Scadrian vs. Rosharan magic post RoW

Publius · April 6, 2021

2 hours ago, therunner said:

Ashyn should not be out of speculation, as it was destroyed by surges (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/450/#e14434). The WoB directly states that dangerous manipulation of surges like that is possible. In addition, Knights Radiants have their powers restricted both by Oaths (which seems to have been forced on them by Ishar) and possibly by Honor as well, and both of these restriction can be lifted by Dalinar (as he is Bondsmith and 'representative' of sort for Honor), so Ashyn-level surgebinding is in principle achievable. In addition, Eila Stele directly states that people that came from different world were using 'dangerous powers of spren and Surges' that the Singers were forbidden from. As Honor was dying he also stated that Radiants would destroy Roshar as they did their homeworld.

The devastation of Ashyn involved a Dawnshard and I think we've already conceded that if Ishar was given a Dawnshard he stands a very good chance of singlehandedly devastating Scadrial. Without a Dawnshard, I am highly skeptical that Radiants would be capable of such feats without a Dawnshard amping them up.

Rysn swore that she would not bond a truespren. If Rysn became a Radiant, she would immediately be in violation of an Oath, which would probably kill her spren right then and there.

If anyone wants to seriously propose the Dawnshard be used in this conflict - just bear in mind that doing so probably requires that Rysn be killed in order for someone else to pick up her Dawnshard.

therunner · April 6, 2021

1 hour ago, Publius said:

The devastation of Ashyn involved a Dawnshard and I think we've already conceded that if Ishar was given a Dawnshard he stands a very good chance of singlehandedly devastating Scadrial. Without a Dawnshard, I am highly skeptical that Radiants would be capable of such feats without a Dawnshard amping them up.

Rysn swore that she would not bond a truespren. If Rysn became a Radiant, she would immediately be in violation of an Oath, which would probably kill her spren right then and there.

If anyone wants to seriously propose the Dawnshard be used in this conflict - just bear in mind that doing so probably requires that Rysn be killed in order for someone else to pick up her Dawnshard.

I rechecked Oathbringer and Stormfather does say that Honor raved about Dawnshards and refers to them as the weapons used to destroy Tranquiline Halls (Ashyn), so destruction of Ashyn did seem to require it and I was wrong on that account.

However the WoB linked (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/450-waterstones-row-release-event/#e14434) does not specify that Dawnshard is necessary, and since Bondsmith have those heightened surges without Dawnshard there might be a way to highten the surges without it, potentially through Bondsmith doing some Connection smithing?

While Rysn swore, oaths and Oaths are not the same thing. Rysn took up the dawnshard before swearing anything. If her orders Oaths did not contradict actions she would take with Dawnshard she and her spren would be fine. But I do agree that Dawnshard should probably not be included in this conflict as we have effectively zero understanding of it.

EDIT:

Apologize late edit, I was going through WoBs on surges and dawnshards and came upon something I think is interesting and possibly relevant for the discussion. It is specifically this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/444/#e14336)

Quote

alercah

The Sleepless presumably do not want her to swear a Radiant oath because she would be able to use the Dawnshard in conjunction with Surgebinding, and we know that that combination already destroyed one planet in the system so it's pretty understandable.

But there were a bunch of Soulcasters lying around and they didn't seem bothered. So is this one of the differences between Radiant Soulcasting and Soulcasting via the fabrial? That the Dawnshard cannot be used alongside the fabrial?

Brandon Sanderson

So, the Sleepless ARE capable of Radiant bonds. (I believe the back jacket of the first book implies as much, if I remember correctly.) However, things they at first thought were great are making them increasingly worried, for reasons that will come up (not related to them specifically) in this book and the next.

Soulcasting via a fabrial is way, way less dangerous than Radiant Soulcasting--which is in turn far less dangerous than unbound Soulcasting (meaning without oaths.)

FirebreatherRay

We've seen that the interpretation of the oaths is largely up to each individual spren (to the point that we've seen an entire Order of Radiants change their allegiance). Would it be possible for there to be a "sociopathic spren" that has interpreted the oaths so radically differently from the rest of their kind that it appears, to an outsider, that they are unbound in the same way the wielder of an honorblade is unbound? Or is there something essential about the nature of spren that prevents this?

Brandon Sanderson

I think that spren could go further than we've seen so far, and indeed, many of the older Skybreakers might be horrified by how far their order has gone. However, there are SOME fundamentals that even a spren with a very different interpretation wouldn't be able to abandon.

Dawnshard Annotations Reddit Q&A (Nov. 6, 2020)

Note the bolded part. There seems to be sort of hierarchy to surgebinding roughly going fabrial -> Radiant -> Unbound surgebinder.

We know that Radiants had to be formed by Ishar (and possibly Honor) artificially, as there were surgebinders before formation of Knights Radiant (for example Nohadon). There are other WoBs which seem to state that something is attainble to surgebinders but not to Radiants (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8690) and (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/444/#e14378). Together this seems to imply that the feats Radiants do are limited versions of full surgebinding abilities, although to what extent and in what manner is unknown.

Edited April 6, 2021 by therunner
added some more information

Frustration · April 6, 2021

2 hours ago, Publius said:

Rysn swore that she would not bond a truespren. If Rysn became a Radiant, she would immediately be in violation of an Oath, which would probably kill her spren right then and there.

If that were the Case the Sibling would be dead, Navani has broken oaths before.

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 6, 2021

8 hours ago, therunner said:

(which seems to have been forced on them by Ishar)

I strongly disagree with the assertion that Ishar put the Ideals into place. First off, he had to threaten Surgebinders into agreeing to whatever he did, which wouldn't make sense with a unilateral permanent change to the magic. Additionally, orders like the Lightweavers and Elsecallers do not have Ideals that really restrict them much, so if the Ideals were put in place to do that, I have to question most choices made. Lastly, a bond with a spren of Honor and Cultivation requiring growing into oaths feels like a pretty natural outgrowth of the Intents.

8 hours ago, therunner said:

Per WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/374/#e12145) separating out Ettmetal does not give you Lerasium and Atium but something else, there is a way to get Lerasium and Atium but it would be more involved. Along similar lines, from the mists we would most likely get these either ettmetal or more likely these two unknown metals, as there are two kinds of mists currently on Scadrial (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40/#e712).

Two things: one, ettmetal is a single element, so you're not separating it out into any two metals via "normal" means (unclear if nuclear fission or anything works with godmetals, so maybe you can do that I guess, but that's not really the same thing as it being made of two other metals).

Two, while Brandon on one occasion said there would be two kinds of mists, we've seen no indication of this, and this line in your second WoB:

Quote

They were changed in that they are no longer simply the raw power of Preservation; they're now a part of Harmony—so they no longer pull away from Hemalurgy in the same way as they used to.

to me indicates it's likely just one mist of Harmony now. But it's worth asking Brandon for clarification on at some point, I feel.

+Bzhydack · April 6, 2021

7 hours ago, therunner said:

We know that Radiants had to be formed by Ishar (and possibly Honor) artificially, as there were surgebinders before formation of Knights Radiant (for example Nohadon). There are other WoBs which seem to state that something is attainble to surgebinders but not to Radiants (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256/#e8690) and (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/444/#e14378). Together this seems to imply that the feats Radiants do are limited versions of full surgebinding abilities, although to what extent and in what manner is unknown.

Yeah, but we know also Magic Rules changed drasticly after destruction of Ashyn. Yes, on Ashyn Surges were unlimited and now the floor is lava, but this isnt the case now. Is very plausible Honor himself restricted use of Surges. He couldnt change Magic System, but he could bend its rules and weakened it indirectly (like Harmony changes Snapping - he didnt delete it, he makes it much less traumatic).

So, we now talking about Surges now, and while they are impressive, it seems like they are not capable of planetary scale destruction. For now. And hopefully, never again.

Shattered Plains are wierd to me, because they are different from anything we saw Surges are capable of. They bring to mind massive vibrations, so they could be somehow connected to the Rythms. But we can only wait, and speculate.

BTW. What do you think, can Duralumin Compounder Connect himself to Cognitive Realm and hop?

Frustration · April 6, 2021

6 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

BTW. What do you think, can Duralumin Compounder Connect himself to Cognitive Realm and hop?

