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There is more to Cultivation's magic than just Surgebinding or Old Magic.

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MiToRo94

Honor has Stormlight and Odium has Voidlight, is there a Cultivationlight? If so, can an Invested person use it as a third magic on Roshar or is a boon/curse the only magic of Cultivation/Nightwatcher?

Brandon Sanderson

There is more! I'll just say that, the rest is Read And Find Out. You are theorizing in an accurate direction.

Read For Pixels 2018 (Sept. 1, 2018)

If you think about it, it does make sense that there would be more. Half of the Nahel Bond spren are theorised to be more aligned towards Cultivation but the overall system of Surgebinding is more of Honor. The Nightwatcher too is one spren, there should be more than just her boons and banes.

We do know that something like Cultivationlight exists, Cultivation's Investiture in gaseous form:

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MiToRo94

When Dalinar first goes to meet the Nightwatcher and he sees Cultivation as well, presumably.

Brandon Sanderson

He does.

MiToRo94

They are surrounded by a green mist. So is that mist comparable to Preservation's mist on Scadrial? Would that be like "Cultivationlight?"

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, that is in the same sort of vein. 

Footnote: Related to the original question about Culitvationlight by MiToRo94
Idaho Falls signing (Dec. 29, 2018)

 

Some people assume that Fabrials are Cultivation's magic, due to some WoBs like:

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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.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

Which makes it seem like there are one for each of the Shards.

But I don't think so, after all aren't Fabrials just an outgrowth of the Surges? They are the same forces, being tapped into via artificial rather than the more organic means of spren bonding that we occurring on Roshar including the Parshendi/Singer/Listener (what would be the correct way to refer to them now?) Forms of Power, as well as the Nahel Bond itself.

We do also have this WoB though:

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Questioner

How many magic systems are in The Stormlight Archive, and how many of them haven't been seen?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say the only major one you haven’t seen is Voidbinding, it depends on how you count them. I count fabrials as one, Surgebinding as one, and Voidbinding as one. And then the Old Magic is kind of its own weird thing.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

And that made me wonder, what if, in regards to Cultivation's magic, Fabrials are, once again, "a part of it"

Let's observe the Old Magic then, which is confirmed to come from Cultivation for clues

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PrinceDusty

At the Pixel Project event, you talked about a further extent of Cultivation's magic than just the boon and bane? Are there any people alive at the end of Oathbringer who are influenced by that magic?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, Lift. Well, I guess that's a boon, isn't it? Yes, there are. But nobody on screen that has Cultivation magic, other than boons or curses from the Nightwatcher. Yes, there is such a thing, no, there's no one else on screen. But what Lift does is a hint.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)  

Now that's interesting...

There is also the magic from Ashyn which is related:

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Paleo (paraphrased)

Are the Ashynite magic system, in which micro organisms cause diseases and bestow powers, and the Old Magic related? You could sort of see the powers and the disease as a boon and a curse. If so, does the "Old" part come from that?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, they are related, but the name comes from the magic actually predating spren bonds.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

Okay, then what do they all have in common?

I think this:

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Questioner

I kind of envision the Old Magic working a little bit like Hemalurgy, where some-- takes a part of the Physical DNA of the person and transmutes it onto the Cognitive DNA because everything seems to be a Cognitive shift for the person, am I thinking along the right lines?

Brandon Sanderson

You are thinking along very-- Yes you are thinking along the right lines.  I won’t tell you exactly but you are thinking along the right lines.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)  

This has been theorized before, of course, notably here:

 

And it's only fitting, I suppose, that the Roshar and Scadrial comparisons come full circle here. Much like Feruchemy, Surgebinding is of two Shards but leans towards one, magitech! Fabrials and medallions (when will we get a canon name for this?) and this unnamed magic and Hemalurgy.

I'm proposing that Cultivation's magic might be a... metamagic like Hemalurgy. That it can be used to modify things via the metaphysical realms but in a more broader sense than Hemalurgy.

I suspect that we've already seen an example of this happening: Vyre's knife. A knife with a sapphire on the pommel that glowed when used against the Herald Jezrien. It shouldn't be impossible for Odium's forces to use it, after all:

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RandyD

Can a Shard just--like, say someone is using their magic system--can they stop the power from them being able to use it?

