Fabrials, the Third Magic of Roshar.

[cris34b]

From what I've seen, Surgebinding seems to be a pretty physical form of magic on Roshar. You know, healing people, making illusions, burning things, changing one thing onto another, and changing the gravity of things. All very physical aspects.

We know that Voidbinding is the second form of magic on Roshar, and that it is strongly associated with predicting the future, and is considered evil, despite Shards like Cultivation being able to predict the future, which is why I think this future prediction thing is not an actual part of Voidbinding. I believe Voidbinding to be mainly Spiritual in nature, which would explain it's evil associations.

 

Now, WoB is that the third form of magic on Roshar has to do with Fabrials. The translations of the Navani's Notebook pictures in WoK show that Fabrials are made by binding Spren to gemstones. Spren are Cognitive aspects of things in Roshar. From what I've seen in Navani's Notebook, this almost seems like an end-positive form of Hemalurgy, but instead of killing a person to steal their powers, you are capturing a spren to copy these powers. It also seems much more versatile, capable of not only very simple objects by use of a single Fabrial, but also capable of creating the emotion bracelet by combining ten fabrials. Oh, looky there. Ten.

Ten Surges, Ten Voidbindings, Ten Sprenbindings.

 

This is a very rough and incomplete theory, so feel free to comment and tear my theory apart, or to contribute and make this solid.

[Cromptj]

I like the theory, but could you link or quote the WoB that says this?

[Moogle]

Brandon has said there are 10 systems of magic, or 30 systems of magic, depending on how you look at it. This seems to relate to Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and the Ten Surgefabrials to me. They all let you manipulate the Ten Surges (though how you get the power is different in each case).

• Surgebinding: Form bond with a spren through honorable actions.
• Voidbinding: (Speculation) Create Investiture though sacrifice. Cultivation seems to have a boon/curse theme, and there's the legend about a man sacrificing his child to see the future. I guess you sacrifice something and gain the ability to manipulate the Surges. I'm not sure how seeing the future works in here, except that Cultivation was good at it. There's "ten levels of Voidbinding", too, which sounds exactly like 'leveling up' with your Calling in the Vorin religion. I wonder if they get all ten Surges? Maybe you have to like, chop off parts of your soul, like a reverse Hemalurgy, or (ew) chop off body parts or something. Actually, this sounds like Feruchemy...
• Fabrials: Use Surges through carefully crafted instruments. May require usage of bound spren.

I would guess that fabrials like heating fabrials don't count as a magic system in his quote about there being 30 systems. I'll bet you there's more than a thousand fabrials. It probably counts as 'technology' in Brandon's mind.

Edited February 11, 2014 by Moogle

[18th Shard]

My only problem with this is the fact fabrials don't necessarily work with only one person, they work with all. Your Spiritweb isn't affected at all. I would say that fabrials can duplicate all of the 30 magical effects and a few more due to the nature of Stormlight, but it's not one of the three groups.

[cris34b]

Oo

 

Brandon has said there are 10 systems of magic, or 30 systems of magic, depending on how you look at it. This seems to relate to Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and the Ten Surgefabrials to me. They all let you manipulate the Ten Surges (though how you get the power is different in each case).

• Surgebinding: Form bond with a spren through honorable actions.
• Voidbinding: (Speculation) Create Investiture though sacrifice. Cultivation seems to have a boon/curse theme, and there's the legend about a man sacrificing his child to see the future. I guess you sacrifice something and gain the ability to manipulate the Surges. I'm not sure how seeing the future works in here, except that Cultivation was good at it. There's "ten levels of Voidbinding", too, which sounds exactly like 'leveling up' with your Calling in the Vorin religion. I wonder if they get all ten Surges? Maybe you have to like, chop off parts of your soul, like a reverse Hemalurgy, or (ew) chop off body parts or something. Actually, this sounds like Feruchemy...
• Fabrials: Use Surges through carefully crafted instruments. May require usage of bound spren.

I would guess that fabrials like heating fabrials don't count as a magic system in his quote about there being 30 systems. I'll bet you there's more than a thousand fabrials. It probably counts as 'technology' in Brandon's mind.

On the aspect of leveling up Voidbinding, Kaladin's Surgebinding skills leveled up a bit more with each of the Ideals. So maybe they all have those levels?

[Moogle]

Oo

 

On the aspect of leveling up Voidbinding, Kaladin's Surgebinding skills leveled up a bit more with each of the Ideals. So maybe they all have those levels?

 

That's a neat idea. Surgebinding only has 5 (maybe only 4) 'level-ups' though. I think the ten levels of Voidbinding more likely mean you get access to all ten Surges at a terrible cost.

Edited February 11, 2014 by Moogle

[Cromptj]

But to clarify, where did Brandon specifically said that the third system of magic was related to fabrials?

[cris34b]

Oh god, I can't specifically remember where, but I remember a quoted conversation someone posted, and they asked about the supposed 30 magic systems on Roshar, and said they knew of Voidbinding and Surgebinding, what is the last one? And he was all like 'The third system has something to do with Fabrials.' I know that is a terribly vague answer and I'm sorry, I'll look for it. But in the mean time, if anyone else can find it first, that'd be amazing.