I don't think so, if you had enough f-Nicrosil you could do it, but Duralumin no.

therunner · April 6, 2021

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I strongly disagree with the assertion that Ishar put the Ideals into place. First off, he had to threaten Surgebinders into agreeing to whatever he did, which wouldn't make sense with a unilateral permanent change to the magic. Additionally, orders like the Lightweavers and Elsecallers do not have Ideals that really restrict them much, so if the Ideals were put in place to do that, I have to question most choices made. Lastly, a bond with a spren of Honor and Cultivation requiring growing into oaths feels like a pretty natural outgrowth of the Intents.

I will try to defend my assertion on Ishar, even if I am not fully convinced myself. If I make any factual errors below, please correct me

Oaths currently have to be approved/accepted by Honor/Cultivation, yet appearance of surgebinders who bonded spren in mimicking Heralds was a surprise to them. If the oaths existed and needed to be accepted, they would have known the moment first human bonded the first spren, and then Ishar could have presumably acted sooner. Of course it could have been poorly timed in the middle of pause between Desolations.
Ishar threatened them, not persuaded them. That to me suggests inherent imbalance of power in the dialogue, for all we know it could have been 'Accept these new restrictions, or I am gonna kill you.' that would be a threat. I do not think Ishar would want to just massacre the surgebinders, after all they are an incredibly useful tool in Desolations, for the first time Heralds could have allies close to their level. If surgebinders appeared only after Fused gained surges, Heralds would be foolish to waste help.
1. Alternatively, back then Ishar was most likely restricted by Honor, as his power came from Honorblade, so he might have had to act within Intent of Honor. So he could have helped make sure new bonds will follow Knights Radiants structure, and then convince the already existing ones to join.
The spren original mimicked bond of Honor to Heralds, no Cultivation involved.
1. While Cultivation was already present on the Roshar, the pact between Heralds and Honor was only between them as far as we know.
2. Multi-shardic planets seem to have magic systems for individual shards and for combinations (although this might not be hard rule).
3. Therefore, having Cultivating elements be present in the original bonds of surgebinders and spren seems odd to me. I feel that Oaths might have been placed ex-facto over the original system, effectively turning original mono-shardic system into di-shardic one, with the Oaths themselves being not artifically chosen but natural out-growth of the Intent of Cultivation.
The growth in power with Oaths feels to clean? They start with limited access to given surges and no blade or plate, and have to slowly earn them, effectively mimicking progress through military ranks.
Finally, the plate also to me feels oddly good for what Radiants are expected to do, i.e. fight against Fused. It resists external application of investiture, enhances wearers and aids their sense. Plus it is not actually formed from the spren the Radiant has bond to, but from others that are unrelated outside of 'species' (is that a good word for type of spren?)

It is possible, even likely that a lot of the above is wrong, but I do think that Ishar had some hand in the structural aspects of Knights Radiant, and not just by telling people who already bonded the same type of spren to organize themselves.

However, even if I am wrong on the above, the WoB still implies existence of more powerful/less restricted surgebinding and it is specifically stated that it is surgebinding without Oaths. It is possible that the only means to access it are Honorblades (those do not require Oaths) unless they had restriction 'build' in.

2 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Two things: one, ettmetal is a single element, so you're not separating it out into any two metals via "normal" means (unclear if nuclear fission or anything works with godmetals, so maybe you can do that I guess, but that's not really the same thing as it being made of two other metals).

Two, while Brandon on one occasion said there would be two kinds of mists, we've seen no indication of this, and this line in your second WoB:

to me indicates it's likely just one mist of Harmony now. But it's worth asking Brandon for clarification on at some point, I feel.

Good point on ettmetal being only one element, I am bit surprised that slipped my attention.

I was surprised by that WoB on two mists as well, but I felt it honest to mention it, as it might make creation of Lerasium/Atium more easier if they exist. As it would require only 'distilling' the new P-aligned/R-aligned metal and then transmuting those into Lerasium/Atium, or maybe directly distilling Lerasium/Atium.

EDIT:

10 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Yeah, but we know also Magic Rules changed drasticly after destruction of Ashyn. Yes, on Ashyn Surges were unlimited and now the floor is lava, but this isnt the case now. Is very plausible Honor himself restricted use of Surges. He couldnt change Magic System, but he could bend its rules and weakened it indirectly (like Harmony changes Snapping - he didnt delete it, he makes it much less traumatic).

So, we now talking about Surges now, and while they are impressive, it seems like they are not capable of planetary scale destruction. For now. And hopefully, never again.

Shattered Plains are wierd to me, because they are different from anything we saw Surges are capable of. They bring to mind massive vibrations, so they could be somehow connected to the Rythms. But we can only wait, and speculate.

BTW. What do you think, can Duralumin Compounder Connect himself to Cognitive Realm and hop?

That is possible, but those restriction could possibly removed as Honor in his dying moments seems to fear those feats of power being done again. For the sake of Roshar I also hope surges remain restricted.

I do agree that Shattered Plains are weird, the pseudo-cymatic effect of cracks suggest use of Cohesion of the kind Venli used, but on much larger scale. Stoneshaping seems to have been done by Singers in the deep past, so maybe something like that? It honestly feels like if someone turned whatever was used in building Dawncities to destructive ends, and etymology then suggests it could have been a Dawnshard responsible.

On Duralumin compounding to realm hop, I personally do not see it. Even Elsecallers create mini-perpendicularities to transition, and neither Dalinar nor Ishar seem capable of such feat. I think it might give them a glimpse of Cognitive.

Addendum: I hope I do not come off as combative, I was writing this in a bit of a hurry, so I might sound terse.

Edited April 6, 2021 by therunner
added respose to Bzhydack

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 6, 2021

30 minutes ago, therunner said:

Oaths currently have to be approved/accepted by Honor/Cultivation

Kaladin, Lopen, and Venli are the only ones we've heard have their Ideals accepted by someone besides their spren, and Syl tells the Stormfather he cannot intervene if Kaladin swears the Ideal, so this seems more to be a formality than a requirement. (The Stormfather does later tell Eshonai he accepted her oath, but we did not hear anything when the oath itself was sworn at all.)

34 minutes ago, therunner said:

Ishar threatened them, not persuaded them. That to me suggests inherent imbalance of power in the dialogue, for all we know it could have been 'Accept these new restrictions, or I am gonna kill you.'

The thing is, if he's magically changing how the process of bonding fundamentally works, why would this be necessary?

35 minutes ago, therunner said:

Alternatively, back then Ishar was most likely restricted by Honor, as his power came from Honorblade, so he might have had to act within Intent of Honor. So he could have helped make sure new bonds will follow Knights Radiants structure, and then convince the already existing ones to join.

I mean, threatening to hunt down and kill them all doesn't feel much more Honory, lol.

36 minutes ago, therunner said:

The spren original mimicked bond of Honor to Heralds, no Cultivation involved.

Yes, but unlike the Honorblades, the spren themselves are a mix. It seems plausible to me that their attempt to imitate it would end up incorporating both, because the Investiture likes to work that way. (I've actually got a theory that Soulcaster fabrials were an earlier attempt at replicating the Honorblades, which functions more like them but is far more restricted, and the Radiant bond was discovered as a way to grow more powerful, partly because it aligns with their Intent much better.)

40 minutes ago, therunner said:

The growth in power with Oaths feels to clean? They start with limited access to given surges and no blade or plate, and have to slowly earn them, effectively mimicking progress through military ranks.

I agree it's very neat, but imo, it being somewhat structured matches the Intent of Honor very well. And even then, it's not quite as neat as it looks on first glance — see Kaladin, who had not moved fully up to the next step, but had a strong enough bond and aligned closely enough to the Intent of Honor that he could push through things that ordinarily would require the Fourth Ideal (pushing through the fabrial, commanding the windspren), as did Teft. The Ideals imo seem to be a lot more of a gradient than they first appear, though there still are some discrete steps.

44 minutes ago, therunner said:

Finally, the plate also to me feels oddly good for what Radiants are expected to do, i.e. fight against Fused. It resists external application of investiture, enhances wearers and aids their sense.