Brandon Sanderson

No, that's a bit like stopping the laws of physics. So, while they can circumvent laws of physics and things like that, but if you wanted to stop someone from using magic, smiting them would be the efficient way of making that happen, if you are capable of it in the system.

Skyward Seattle signing (Nov. 10, 2018)

We do see situations close to what's described above in multiple Cosmere books. The Fused have access to the Surges, Allomancy being stolen via Hemalurgy.

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17 minutes ago, Honorless said:

But I don't think so, after all aren't Fabrials just an outgrowth of the Surges?

No, there is no Surge for heating/cooling, warning or inflicting or numbing pain.

17 minutes ago, Honorless said:

I'm proposing that Cultivation's magic might be a... metamagic like Hemalurgy. That it can be used to modify things via the metaphysical realms but in a more broader sense than Hemalurgy.

That is very much what happens in the Purelake. You consume the fish and they make things happen to you. Lift also eats things.

 

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On 2/10/2020 at 0:24 AM, Oltux72 said:

No, there is no Surge for heating/cooling, warning or inflicting or numbing pain.

That is very much what happens in the Purelake. You consume the fish and they make things happen to you. Lift also eats things.

There could be more expressions of the Surges then we've seen so far. Heating, for instance, could just be friction. We haven't even seen a true Voidbinder yet. We do know that all the Surges are replicable via fabrials

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Argent (paraphrased)

Fabrials replicate Soulcasting abilities. Is it possible for fabrials to replicate all such Surgebinding abilities?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, good question! Fabrials can replicate all of the Surgebinding abilities.

Steelheart Chicago signing (Oct. 5, 2013)

Regardless, it doesn't really matter. Fabrials could just trap lesser spren and use them to fine tune effects without the need for Bonding and the theory still holds

 

Oh yeah, the Purelake fish too. I've already considered Lift's condition, which came from the Old Magic, in the topic. The Old Magic being used to modify the Spiritweb, which it probably does very often, supports the theory. I wonder what Lift asked for to get better access to the Cognitive Realm and converting food to get Stormlight, the latter part does bring to mind another parallel with the Metallic Arts, that of burning metals in Allomancy, oh well

Edited by Honorless
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I think your on the right track with this one.  It fits well within the overall pattern of sanderson magic.  It also would fit well within Cultivation thematically which is, at least in my opinion, should be a sort of organic nonreplicable magic with hard to understand rules and potentially dangerous or less well understood consequences.  It would make sense as what the Nightwatcher does pulling a desire into the CR and using it to fuel the part of the spirit web that grants the boon.  Perhaps the equal and opposite reaction is what keeps the Nightwatcher semi sane?

Edited by Karger
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Verrry interesting. I can see why this theory came to mind, and I do see how all the evidence comes together to suggest it. I would say the biggest parts that have me wanting to believe this is the bit about "fabrials are a part of" cultivation's magic system, and Vyre's knife seeming to trap something (which, if it has been explained, what it is currently escapes me) inside a gemstone, like a spren or stormlight inside a fabrial.

What I would be most intrigued by is if you could make a scalpel version of the vyre knife, and, with proper Intent or knowledge, use it to perform similar acts to the boons and curses, by cutting out little scraps of the spiritweb, pruning it, and allowing it to regrow in a new, more powerful way, perhaps nurtured by Cultivationlight to enhance the regrowing spiritweb fragment. This would make it a further parallel to Hemalurgy, then, because like how the key to hemalurgy is the Intent to make a spike and the knowledge of where to put the charged spike into the recipient, the key to this magic would be the intent to cut into the Spiritweb and the knowledge of what parts to prune away, to allow it to grow back better and stronger.

Heck, a shard-scalpel might even benefit this, since they don't cut the physical body if the soul is there. It would, however, have the typical drawback of needing to not hit the head or spine, which might limit some of the more dangerous but powerful effects.

As well, this would be limited by the knowledge of the practitioner, like hemalurgy, but also limited by the spiritweb of the being that you're cutting into. As well, cuts in the wrong places would have potentially undesirable or even fatal effects, even if not using a Shard-scalpel and hitting the spine/head.

 

Does this sound a little too crazy?

