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voidus Posted January 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2013 Fabrials only need specific gems for the spren that can be bonded to them and Parshendi use spren as well so I doubt it's a separate one for each, could be a combination of all for all of them I suppose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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