Makes sense, that's what their goal with the bond was. Wouldn't be surprised if, were the bond worked out in another scenario, Plate ended up manifesting a bit differently, but the goal of the bond both when it was first discovered and when the Radiants were bonding throughout was to lead and protect between and during Desolations. We've been told that the reason deadeyes default to Shardblades is because the bond was worked out as an attempt to mimic the Honorblades, for an example of something similar.

47 minutes ago, therunner said:

resists external application of investiture

Isn't this mostly just because as a godmetal, it's super Invested?

48 minutes ago, therunner said:

Plus it is not actually formed from the spren the Radiant has bond to, but from others that are unrelated outside of 'species' (is that a good word for type of spren?)

It forming via specifically the cousinspren of the order is interesting, but I can see some potential reasons for it. Main one I've settled on is that the Radiant bond getting deep enough forms a more general Connection to the truespren and similar entities, which the cousinspren then can follow and bond the Radiant so that they too can be pulled into the Physical. I'm thinking of it as a similar but more limited version of what Brandon outlines for why spren tend to bond within families and close-knit groups:

Quote

In-world reasoning is that, when these bonds are forming, these human beings have bonds to other people, and that naturally leads the spren along those bonds. When Kaladin is forming a bond with a windspren [honorspren], and windspren [honorspren] start looking, or even other sapient spren start looking for people, they're going to notice. Remember, they're coming into the Physical Realm, it's very hard for them. They're doing this partially from the Cognitive Realm, searching and trying to get pulled through by the attention and the bond that is forming. They're naturally led to other people who are related. You could even say that, because of Tien, Syl found Kaladin.

YouTube Livestream 23 (Dec. 17, 2020)

It just takes a powerful Connection to fully let the cousinspren piggyback off it enough to come through Physically, imo.

53 minutes ago, therunner said:

It is possible, even likely that a lot of the above is wrong, but I do think that Ishar had some hand in the structural aspects of Knights Radiant, and not just by telling people who already bonded the same type of spren to organize themselves.

Fair enough. It's a reasonable opinion and I can see how someone would come to it, though I do disagree.

54 minutes ago, therunner said:

I was surprised by that WoB on two mists as well, but I felt it honest to mention it, as it might make creation of Lerasium/Atium more easier if they exist. As it would require only 'distilling' the new P-aligned/R-aligned metal and then transmuting those into Lerasium/Atium, or maybe directly distilling Lerasium/Atium.

Yeah, if there actually are two mists, it'd definitely make it easier than having to split it, I think. Though, I'm curious if the tones can split it, if played with the correct Intent.

1 hour ago, Bzhydack said:

Is very plausible Honor himself restricted use of Surges.

57 minutes ago, therunner said:

That is possible, but those restriction could possibly removed as Honor in his dying moments seems to fear those feats of power being done again. For the sake of Roshar I also hope surges remain restricted.

The restrictions do seem to be quite possibly gone, which is.... worrying. From what the Stormfather says, the restrictions started breaking down during Melishi's time. RoW 66:

Quote

“I see them,” he whispered. “Finally.”

The Stormfather rumbled in the back of his mind. I was not certain it could be done, he said. The power of Bondsmiths was tempered by Honor, for the good of all. Ever since the destruction of Ashyn.

“How did you know about this ability?” Dalinar said, eyes still closed.

I heard it described before I fully lived. Melishi saw these lines.

“The last Bondsmith,” Dalinar said. “Before the Recreance.”

The same. Honor was dying, possibly mad.

RoW 111:

Quote

Are you all right? he asked the Stormfather.

Yes. He tried to steal our bond. It should not be possible, but Honor no longer lives to enforce his laws.…

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I do agree that Shattered Plains are weird, the pseudo-cymatic effect of cracks suggest use of Cohesion of the kind Venli used, but on much larger scale.

I've seen some propose superpowered Cohesion (to make the stone more moldable) + Illumination (to produce the massive sound). Though, it's plausible to me that a large enough bit of Surgebinding might produce a sound on its own, considering bronzepulses are a thing.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

It honestly feels like if someone turned whatever was used in building Dawncities to destructive ends, and etymology then suggests it could have been a Dawnshard responsible.

I've previously liked the idea it was using the Honorblades at their theoretical max power, drawing through incredible amounts of Investiture (we've been told the Heralds could obtain raw levels of power no Radiant could match), and destroying the city to protect its Oathgate (Venli mentions that the towers the Fused were having them build in Kholinar reminded her of a building in Narak), but Dawnshard does seem the more logical theory. I just really like the idea of a Silver Kingdom, fed up with the Desolations that were hitting multiple times a decade at this point, defecting to Odium to try and get it over with, and the Heralds essentially nuking them in response. (I don't think they ordinarily would have access to quite that level of power, but if one nation betrayed the others to join Odium, Honor might make an exception to his limits.)

I agree Dawnshard seems more likely, though.

Tangential note from Way of Kings Prime:

Spoiler

I like the idea more with these bits from Prime (note for those who haven't read it, "Awakening" was the old name for Soulcasting), though still agree that a Dawnshard seems more likely, considering Ashyn and the Dawncities:

WoKP 84:

Quote

The new city lay almost in the same place as the city of Kanar once had. Looking down upon it, Taln was surprised to realize that he felt nothing.

What did you expect? he thought, shaking his head. Two thousand years had passed since Kanar’s fall—or, more accurately, since the Heralds’ destruction of the city. Nothing was left of the grand city that had once stood over the bay. After the city’s defeat, its very stones had been changed to water by Marnah Awakeners, Kanar’s substance sent to mix with the ocean and be forgotten.

WoKP 55:

Quote

Awakeners, thankfully, were rarely used in battle. Taln well remembered the chaos of the Awakener Wars of the Third Epoch—wars the Heralds themselves had sparked to overthrow Kanar.

1 hour ago, Bzhydack said:

BTW. What do you think, can Duralumin Compounder Connect himself to Cognitive Realm and hop?

I agree with therunner, I don't personally see it being the case. I think it's possible Brandon could decide to let them, but as of yet I don't think Connecting to a Realm will allow you to hop to it (though I'll admit I'm a bit confused over how Connection to a Realm is even a thing, considering Connection is a Spiritual phenomenon, so I can't really say it with much certainty). Mostly going off gut feeling, though.

therunner · April 6, 2021

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Kaladin, Lopen, and Venli are the only ones we've heard have their Ideals accepted by someone besides their spren, and Syl tells the Stormfather he cannot intervene if Kaladin swears the Ideal, so this seems more to be a formality than a requirement. (The Stormfather does later tell Eshonai he accepted her oath, but we did not hear anything when the oath itself was sworn at all.)

Good point. Thinking about it, are the only orders we did not hear have their Oaths be actively accepted be Lightweavers and Skybreakers? I would think Bondsmiths would be special case either way. Also haven't we also seen Venli have her words rejected and being told she does not mean them enough? If I remember correctly that would imply that Cultivation/Honor have some say in what is good enough, so it might not be simple formality.

Nohadon in vision complains that not all spren are as discerning as Honorspren, suggesting some spren bonded not so savory people. If the Shards had a say in it back then, such bonds could have been limited as Venli is (if I remember correctly).

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The thing is, if he's magically changing how the process of bonding fundamentally works, why would this be necessary?

Hmm, good question. It might break the bond forcibly, if the surgebinder was not worthy according to new mechanics, which might be traumatic for both the spren and the surgebinder?

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I mean, threatening to hunt down and kill them all doesn't feel much more Honory, lol.

Yeah, that is true That is why I meant this as alternative, where Ishar would not be so...forceful.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Yes, but unlike the Honorblades, the spren themselves are a mix. It seems plausible to me that their attempt to imitate it would end up incorporating both, because the Investiture likes to work that way. (I've actually got a theory that Soulcaster fabrials were an earlier attempt at replicating the Honorblades, which functions more like them but is far more restricted, and the Radiant bond was discovered as a way to grow more powerful, partly because it aligns with their Intent much better.)

That is a complication, true. But would the nature of the spren affect the bonding process? All the radiant spren seem to have mostly the same process, dispite having differing levels of H/C investitures. Plus enlightened spren also seem to work within this framework despite having Odium investiture in them as well.