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I feel like noting that although it's possible for Fabrials to replicate the Surges, that seems to be extremely difficult to pull off- Hence Soulcasters being very rare and valuable, and the Regrowth Fabrial Nale has being seemingly unique- and the more basic Fabrials seem to do stuff that would be complicated to replicate via surgebinding. Like Navani's painrail doesn't map cleanly onto any of the Radiant powersets, but making it was probably as simple as trapping a Painspren in the right kind of gem. And producing heat could be doable with Abrasion or Division, but it's not really the intuitive way of using either Surge. So I don't think that 'an outgrowth of the surges' is the right way of thinking about them.

Indeed, I suspect that 'replicate' is exactly the right word for what things like Soulcasters are doing- they give you access to an ability that's almost identical to the Surge of Transformation for most purposes, but they're not actually Surgebinding. They have a similar relationship to the Surges as Azure's Blade does to a Shardblade; they're both attempt at reverse-engineering Surgebinding using a different magic system.

Which is to say that I'm in the camp that says that Cultivation's magic is the 'putting spren in gemstones' thing that we see in Fabrials, Listener Forms, Greatshells and possibly other places. Based on what we've seen from Fabrials, to seems what effect you get out of it depends on both the type of Spren and the type of Gemstone, which would mean there are hundreds if not thousands of possible effects. And since having the right mindset is so important for Listener Forms, we can infer that there's an Intent component in there too, the scope of what could be done expands even further. 

So it's a system that has limitless potential, but getting it to do exactly what you want it to takes a lot of knowledge, experimentation and skill. Which feels right for Cultivation's magic system to me.

Oh, on the note of Vyre's Knife: My personal theory is that it's a combination of Cultivation's unnamed system and Hemalurgy; I think it's a Raysium (or whatever we want to call Odium's godmetal) spike with a gemstone attached to the end. Possibly because a Gem by itself couldn't trap Jezrien against his will, but a spike alone couldn't hold his entire soul?

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22 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

No, there is no Surge for heating/cooling, warning or inflicting or numbing pain.

You don't really need everything to be a Surge. Fabrial Machines work by trapping spren. Since some can use the spren's association with the Surges, others should be able to  piggyback on the spren's "natural circuitry." Warning, for example could be analogous to someone strapping electrodes into your brain and then using... say, your fear response to what you see, to trigger an electronic buzzer.

Completely agree with Honorless in the sense that heat could be Abrasion (I'd be happy with arguments for Division or Tension too), and I would add that the Painrials could be using Cognitive Gravitation/Transportation.

All of this is largely speculation, mind. The point is only that arguments can be made to explain those things, without necessarily reverting to "Well, these things don't fit the 10 Surges so no."

@Honorless Really cool theory. I could never really fit what Odium's knife was, since we know it's not Hemalurgy but works on similar principles. This'd be a cool way to look at things, making it an act of forced Cultivation.

Though, just because I wasn't entirely clear on what you meant with Vyre's knife, the knife is said to have trapped the soul of Jezrein in the gem, much like how others trap spren in gems, just in this case, more forcefully.

Edited by asmodeus
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11 minutes ago, asmodeus said:

Completely agree with Honorless in the sense that heat could be Abrasion (I'd be happy with arguments for Division or Tension too

or even adhesion if you realy watned.

11 minutes ago, asmodeus said:

Though, just because I wasn't entirely clear on what you meant with Vyre's knife, the knife is said to have trapped the soul of Jezrein in the gem, much like how others trap spren in gems, just in this case, more forcefully.

Hm.  I think it also did something else.

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2 hours ago, Karger said:

 

Hm.  I think it also did something else.

Now I'm curious if the knife bestows any magical properties to the wielder like an honorblade, obviously would be a bit redundant if it was the same as his honorblade. Maybe it can hijack the direct connection to Honor and provide Stormlight now? That seems a bit overpowered though...

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4 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Now I'm curious if the knife bestows any magical properties to the wielder like an honorblade, obviously would be a bit redundant if it was the same as his honorblade. Maybe it can hijack the direct connection to Honor and provide Stormlight now? That seems a bit overpowered though...

Maybe it lets him sense the other Hearalds?

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27 minutes ago, Honorless said:

That was originally an intended function of the Honorblades actually. As for Vyre's knife, how would that work?

I can't remember if it's Canon or not if the Hearalds can sense each other. (Help!) I remember reading that about Honorblades, but think it was in an older version of WoK. 

If they can sense each other, it would work a lot like hemalurgy. The knife would have stolen the part of his soul that connected him to the others.

