The Fabrial Arms Race

[first void]

I hope we see some kind of fabrial that affects something other than the physical realm. I want soul-cannons, dang-it!

[Karger]

33 minutes ago, first void said:

I hope we see some kind of fabrial that affects something other than the physical realm. I want soul-cannons, dang-it!

Shard cannon's?  What are soul-cannons?

[first void]

fabrials can have different effects. We can see investiture happens in the soul. Attach person to energy type gun. Shoot using their soul. Laugh evilly. 

[Halyo_Alex]

25 minutes ago, first void said:

fabrials can have different effects. We can see investiture happens in the soul. Attach person to energy type gun. Shoot using their soul. Laugh evilly. 

We might have actually seen something like this

[Cosmere Spoilers]

Spoiler

Nazh's Shadegun might be exactly what you're thinking of, a Fabrial with a Threnody shade inside the gemstone.

 

[first void]

Now we just need a suitably evil scientist and maybe some kind of demonic cult.

[SteelShaper]

I've been trying to think what the most dangerous sorts of fabrials could be.  Personally, I think it would be pretty devastating if either side, or both, came up with a surge fabrial that could give even limited access to the surge of Division.

Before I move to what I think is a highly unlikely and apocalyptic scenario, I want to know: What caused the Shattered Plains to shatter? What destroyed Stormseat/Narak? Could it have been some kind of fabrial experiment gone wrong, was it one of the Unmade, or was it just a lot of really powerful surgebinders on both sides wielding conflicting forces that tore everything to pieces?

As for the Raysium dagger, the absolutely most horrifying possibility I can think of is that Odium wants to harvest the power of the old Oathpact and create anti-heralds who could somehow banish all the spren of Honor and Cultivation to Braize/Damnation, thereby preventing any new Radiants.  Or he could just be trying to get rid of his old enemies, or make sure that the Oathpact is thoroughly destroyed, because it might be hindering him in some way.  After all, right now he has to wait for the Everstorm to give the Fused new bodies, maybe if he kills and imprisons all the Heralds he can let the Fused re-corporate at will.

[+Oltux72]

20 hours ago, SteelShaper said:

I've been trying to think what the most dangerous sorts of fabrials could be.  Personally, I think it would be pretty devastating if either side, or both, came up with a surge fabrial that could give even limited access to the surge of Division.

Why? By which reason is Division worse than soulcasting to fire?

[SteelShaper]

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Why? By which reason is Division worse than soulcasting to fire?

You make a fair point, but I'm trying to think large scale here.  Soulcasting takes a great deal of training and large amounts of stormlight.  We don't yet know how much [relatively] stormlight it takes to use Division.  Think about it though-- which would you rather have? A bunch of soldiers with soulcasters [which the ardentia would just love, I'm sure] who will require lots and lots of training to be able to transform things, and who will rapidly deplete the fabrial's gemstones, cracking them and rendering them unusable, not to mention that they will eventually be transformed into essences themselves by prolonged usage. Or a bunch of soldiers armed with fabrials that could, theoretically, allow them to burn/decay/dissolve whatever they touched [if it isn't too invested], and that wouldn't require them to have learn to manipulate the cognitive realm?

I won't go so far as to say it isn't possible that they could figure out how to make new Soulcasters, since we are talking about rapid advances in fabrial technology.  I just think, personally, that Division fabrials would be the equivalent of suddenly introducing hand grenades to a medieval battlefield.  Time will tell.

[first void]

Divide atoms. Sanderson said he had some system of power like that, so i want spren powered nukes. Division at its finest. 

[+Bzhydack]

On 10.04.2020 at 8:24 AM, Oltux72 said:

OK, which concrete fabrials will have been created and/or widely deployed. Some suggestions:

• painrials - they are just too obvious to use if combined with a long rod or even wire
• the floating platform - too good for archers
• the bloodsucker - when Navani switched on the drying fabrial she feared it would suck the blood right out of people - usable idea in a war
• flame throwers - heating fabrials have the potential to be weaponized

There are also Alerters, can be great in a war, because of usefullness of early detection of enemy. Especialy flying enemy.

Also information exchange is key in any War, spanreeds will be crutial in army coordination. Maybe even we can see another usage of them - swiching on and off spanreed can be use as code, and small messages can be send without need of table.

The arms race will be probably few-dimentional. New fabrials, new forms for singers, maybe even standard technological progress. Race for shards will be probably important part of this, and it will be in many cases literal race. And here Fused are in favor - they canot die, is more of the, they also are more experienced. Probably they will obtain more Blades than Humans. So question is

Are aluminium properties known on Roshar?

[Halyo_Alex]

28 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

 So question is

Are aluminium properties known on Roshar?

Yes, they used Aluminum to hide from Voidspren in Kholinar during Oathbringer. Whether they really understand it and can make more of it, I don't know. But they know it exists.