Interesting theory on surge fabrials, it does sound likely.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I agree it's very neat, but imo, it being somewhat structured matches the Intent of Honor very well. And even then, it's not quite as neat as it looks on first glance — see Kaladin, who had not moved fully up to the next step, but had a strong enough bond and aligned closely enough to the Intent of Honor that he could push through things that ordinarily would require the Fourth Ideal (pushing through the fabrial, commanding the windspren), as did Teft. The Ideals imo seem to be a lot more of a gradient than they first appear, though there still are some discrete steps.

Actually this presence of gradient suggests to me that the Oaths were placed on top of original smoother progression. Going by RoW, Kaladin was functionally as Connected to his spren as almost any 4th Oath Radiant, but he could not access the powers of the 4th Oath fully until swearing the Oath, suggesting the lack of Oath limited his power sort of like closed dam.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Makes sense, that's what their goal with the bond was. Wouldn't be surprised if, were the bond worked out in another scenario, Plate ended up manifesting a bit differently, but the goal of the bond both when it was first discovered and when the Radiants were bonding throughout was to lead and protect between and during Desolations. We've been told that the reason deadeyes default to Shardblades is because the bond was worked out as an attempt to mimic the Honorblades, for an example of something similar.

Isn't this mostly just because as a godmetal, it's super Invested?

It forming via specifically the cousinspren of the order is interesting, but I can see some potential reasons for it. Main one I've settled on is that the Radiant bond getting deep enough forms a more general Connection to the truespren and similar entities, which the cousinspren then can follow and bond the Radiant so that they too can be pulled into the Physical. I'm thinking of it as a similar but more limited version of what Brandon outlines for why spren tend to bond within families and close-knit groups:

It just takes a powerful Connection to fully let the cousinspren piggyback off it enough to come through Physically, imo.

I am not sure if that was the original intent of the surgebinders at least. Of spren I could see it, but since humanity seems to have often lost a lot of knowledge (both scientific and historical) I think most surgebinders would be motivated by more mundane goals than protection of mankind.

True, but I am thinking that the plate was artificially added to help with fighting, it being heavily invested was a goal, and so they chose the mechanism that would facilitate that. After all, any proper Knight needs Plate.

Interesting idea on the Connection, and the parallel with more bonds within close groups makes sense to me.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Fair enough. It's a reasonable opinion and I can see how someone would come to it, though I do disagree.

Fair enough, hopefully the fifth books reveals a bit on this

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Yeah, if there actually are two mists, it'd definitely make it easier than having to split it, I think. Though, I'm curious if the tones can split it, if played with the correct Intent.

I would say Tones would not help, unless the Tones can vary based on Vessel. If the Tones are of Shard, than Ruin should still have the same tone even with different vessel. And I would think that Tones would stay the same, otherwise Navani will quickly discover something has changed about Odium.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The restrictions do seem to be quite possibly gone, which is.... worrying. From what the Stormfather says, the restrictions started breaking down during Melishi's time. RoW 66:

It is interesting Stormfather mentions only restrictions on Bondsmiths. Either he does not know about others, or only Bondsmiths were restricted (I doubt this), or restrictions on Bondsmiths were first to fail/easiest to overcome.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I've seen some propose superpowered Cohesion (to make the stone more moldable) + Illumination (to produce the massive sound). Though, it's plausible to me that a large enough bit of Surgebinding might produce a sound on its own, considering bronzepulses are a thing.

I've previously liked the idea it was using the Honorblades at their theoretical max power, drawing through incredible amounts of Investiture (we've been told the Heralds could obtain raw levels of power no Radiant could match), and destroying the city to protect its Oathgate (Venli mentions that the towers the Fused were having them build in Kholinar reminded her of a building in Narak), but Dawnshard does seem the more logical theory. I just really like the idea of a Silver Kingdom, fed up with the Desolations that were hitting multiple times a decade at this point, defecting to Odium to try and get it over with, and the Heralds essentially nuking them in response. (I don't think they ordinarily would have access to quite that level of power, but if one nation betrayed the others to join Odium, Honor might make an exception to his limits.)

I agree Dawnshard seems more likely, though.

That seems likely to me as well, I wonder if Bondsmith with loosened restrictions could help with this, as we have seen Dalinar 'empower' Shallans Illusions. Somehow the idea of powerful Surgebinding producing loud sounds is terrifying to me.

Unrestricted Honorblade seems like a possibility as well, and I like the image you are presenting. Cutting completely loose with powers can be awe-inspiring.

Edited April 6, 2021 by therunner
spelling, clarified wording in one sentence

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 6, 2021

1 minute ago, therunner said:

Thinking about it, are the only orders we did not hear have their Oaths be actively accepted be Lightweavers and Skybreakers?

I believe so, though we don't have a lot of samples. (Possibly Willshapers too, depending on if the Stormfather saying afterwards but not saying it in the big boomy voice at the time is counted, because that's kinda odd and doesn't match the others we've seen.)

Also depends on if Teft heard a voice offscreen or not, since iirc it cuts right after his words, and before any acceptance may or may not occur.

2 minutes ago, therunner said:

Also haven't we also seen Venli have her words rejected and being told she does not mean them enough?

I had interpreted that as her just genuinely not living up to it enough to be able to swear it, and the voice letting her know of this fact to prevent it being anticlimactic and having nothing happen, as opposed to the voice preventing it, but it's unclear, for sure.

4 minutes ago, therunner said:

Nohadon in vision complains that not all spren are as discerning as Honorspren, suggesting some spren bonded not so savory people.

I mean, yeah. Happens now too. Gaz is a sack of crem but bonded, Malata is working directly against the other Radiants and for Odium but bonded, etc.

11 minutes ago, therunner said:

All the radiant spren seem to have mostly the same process, dispite having differing levels of H/C investitures.

I've been of the opinion the difference might not actually be super large, considering that, when their essence is manifested physically, Brandon's said he'd consider it all one metal.

12 minutes ago, therunner said:

Plus enlightened spren also seem to work within this framework despite having Odium investiture in them as well.

I imagine there may be some differences with the addition of Odium (we know there'll be some differences between him and normal Truthwatchers, but not whether this means the structure of the Ideals or just the specific Ideals themselves), but I expect either way it would turn out somewhat similar, due to also having H&C in large amounts. I'm very very curious to see how Renarin's bond works, since there's clearly some large differences (Glys uses Stormlight to recreate the vision, for example).

42 minutes ago, therunner said:

Actually this presence of gradient suggests to me that the Oaths were placed on top of original smoother progression. Going by RoW, Kaladin was functionally as Connected to his spren as almost any 4th Oath Radiant, but he could not access the powers of the 4th Oath fully until swearing the Oath, suggesting the lack of Oath limited his power.

Fair enough. Like I said, it to me makes sense that the magic that is in large part Honor requires an actual oath and commitment, but I can see where you're coming from as well.

43 minutes ago, therunner said:

I am not sure if that was the original intent of the surgebinders at least. Of spren I could see it, but since humanity seems to have often lost a lot of knowledge (both scientific and historical) I think most surgebinders would be motivated by more mundane goals than protection of mankind.

I've got a two-part response:

The Radiants were intended to keep knowledge around, iirc, and the Silver Kingdoms were seemingly a lot more stable than their predecessors (considering that, you know, they existed for more than one Desolation, lol), so I think the knowledge could have stuck around.
The bond had to be discovered, which I would guess means that the newer spren bonding had to learn (by example or by actual instruction, I don't know) from other spren who'd already worked it out about how to do it in this way. Imo, that opens things up a bit for why it always happened this exact way.

46 minutes ago, therunner said:

True, but I am thinking that the plate was artificially added to help with fighting, it being heavily invested was a goal, and so they chose the mechanism that would facilitate that. After all, any proper Knight needs Plate.

Ah, I see what you're saying now. That's fair.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I would say Tones would not help, unless the Tones can vary based on Vessel. If the Tones are of Shard, than Ruin should still have the same tone even with different vessel. And I would think that Tones would stay the same, otherwise Navani will quickly discover something has changed about Odium.

In case I wasn't clear, what I meant was, say, playing Preservation's tone to split Pres's mist out of Harmony's (or maybe you'd need to play both Pres and Ruin, but with the Intent to split instead of harmonize). I don't think the tone would need to be Vessel-specific for that?