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17 minutes ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

I can't remember if it's Canon or not if the Hearalds can sense each other. (Help!) I remember reading that about Honorblades, but think it was in an older version of WoK.

It's not canon, it was from an older draft of WoK, with Taln's PoV

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6 hours ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

Maybe it lets him sense the other Hearalds?

43 minutes ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

I can't remember if it's Canon or not if the Hearalds can sense each other. (Help!) I remember reading that about Honorblades, but think it was in an older version of WoK. 

If they can sense each other, it would work a lot like hemalurgy. The knife would have stolen the part of his soul that connected him to the others.

We have enough information to know exactly how much of the Herald sensing ended up as canon and how.

The first hint comes directly from OB, practically exactly after Jezrein dies, from the fact that Shalash sensed his true death. She doesn't have her Honorblade with her, that's with the Shin - so this ability ended up being something innate to the Heralds themselves, and not the Honorblades.

Second, neither could Shalash tell Taln's location in OB, and had to get that from Mraize, nor could Kalak and Nale tell that all the other Heralds were at Gavilar's assassination party in the timeline of the prologues, so that's not innately a part of what the Heralds can sense about each other.

The only thing we don't know for sure is whether a Herald with their own Honorblade can sense the other Honorblades, though based on what happened in the Way of Kings prelude, we can safely say that they can't. The Heralds had to choose a place of meeting beforehand, indicating that they couldn't just detect that each other and make their way organically. Also, Kalak had to be explicitly told who'd lived and died there, which he would have straight up known if he could sense Taln at all.

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Thinking back on it, I think both what happened and the comparison with Hemalurgy would make more sense if instead of trapping Jezrien's soul, the dagger simply ripped out part of his Spiritweb, the part which sends his soul back to Braize when killed

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2 hours ago, Honorless said:

Thinking back on it, I think both what happened and the comparison with Hemalurgy would make more sense if instead of trapping Jezrien's soul, the dagger simply ripped out part of his Spiritweb, the part which sends his soul back to Braize when killed

Oh crap, does that mean Moash is immortal now? :P

At least when holding onto the dagger.

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On 2/17/2020 at 0:47 AM, Halyo_Alex said:

Oh crap, does that mean Moash is immortal now? :P

At least when holding onto the dagger.

Oh my... uh.. wielding the dagger might have some effects, possibly even before Jezrien was stabbed, given how it was handled & possibly why the Fused themselves didn't use it, but that reaction doesn't necessarily have to be magical in nature

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We don't know that. The Parsh existed before Cultivation, but Fabrials could very well not have been a thing before the Shattering; Surgebinding certainly wasn't:

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Pod

You’ve said that you would call Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and fabrials the three magics on Roshar. Would it be more accurate to say that Surgebinding followed and emulated fabrials and/or the possibility of fabrials or vice versa?

Brandon Sanderson

 Vice versa. Fabrials are... generally, Surgebinders first, fabrials second. 

Pod

So you couldn’t have done fabrials when it was just Adonalsium. 

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, before the [Shattering]? *deep in thought mmming*

Pod

Would the spren have still been able to do Surges then?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say... no. No, Adonalsium probably would not have let that happen. You could theoretically do it, if Adonalsium allowed it. 

Pod

He had boundaries against it. 

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So, I would say no. 

To me it makes sense to assume that the Forms were something that Cultivation added to them when she settled on Roshar.

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18 hours ago, Robot said:

I always assumed cultivation magic was fabrials/parsh gemhearts and that the fused are using Odium corrupted fabrial magic. 

Oh I think those are Cultivation but Cultivation as part of Adonalsium's nature, not Cultivation the Shard of Adonalsium

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2 hours ago, Dreamer said:

Oh I think those are Cultivation but Cultivation as part of Adonalsium's nature, not Cultivation the Shard of Adonalsium

That could be it too, Roshar as a whole seems very cultivated, to the point where I think it's not unreasonable to assume Cultivation went there and Honor followed. Although the Singer culture, if the oarshendi are anything to go by, seems very honorable 

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6 hours ago, Robot said:

That could be it too, Roshar as a whole seems very cultivated, to the point where I think it's not unreasonable to assume Cultivation went there and Honor followed. Although the Singer culture, if the oarshendi are anything to go by, seems very honorable 

Did you mean 'Parshendi'? Sometimes I love auto-correct (only when it happens to other people though, :D)

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