[Karger]

We know there are deathspren.  You could probably just zap people with an attractor/enhanceor fabrial.

[+Bzhydack]

37 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

Yes, they used Aluminum to hide from Voidspren in Kholinar during Oathbringer. Whether they really understand it and can make more of it, I don't know. But they know it exists.

But did they know that Aluminum can stop Shardblade? Did someone saw the Nightblood Scabbard in action?

Aluminum is also relatively easy to make on Roshar, due to soulcasting. And having squads of Shardkillers is worth any price.

[first void]

I thought soulcasting aluminum was difficult, but i might be wrong. Also, aluminum is pretty weak, so a sheet of it does very little against the non-magical part of being hit by a huge sword by someone with super-strength. Also: soulcast thermite, add spark, melt enemy. 

[Tadas]

Arms race might also mean that there are more radiants/fused popping up and more people trained as soldiers, better fortifications.

Flying ships and restoring of Urithiru are almost guaranteed. Adolins dead shardblade becoming alive as well, so it's likely that it will be possible for others as well. An enormous stash of shards is very likely.

I think at some point bondsmith will very likely unite unmade into "made", maybe cleanse it from Odiums influence.  I also think we haven't seen the power of listeners songs fully, in dawnchant they say that humans don't hear Roshar, it's likely that songs are more than just quirky way to speak.

I am pretty sure that making fabrials by trapping spren will become more common, more powerful but it will also backfire at some point. There is a theme going on that slavery is bad.

[Halyo_Alex]

12 minutes ago, Tadas said:

I am pretty sure that making fabrials by trapping spren will become more common, more powerful but it will also backfire at some point. There is a theme going on that slavery is bad.

easy: politely ask spren to become a fabrial.

...wait most of those are lesser spren, that probably wouldn't work...

[first void]

The real question is if fabrials can develop to the point of effecting the other realms. Nightblood, but a gun.

[Frustration]

On 7/7/2020 at 1:35 AM, Tadas said:

I am pretty sure that making fabrials by trapping spren will become more common, more powerful but it will also backfire at some point. There is a theme going on that slavery is bad.

Is owning a chill making the chill a slave? In order to be a slave the Spren would have to be intelegent and those are better used for the Nahel bond anyway. 

[first void]

If the arms race develops as stockpiling radiants, wouldn't the society be made of better people? Also, the rarity of certain spren would help balance the powers. Can't have odium-killing fabrial nukes be overly common. Although we see a device capable of doing something to a shard in secret history.

[Karger]

12 minutes ago, first void said:

Although we see a device capable of doing something to a shard in secret history.

Not exactly.  That was a manipulation of connection.  Preservation was already dead at the time.  It was just a fast way of grabbing the power.

[first void]

He was mostly dead. Much better than dead-dead. If he was dead-dead, there wouldn't be a connection to snatch. Plus, this is still messing with the connection of vessel to shard. No small feat.

[Eternal Khol]

On 6/30/2020 at 6:56 AM, first void said:

Divide atoms. Sanderson said he had some system of power like that, so i want spren powered nukes. Division at its finest. 

Unfortunately, Division only splits the bonds of molecules, not the atoms themselves

 

 

Questioner

The Division Surge: does it actually split atoms or does it split the bonds of molecules?

Brandon Sanderson

It splits the bonds of molecules, it does not split atoms.

Questioner

That would be completely overpowered.

Brandon Sanderson

I have done an atom splitting magic originally in Dragonsteel. And wooow it was overpowered. So really, this is fiddling... You'll see what it does when I use it, but we'll not be splitting atoms. We're not creating nuclear reactio... or fission, so.

Leipzig Book Fair (March 24, 2017)

[+Bzhydack]

2 hours ago, Eternal Khol said:

Unfortunately, Division only splits the bonds of molecules, not the atoms themselves

 

 

Questioner

The Division Surge: does it actually split atoms or does it split the bonds of molecules?

Brandon Sanderson

It splits the bonds of molecules, it does not split atoms.

Questioner

That would be completely overpowered.

Brandon Sanderson

I have done an atom splitting magic originally in Dragonsteel. And wooow it was overpowered. So really, this is fiddling... You'll see what it does when I use it, but we'll not be splitting atoms. We're not creating nuclear reactio... or fission, so.

Leipzig Book Fair (March 24, 2017)

But we still can have fabrial-powered nukes, due to the Transformation surge. Just soulcast rock into Uranium235 in critical mass and we have it.

[+Oltux72]

2 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

But we still can have fabrial-powered nukes, due to the Transformation surge. Just soulcast rock into Uranium235 in critical mass and we have it.

Now we are getting into difficult territory. How long does a soulcasting take and are there intermediate stages?

[Subvisual Haze]

I think the theme is going to be ecological.  Enslaving massive numbers of spren to power an ever increasing number of fabrials is going to have unintended consequences on the functioning of life itself on Roshar.