1 hour ago, therunner said:

It is interesting Stormfather mentions only restrictions on Bondsmiths. Either he does not know about others, or only Bondsmiths were restricted (I doubt this), or restrictions on Bondsmiths were first to fail/easiest to overcome.

I could see the Bondsmith restrictions being the first to fall, because the power's so tied into Honor. It might also just be that the restrictions on Bondsmiths were way more obvious, and so he wasn't sure a.) what was restricted for others or b.) if those still held (the Ars Arcanum mentions Cohesion is restricted to avoid Yolen's probably-nuclear mistakes, but how often are people going to stumble upon that one?). Definitely interesting, I agree.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

That seems likely to me as well, I wonder if Bondsmith with loosened restrictions could help with this, as we have seen Dalinar 'empower' Shallans Illusions.

Dalinar's stuff with Shallan's visions is a lot more specific than just boosting, so I'm not sure. I think it's possible it could be the case, though.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Cutting completely loose with powers can be awe-inspiring.

Yeah, these powers have some insane potential if fully unrestricted and given a good power source. Era 4 will probably not be fun for any planets who find themselves on the bad end of Roshar or Scadrial.... If it comes to a conflict between the two as often theorized, I imagine it'll be proxy war style for a long time to prevent the complete and utter glassing of multiple entire planets.

therunner · April 7, 2021

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I believe so, though we don't have a lot of samples. (Possibly Willshapers too, depending on if the Stormfather saying afterwards but not saying it in the big boomy voice at the time is counted, because that's kinda odd and doesn't match the others we've seen.)

Also depends on if Teft heard a voice offscreen or not, since iirc it cuts right after his words, and before any acceptance may or may not occur.

Willshapers do seem to be edge case, but the Venli examples make me lean towards some voice being involved.

For Teft, I think we can go by Kal and the fact that every other Windrunners seemingly had to have their words accepted, so I would assume it is the same.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I had interpreted that as her just genuinely not living up to it enough to be able to swear it, and the voice letting her know of this fact to prevent it being anticlimactic and having nothing happen, as opposed to the voice preventing it, but it's unclear, for sure.

That was my reading at first as well (and still mostly is), however the question is, who/what decides if they are living up to ideal? I see three options

Shard, either H or C take a quick peak at Radiant-to-be and decide if they are living up to the Ideal.
Spren, the individual spren can accept oaths at their discretion.
Mechanics of Nahel bond itself, the magic knows if the Oath is truly lived up to/fully meant or not.

Personally, I think currently it is some mix of options 1./3. and before Knights Radiants were formed it was option 2. with maybe a bit of option 3. (i.e. magic decides, but the spren can influence if it counts or not).

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I mean, yeah. Happens now too. Gaz is a sack of crem but bonded, Malata is working directly against the other Radiants and for Odium but bonded, etc.

I mean yeah, Gaz definitely acts bad, but to me his POV showed that he does that because of being paranoid and fearful. Frankly I pitied him somewhat afterwards, and I think he himself did not want to be like that, but could not bring himself to act against it. Shallan seems to have given him some measure of hope that he can be better. But yeah, he is not exactly exemplar Radiant.

Malata is more complicated than just working for Odium. She is part of Diagram remember, so I think she may honestly believe that Taravangian's actions are necessary, and hurting humans is a bonus for her spren.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I've been of the opinion the difference might not actually be super large, considering that, when their essence is manifested physically, Brandon's said he'd consider it all one metal.

I imagine there may be some differences with the addition of Odium (we know there'll be some differences between him and normal Truthwatchers, but not whether this means the structure of the Ideals or just the specific Ideals themselves), but I expect either way it would turn out somewhat similar, due to also having H&C in large amounts. I'm very very curious to see how Renarin's bond works, since there's clearly some large differences (Glys uses Stormlight to recreate the vision, for example).

Good point on the metal composition. Despite how the spren may act, they are all probably something like 60/40 at most, some leaning more towards C and some towards H.

If Glys has enough Odium's investiture I would expect the bond to now have some mechanics related to emotions, if we have bond for Honor and Oaths for Cultivation. Although Glys is red, so he might not have that much Odium's investiture to begin with, being mostly just corrupted/co-opted. I am also fan of the theory that spren Voidbind, not people (https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/97133-spren-can-voidbind-not-people/ ).

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Fair enough. Like I said, it to me makes sense that the magic that is in large part Honor requires an actual oath and commitment, but I can see where you're coming from as well.

Fair, this is also reasonable position given what we know.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I've got a two-part response:

The Radiants were intended to keep knowledge around, iirc, and the Silver Kingdoms were seemingly a lot more stable than their predecessors (considering that, you know, they existed for more than one Desolation, lol), so I think the knowledge could have stuck around.

The bond had to be discovered, which I would guess means that the newer spren bonding had to learn (by example or by actual instruction, I don't know) from other spren who'd already worked it out about how to do it in this way. Imo, that opens things up a bit for why it always happened this exact way.

I do not understand the first point. Surgebinders would predate Knights Radiant by at least one interval of Desolations, so I do not see how Radiants being intended to be keepers of knowledge could help surgebinders make surgebinders motivated to help humankind. After the Knights were formed it works, but surgebinders are older than Knights.

The second point is interesting, and I would love to see how it first came about. I personally always saw the bonding as something instinctual, Syl bonds Kaladin and neither of them truly realize what has happened until he swears the 2nd Ideal. And while Syl did bond in the past, she lost her memories, both due to trauma and due to crossing into Physical.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

In case I wasn't clear, what I meant was, say, playing Preservation's tone to split Pres's mist out of Harmony's (or maybe you'd need to play both Pres and Ruin, but with the Intent to split instead of harmonize). I don't think the tone would need to be Vessel-specific for that?

I see now, I think this should work. I think only one Tone would be necesarry, since we know that Preservation is naturally repelled from Ruin (OG mists and Hemalurgy), so one Tone should both attract like investiture and repel the other one.

The Vessel-specificness I mentioned because it seems that Preservation-aligned metal of Sazed is no longer Lerasium but something else (same for Ruin/Atium), so to change the new metal to original one might require something that was specific to given Vessel.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I could see the Bondsmith restrictions being the first to fall, because the power's so tied into Honor. It might also just be that the restrictions on Bondsmiths were way more obvious, and so he wasn't sure a.) what was restricted for others or b.) if those still held (the Ars Arcanum mentions Cohesion is restricted to avoid Yolen's probably-nuclear mistakes, but how often are people going to stumble upon that one?). Definitely interesting, I agree.

Dalinar's stuff with Shallan's visions is a lot more specific than just boosting, so I'm not sure. I think it's possible it could be the case, though.

Good point on Bondsmith's powers closeness to Honor. This might suggest that the second order to have loosened restrictions would be Windrunners, they do have Honor's truest surge (if Odium is not lying about it).

Interesting note on Cohesion, I always thought that it unrestricted Division might go nuclear. Looking at Ars Arcanum, Lightweaving also has 'various waveforms' listed, so Lightwoven gravitational waves might be a thing? Or if pilot-wave theory of Quantum mechanics is correct within Cosmere, they might do almost anything, funnily enough. But I think that is a bit of a stretch

True, though Brandon did say that Bondsmiths will have some special interactions with all orders, but so far it does not seem to be straight up power boost, more of a broadening and building up on the original power.

7 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Yeah, these powers have some insane potential if fully unrestricted and given a good power source. Era 4 will probably not be fun for any planets who find themselves on the bad end of Roshar or Scadrial.... If it comes to a conflict between the two as often theorized, I imagine it'll be proxy war style for a long time to prevent the complete and utter glassing of multiple entire planets.

Sixth of the Dusk does seem to point at the conflict being more proxy and about getting influence with others, sort of like Cold War. Will be interesting for sure.

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 7, 2021

7 hours ago, therunner said:

Willshapers do seem to be edge case, but the Venli examples make me lean towards some voice being involved.

Imo, that's more Venli being an edge case than the entire order. First singer Radiant (well, Eshonai was first, but died basically instantly after swearing the Ideal), it makes sense to me for Cultivation to be paying close attention.

7 hours ago, therunner said:

For Teft, I think we can go by Kal and the fact that every other Windrunners seemingly had to have their words accepted, so I would assume it is the same.