[KiManiak]

Oh god, I can't specifically remember where, but I remember a quoted conversation someone posted, and they asked about the supposed 30 magic systems on Roshar, and said they knew of Voidbinding and Surgebinding, what is the last one? And he was all like 'The third system has something to do with Fabrials.' I know that is a terribly vague answer and I'm sorry, I'll look for it. But in the mean time, if anyone else can find it first, that'd be amazing.

 

 

Here you go, question #1.

 

Cris34b did a pretty good job of paraphrasing.

[Quazar87]

Are we sure that Brandon doesn't just consider Soulcasting to be the other 10? It does use 10 different gems to do 10 different things.

[The Count]

Are we sure that Brandon doesn't just consider Soulcasting to be the other 10? It does use 10 different gems to do 10 different things.

That would not fit with the 30 magic systems since soulcasting only uses a single surge - Transformation.

IIRC Brandon has also confirmed somewhere that all surgebinding activities can be replicated by fabrials.

So I concur that the 10 or 30 means:

10 surges

3 ways to access them.

[WeiryWriter]

Here you go, question #1.

 

Cris34b did a pretty good job of paraphrasing.

 

Here is the actual quote (and a more direct link since that is a search page, which can change):

 

rags

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.

Brandon Sanderson

Fabrials are part of it.

 

(source)

[Gloom]

So since a fabrial can be made to do just about anything, it may have more to do with the creation of fabrials, or part of it may have to do with the creation of fabrials, rather than the fabrials themselves being a magic system.

[hoser]

While it is certainly possible.  I do not believe that we can conclude that there are exactly thirty magic systems, nor that fabrials can implement exactly ten of them.  In the quote above, the questioner makes a number of assumptions that Brandon does not confirm (as I read it). 

Interview: Jul, 2009

BarnesandNoble.com Book Club Q&A with Brandon Sanderson

BenFoley

You have stated in your blog that Mistborn had three magic systems (Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemurology) and also that The Way of Kings will have upwards of 20. For comparison, how many magic systems would you say the Wheel of Time series has? Two (One Power and the True Power)? How do you classify other abilities (not necessarily related to the One Power or True Power) such as Dreamwalking, viewing the Pattern, Wolfbrother-hoodness, and changing 'luck' or chance? Would you classify these abilities as a magic system in and of themselves? Has your chance to see the background material Robert Jordan left changed how you view these abilities?

Brandon Sanderson

This kind of gets sticky, as it's all up to semantics. Really, you could say that Mistborn had a different magic system for each type of Misting. But at the same time, you could argue that something like X-Men—with huge numbers of powers—all falls under the same blanked 'magic system.' And take Hemalurgy in Mistborn 3—is it a new magic system, or just a reinterpretation of Allomancy and Feruchemy?

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.

• I believe that we have 10 surgebindings that the Radiants can perform by themselves. 
• There are hints that spren can be corrupted, people can be possessed, thunderclasts and midnight essence can be created, and the future can be foretold as part of voidbinding. 
• Brandon has said that each Radiant order has something extra to itself.  Some think that windrunners have stormriding, for example. 
• The Radiant eye table has many extra lines that could indicate these special abilities and/or abilities that Radiants of differing orders could do in concert. 

It seems possible (to me, at least) that there are a minimum of about 12 to upwards of 30 sets of magic that can be done, independant of how they are done. 

Edited February 12, 2014 by hoser

[cris34b]

Here you go, question #1.

 

Cris34b did a pretty good job of paraphrasing.

Thank you so much for finding this. I knew I'd seen it somewhere. I wish I knew how you people are so good at finding quotes. Anyway, yes, this. This is exactly what I was referring to.

[Cromptj]

Thanks for that, I didn't mean to be pushy, I just wanted to make sure this theory had an actual basis and was not founded on a misremembering of a quote.

The fabrials don't necessarily seem to use all the same surges as surgebinding though. There is no surge I know of which can augment the strength of materials like certain fabrials can. Also, the emotion bracelet doesn't seem to fit any of the surges.

I think that the fabrials vs surgebinding are a bit lie feruchemy vs allomancy. They use the same materials as the base of their powers, and some of them have fairly similar effects, but some of the powers are completely different and weird.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Cromptj

[PorridgeBrick]

Thanks for that, I didn't mean to be pushy, I just wanted to make sure this theory had an actual basis and was not founded on a misremembering of a quote.

The fabrials don't necessarily seem to use all the same surges as surgebinding though. There is no surge I know of which can augment the strength of materials like certain fabrials can. Also, the emotion bracelet doesn't seem to fit any of the surges.

I think that the fabrials vs surgebinding are a bit lie feruchemy vs allomancy. They use the same materials as the base of their powers, and some of them have fairly similar effects, but some of the powers are completely different and weird.

While I do agree that not all fabrials use Surges, the strength augmenters might be using "Surface Tension", which can increase or decrease a material's rigidity.

[Aminar]

I can see this making sense if there are 10 surges, and three ways to power them(Surgebinding, Voidbinding, Sprenbinding.) That said, I really hope not... I'd rather see them be similar, but more complicated.