Agreed that he probably does, just noting it as a possibility. (After all, Syl is someone that the SF would pay special attention to, and the Stormfather does seem to like to troll Lopen, so could always be just that :lol: )

7 hours ago, therunner said:

That was my reading at first as well (and still mostly is), however the question is, who/what decides if they are living up to ideal? I see three options

Shard, either H or C take a quick peak at Radiant-to-be and decide if they are living up to the Ideal.

Spren, the individual spren can accept oaths at their discretion.

Mechanics of Nahel bond itself, the magic knows if the Oath is truly lived up to/fully meant or not.

Personally, I think currently it is some mix of options 1./3. and before Knights Radiants were formed it was option 2. with maybe a bit of option 3. (i.e. magic decides, but the spren can influence if it counts or not).

Sounds like it's mostly #2, with maybe a bit of #3:

Quote

Krios (paraphrased)

At the end of Oathbringer, Kaladin says that the Oaths are about perception. So, what would happen when a crazy person bonds a crazy spren? Is there a hard limit to what the Oaths allow or could they just go on a John Wick style rampage?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Perception will get you a very long way, like Nightblood proves. So you can go beyond the Oaths, but there will be a hard limit. Although it will be hard to find a such fitting pair of human and spren.
Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

(I've been interpreting the "hard limit" as the Intent that drives the spren being broad but ultimately still having limits on what it can cover. Could be right, could be wrong, just how I've taken it.)

7 hours ago, therunner said:

Malata is more complicated than just working for Odium. She is part of Diagram remember, so I think she may honestly believe that Taravangian's actions are necessary, and hurting humans is a bonus for her spren.

My point's just that if the Shards are preventing people from forming bonds, the people directly working for Odium and betraying the war effort seem like people the Stormfather might want to deny.

7 hours ago, therunner said:

If Glys has enough Odium's investiture I would expect the bond to now have some mechanics related to emotions, if we have bond for Honor and Oaths for Cultivation.

That'd be my guess too. Some kind of emotional state required to start the bond/when progressing to the next step, maybe?

7 hours ago, therunner said:

I am also fan of the theory that spren Voidbind, not people (https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/97133-spren-can-voidbind-not-people/ ).

It's definitely an interesting theory, yeah. And does seem to be what looks to be happening in RoW...

7 hours ago, therunner said:

I do not understand the first point. Surgebinders would predate Knights Radiant by at least one interval of Desolations, so I do not see how Radiants being intended to be keepers of knowledge could help surgebinders make surgebinders motivated to help humankind. After the Knights were formed it works, but surgebinders are older than Knights.

That's where Point 2 comes in. Keeps it going that way for a while, and then the Knights Radiant mean that alternative attempts probably won't be being experimented with much, because Ishar's going around threatening to kill anyone who doesn't join the world protection effort, lol.

7 hours ago, therunner said:

I personally always saw the bonding as something instinctual, Syl bonds Kaladin and neither of them truly realize what has happened until he swears the 2nd Ideal. And while Syl did bond in the past, she lost her memories, both due to trauma and due to crossing into Physical.

Yeah, it's definitely interesting. It's seemingly not something that came naturally, since they had to imitate the Honorblades and it had to be discovered, but I don't see why even after all these years honorspren would still know how to do it, considering the stigma against bonding... It's weird.

7 hours ago, therunner said:

I see now, I think this should work. I think only one Tone would be necesarry, since we know that Preservation is naturally repelled from Ruin (OG mists and Hemalurgy), so one Tone should both attract like investiture and repel the other one.

Good point. The relationship between Ruin and Preservation is really odd, after RoW, to be honest. Seems highly unlikely it's anti-Investiture, but it also seems to act remarkably similar in some ways.... This stuff is probably more complicated than we realize yet, I guess.

7 hours ago, therunner said:

they do have Honor's truest surge (if Odium is not lying about it).

Since the Sibling and Nale also talk about it, I don't think Odium's completely lying when he talks about it, in that I think it really does fit Honor's Intent very closely and in my opinion the Surge may even have been inspired by him (the "there were seeds" WoB). I do however think he's bullcrapping when he says he can't grant it, because that doesn't really match how we've seen powers work before (and Venli's Regal power seems strongly Connection-based, so I don't buy claims that Connection is somehow too anathema to him to be able to use it).

7 hours ago, therunner said:

Interesting note on Cohesion, I always thought that it unrestricted Division might go nuclear. Looking at Ars Arcanum, Lightweaving also has 'various waveforms' listed, so Lightwoven gravitational waves might be a thing? Or if pilot-wave theory of Quantum mechanics is correct within Cosmere, they might do almost anything, funnily enough. But I think that is a bit of a stretch

Why not both? Just let all Surges nuke places! Transformation already can, Cohesion might be able to, Division sounds like it fits nicely, maybe Gravitation and Adhesion can rip particles away from each other, Illumination could do the weird things you mentioned, Transportation can.... uh... idk transport particles away, Progression can grow a particle weirdly until it blows up, Abrasion can... uh... I'm stumped here, and Tension maybe can do weird particle things too! Nukes for all!

7 hours ago, therunner said:

True, though Brandon did say that Bondsmiths will have some special interactions with all orders, but so far it does not seem to be straight up power boost, more of a broadening and building up on the original power.

Oh I agree they can do something with all the orders, I just don't think it's a straight superpowering. I think it'd have to be more tied into Connection like the illusions that are based specifically on what the Bondsmith spren knows.

therunner · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Imo, that's more Venli being an edge case than the entire order. First singer Radiant (well, Eshonai was first, but died basically instantly after swearing the Ideal), it makes sense to me for Cultivation to be paying close attention.

Agreed that he probably does, just noting it as a possibility. (After all, Syl is someone that the SF would pay special attention to, and the Stormfather does seem to like to troll Lopen, so could always be just that )

Good point on Venli being a total edge case herself, that makes taking her as an example problematic

Trolling Stormfather is just what the war effort needs

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Sounds like it's mostly #2, with maybe a bit of #3:

Quote

Krios (paraphrased)

At the end of Oathbringer, Kaladin says that the Oaths are about perception. So, what would happen when a crazy person bonds a crazy spren? Is there a hard limit to what the Oaths allow or could they just go on a John Wick style rampage?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Perception will get you a very long way, like Nightblood proves. So you can go beyond the Oaths, but there will be a hard limit. Although it will be hard to find a such fitting pair of human and spren.

Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

(I've been interpreting the "hard limit" as the Intent that drives the spren being broad but ultimately still having limits on what it can cover. Could be right, could be wrong, just how I've taken it.)

My point's just that if the Shards are preventing people from forming bonds, the people directly working for Odium and betraying the war effort seem like people the Stormfather might want to deny.

This WoB is a good argument for it being mostly at the spren discretion, with their Intent limiting it somewhat.

And the argument that denying bonds to people hindering war effort is also excellent one...I think I have to abandon my position and acknowledge that the accepting of Oaths by H/C does seem to be a formality for Radiants.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

That'd be my guess too. Some kind of emotional state required to start the bond/when progressing to the next step, maybe?

It's definitely an interesting theory, yeah. And does seem to be what looks to be happening in RoW...

Potentially, although if Voidbinding is of spren, then maybe it is the spren that needs to be in some emotional state and not the human counterpart.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

That's where Point 2 comes in. Keeps it going that way for a while, and then the Knights Radiant mean that alternative attempts probably won't be being experimented with much, because Ishar's going around threatening to kill anyone who doesn't join the world protection effort, lol.

Ah, I see. So essentially form Knights Radiants as a alternative to wild surgebinders, and have Knights/Ishar hunt wild surgebinders who do not join orders. And over time wild surgebinders die out, because Knights are a stable organization?

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Yeah, it's definitely interesting. It's seemingly not something that came naturally, since they had to imitate the Honorblades and it had to be discovered, but I don't see why even after all these years honorspren would still know how to do it, considering the stigma against bonding... It's weird.

It might be that in some spiritual sense, the first surgebinders had to 'make' the path the others now follows? So now the pathways for the Nahel bond are 'known' to magic and it works more easily?

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Good point. The relationship between Ruin and Preservation is really odd, after RoW, to be honest. Seems highly unlikely it's anti-Investiture, but it also seems to act remarkably similar in some ways.... This stuff is probably more complicated than we realize yet, I guess.

I think it is not that odd. Positive and negative charges could repel one another (if there was additional minus sign in Coulomb's law) , but not necessarily annihilate one another. I.e. 'Preservaton' (quantum of Preservation investiture) has the opposite charge to 'Ruinon' (quantum of Ruin investiture) so they repel one another but they are not antiparticles of one another, even though 'Anti-Preservaton' has the same charge as 'Ruinon'.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Since the Sibling and Nale also talk about it, I don't think Odium's completely lying when he talks about it, in that I think it really does fit Honor's Intent very closely and in my opinion the Surge may even have been inspired by him (the "there were seeds" WoB). I do however think he's bullcrapping when he says he can't grant it, because that doesn't really match how we've seen powers work before (and Venli's Regal power seems strongly Connection-based, so I don't buy claims that Connection is somehow too anathema to him to be able to use it).

I am not sure if Regal powers are good example. A lot of Voidspren are red, suggesting they are of corrupted/co-opted investiture, so if their original investiture was of Honor, Odium might piggyback on that for the Regal powers. Altough some Voidspren are apparently gold, so that complicates this line of reasoning, however I think that Venli's voidspren was/is red.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Why not both? Just let all Surges nuke places! Transformation already can, Cohesion might be able to, Division sounds like it fits nicely, maybe Gravitation and Adhesion can rip particles away from each other, Illumination could do the weird things you mentioned, Transportation can.... uh... idk transport particles away, Progression can grow a particle weirdly until it blows up, Abrasion can... uh... I'm stumped here, and Tension maybe can do weird particle things too! Nukes for all!

I think 'Nukes for all!' might have been Odium's intent when wanting to recruit surgebinders for his army

Gravity and adhesion might have hard time nuking things (gravity is really weak), but Transportation could allow for some creative application: you could Transport someone's electrons away, and their atoms would fly apart quite fast (and incredibly destructively). Since Abrasion most likely works (in physical sense, in world who knows) through in effect manipulating electromagnetic interaction of particles and their environment, it might also be used to negate EM forces holding atoms together, for similar effect. Though I seriously doubt they could do it, it is fun to imagine.

1 hour ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Oh I agree they can do something with all the orders, I just don't think it's a straight superpowering. I think it'd have to be more tied into Connection like the illusions that are based specifically on what the Bondsmith spren knows.

Well, if Cohesion/stoneshaping works by first making Connection to stone, and the using stormlight to do things with stone (it honestly sounds very similar to Soulcasting, but instead of transforming it is shaping), then Bondsmith might strenghten that Connection (or Connect Stoneshaper to larger area) and then open perpendicularity to provide in effect unlimited stormlight...that might do the Shattered planes trick, at least on smaller scale.

Edited April 7, 2021 by therunner
spelling

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Trolling Stormfather is just what the war effort needs

The Stormfather on the rare occasion he has a sense of humor is great.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Potentially, although if Voidbinding is of spren, then maybe it is the spren that needs to be in some emotional state and not the human counterpart.

Good point, actually.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Ah, I see. So essentially form Knights Radiants as a alternative to wild surgebinders, and have Knights/Ishar hunt wild surgebinders who do not join orders. And over time wild surgebinders die out, because Knights are a stable organization?

Yeah, probably. I'll be honest, there's enough in the conversation I lost track of the exact thread of thought I had there :lol: but that sounds close to what I think I was thinking.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

It might be that in some spiritual sense, the first surgebinders had to 'make' the path the others now follows? So now the pathways for the Nahel bond are 'known' to magic and it works more easily?

Hm, could be. Might be one of those "once you know it's possible, you know how to do it instinctively, but you have to know it's doable in the first place" things?

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I think it is not that odd. Positive and negative charges could repel one another (if there was additional minus sign in Coulomb's law) , but not necessarily annihilate one another. I.e. 'Preservaton' (quantum of Preservation investiture) has the opposite charge to 'Ruinon' (quantum of Ruin investiture) so they repel one another but they are not antiparticles of one another, even though 'Anti-Preservaton' has the same charge as 'Ruinon'.

That's a good point, actually.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I am not sure if Regal powers are good example. A lot of Voidspren are red, suggesting they are of corrupted/co-opted investiture, so if their original investiture was of Honor, Odium might piggyback on that for the Regal powers. Altough some Voidspren are apparently gold, so that complicates this line of reasoning, however I think that Venli's voidspren was/is red.

Good point. Though, voidspren and corrupted spren do seem to be different things (and a lot of corrupted spren aren't even red iirc). So I'm curious what exactly is up with Voidspren.

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I think 'Nukes for all!' might have been Odium's intent when wanting to recruit surgebinders for his army

True lmao

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Gravity and adhesion might have hard time nuking things (gravity is really weak)

What if you put a looooooot of Lashings :thinksmart: (aaa limited forum emoji)

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Well, if Cohesion/stoneshaping works by first making Connection to stone, and the using stormlight to do things with stone (it honestly sounds very similar to Soulcasting, but instead of transforming it is shaping), then Bondsmith might strenghten that Connection (or Connect Stoneshaper to larger area) and then open perpendicularity to provide in effect unlimited stormlight...that might do the Shattered planes trick, at least on smaller scale.

Could be. I was thinking that Cohesion + Bondsmith would probably come out similarly to Shallan's map, but as an actual physical thing (the model of Urithiru they find, perhaps?), but maybe I'm just not stretching my imagination there enough lol

+Bzhydack · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Gravity and adhesion might have hard time nuking things (gravity is really weak),

Maybe MCUish "Sokovia action" - rip bunch of ground, lift and crash. Or pull asteroids or even moon down!

therunner · April 7, 2021

29 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

The Stormfather on the rare occasion he has a sense of humor is great.

Indeed, I would say that any time he allows himself to act as something more than a 'big angry serious storm' he is wonderful, like with Lopen, or Eshonai.

30 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Yeah, probably. I'll be honest, there's enough in the conversation I lost track of the exact thread of thought I had there but that sounds close to what I think I was thinking.

I have the same problem sometime Usually my brain catches up if I reread the thread, but sometimes...well, I ain't no Lightweaver

31 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Hm, could be. Might be one of those "once you know it's possible, you know how to do it instinctively, but you have to know it's doable in the first place" things?

Kind of, maybe slightly more 'if someone has done it, it is easier for other to do' but the gist is what you said I think.

32 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Good point. Though, voidspren and corrupted spren do seem to be different things (and a lot of corrupted spren aren't even red iirc). So I'm curious what exactly is up with Voidspren.

I am a bit confused on that front myself. There seem to be corrupted spren (Glys) which are of Sja-anat, and then Voidspren. But some Voidspren seem to be red and some golden, which led me to my though that some 'voidspren' are regular spren that were directly coopted by Odium.

34 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

What if you put a looooooot of Lashings :thinksmart: (aaa limited forum emoji)

Well, assuming Cohesion can manipulate weak forces, and Gravitation,well, gravity, then to get 1 energy from nuclear reaction you need 1 stormlight for Super-Cohesion, and to get the same effect using gravitational lashings you would need ~10^20 units of Stormlight, but that is probably covered under looooooot (Sidenote: Can I say 'a loot of loot' to signify a great amount of loot, larger than a lot would imply?)

39 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

Could be. I was thinking that Cohesion + Bondsmith would probably come out similarly to Shallan's map, but as an actual physical thing (the model of Urithiru they find, perhaps?), but maybe I'm just not stretching my imagination there enough lol

That is probably more normal use of Cohesion and bondsmith powers, I was thinking more along the lines of unchained Bondsmith.

27 minutes ago, Bzhydack said:

Maybe MCUish "Sokovia action" - rip bunch of ground, lift and crash. Or pull asteroids or even moon down!

Huh this raises interesting questions:

Can you lash ground? I would assume maybe yes if you could conceptualize a piece of it as separate from the rest. But then in principle you are weakening the gravity of the planet, even if only very little.
What acceleration would Lashing impart when the Radiant is floating in space? Would it default to the dominant gravitational source? Or is it determined by a place they have strongest Connection to?

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, therunner said:

Well, assuming Cohesion can manipulate weak forces, and Gravitation,well, gravity, then to get 1 energy from nuclear reaction you need 1 stormlight for Super-Cohesion, and to get the same effect using gravitational lashings you would need ~10^20 units of Stormlight, but that is probably covered under looooooot (Sidenote: Can I say 'a loot of loot' to signify a great amount of loot, larger than a lot would imply?)

~~who cares if it's feasible, it's cool~~

1 hour ago, therunner said:

What acceleration would Lashing impart when the Radiant is floating in space? Would it default to the dominant gravitational source? Or is it determined by a place they have strongest Connection to?

I would guess that a Radiant using one Lashing's worth of Light will always give one Rosharan gravitational.... thingy, not sure of the word there. Just because it seems weird if going to, say, Sel would suddenly make your Stormlight more efficient.

therunner · April 7, 2021

29 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

~~who cares if it's feasible, it's cool~~

I like that approach, though it is not in spirit of the thread

29 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

I would guess that a Radiant using one Lashing's worth of Light will always give one Rosharan gravitational.... thingy, not sure of the word there. Just because it seems weird if going to, say, Sel would suddenly make your Stormlight more efficient.

If I recall correctly 1 Lashing gives the same acceleration as the Rosharan gravitational acceleration on the surface of the Roshar, so ~7m/s^2. If it works more on 'redirect the gravity that already works/multiply it' than it should simply take different planets fields, but than it would not work in space, and there are some WoBs saying Windrunners could fly to different planets. On the other hand if we had non-Rosharan Radiant, what would it do? Would it still be tied to Roshar because spren are from Roshar (so far)?

+Bzhydack · April 7, 2021

2 hours ago, therunner said:

Huh this raises interesting questions:

Can you lash ground? I would assume maybe yes if you could conceptualize a piece of it as separate from the rest. But then in principle you are weakening the gravity of the planet, even if only very little.

What acceleration would Lashing impart when the Radiant is floating in space? Would it default to the dominant gravitational source? Or is it determined by a place they have strongest Connection to?

1. Probably You can use Full Lashing on large portion of ground to stick it together and behave as one.

2. Lashing seems to be directly dependent on Radiant Perception of proper Gravity. Probably for every Rosharan Radiant one Lashing is equal Rosharan Gravity. Things get interesting when someone from outside of Roshar will get Bond. I really want to see this, like Felt bonded Honorspren and his Lashing are stronger than normal ones :lol:

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, therunner said:

I like that approach, though it is not in spirit of the thread

~~a large number of these 60 pages disagree~~

1 hour ago, therunner said:

On the other hand if we had non-Rosharan Radiant, what would it do? Would it still be tied to Roshar because spren are from Roshar (so far)?

My guess is the amount they instinctively go for as "one Lashing" would be different, but that it would use more or less Light accordingly. So in other words, I don't think there's anything special about one Rosharan Lashing, it's just that they naturally gravitate (heh) towards that amount because it's what they think of when they hear "gravity". I could be wrong, though.

BenduLuke · April 7, 2021

On 4/3/2021 at 4:39 PM, The Technovore said:

Reading comprehension moment. "The spiritweb is the network of Connections and Investiture." That's the spiritweb.
"Their borders defined by their Identity." If the Spiritweb was the city of Luthadel, Identity would be the city walls, Connections being the roads and buildings, and the people being the Investiture. It's not a perfect metaphor, but there you go. Are the wall sof Luthadel the entirety of Luthadel? No. But it is an important piece that defines "what is Luthadel" from "what is [Insert City Here]."
What you're theorizing is that by compounding Aluminum you can essentially remove the city walls, and then rebuild them to also include an entirely different city and that's going to be just fine and only do good things for you. Speculation that unfounded is outside of the realms of intellectual honesty in this discussion.

Did you read what I said? The Coppermind is consistently wrong, it's being changed and updated constantly. It's not written by Brandon like Frustration said. NO. The Coppermind is not as valid as any of the WoBs. It's an effective refresher on names and places and trivia facts, but you CANNOT form an accurate basis on magic mechanics by just reading and quoting the Coppermind.

With Identity as a person or things map on the spiritweb connection would be where Identities overlap. Identity is also not static. Every experience, new connection, loss of connection, new thing you learn, personality, talent, injury (especially spirit), environment, and so on changes the Identity, maybe not allot but some. The identity locks on things seem to be somewhat flexible not strict in requiring exactly the identity creating them, or perhaps evolve with the person or thing.

On 4/4/2021 at 2:34 AM, therunner said:

No, abilities are distinct from Identity (per pretty much everything and how feruchemy works).

Steelrunning is affected by inertia, they suffer g-forces when accelerating or turning but the magic compensates for that (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/93/#e2695). And the very same WoB also states that they cannot ignore friction and wind resistance. So wind resistance would be slowing down any steelrunner, and they would need to tap more to compensate for that.

Thing is, the four shot things is something that Wax assumes happened (AoL, chapter 5), he has not actually seen it, for all we know it could have sounded like four quick shots merging together, or four separate shots but so close people did not have time to react. Bleeder is not shown doing anything close to this on screen. The compression factor of bendalloy is roughly 11x fold per AoL (coppermind), so if Bleeder looks as if moving normally from inside the speedbubble, than she is moving 11x as fast in reality, i.e. she would be moving at 99 m/s at best quite far from sonic speeds.

Now, what are the limits of f-steel? Per this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/243/#e6126) the feruchemy is increasingly inefficient the harder you tap. In the WoB proper he seems to imply that the increase in tapping speed is relative to storing speed, but in other he says that otherwise, so I will assume that you can always tap without any penalty 100% of attribute, i.e. if you have stored what is effectively 100% speed increase for 1 hours, you can tap it, move at 2x the usual speed and do it for one hour. Now we can analyze the WoB and try to figure out what penalties would be for n-fold tapping speed. I also assume that 100% speed for movement (running, walking etc.) is 9m/s, as that is roughly what above average person can sustain for a 100 meter dash.

The above also completely neglects that air resistance is a thing and steelrunners do experience it(https://wob.coppermind.net/events/93/#e2695), that speed is among the most difficult attributes to store as you yourself need to be moving (per Sazed...and I think this means really moving, not tapping your leg or waving arms and storing that). Someone running 8 hours a day would be running at ~5m/s if we are being very generous, that nets them ~1500 hours of 100% speed (9m/s) after a year, and using all of these stores would net them only 1.5 ms of slightly supersonic speed. However it would give them around 45 minutes of 100m/s speed (if we are assuming the most favourable scenario), or 7.5 seconds at ~190 m/s.

Now of course someone with A-pewter could get around some of this, burning pewter roughly doubles the physical attributes and flared triples, this results in

For storing this is effectively just a multiplier, thug/runner combo could have 3x the size of his stores, so after a year he could have 4500 hours of 100% speed stored, and since he could maintain sprint for the entire time his store would roughly roughly double again for 9000 hours of 100% speed after a very intense year of 8 hours sprints every day. Now this assumes that pewter speed is storable (when moving!) as I see no reason why it should not be, the Thug is physically moving at those speeds.When just tapping the steelminds could get 4hours 30 minutes of 100m/s or 46 seconds at 190 m/s, or 0.1 second at ~280m/s, so still not enough to reach sonic speeds for any useful amount of time.

Now they can also burn/flare when steeltapping but that will effectively just give them a discount as I would assume a-speed and f-speed would be additive, i.e. when flared thug/runner is moving at 27m/s max so to get to 99m/s he needs to tap only at 8x the speed, as feruchemy seems to be relative the base state of Feruchemist. This effectively makes it cheaper for them to run at such speeds, but it is not enough to let them move at/near sonic speeds, they would still get not even 0.02 second at Mach 1 speeds.

There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13501), saying that burning metals while tapping speed increases the speed of burn, likening to what would happen inside bendalloy bubble. However I do not think this means that the metal gives greater benefit, consider this:

You could in principle try to get around the storage limitations by using unkeyed metalminds, but even if you have hundreds of thousands of people equipped with f-steel and f-aluminum, steelrunner would still not get more than 10 seconds at sonic speeds. Thug/runner with such support team (hundreds of thousands of people) could get maybe 5 minutes of 1 mach speed, and again this assumes the ideal scenario were each increment in tapping speed is not harder than the one before. Ultimately no one outside of compounders or supported by compounders can move at sonic speeds for any useful amount of time.

TL;DR: Solo steelrunner, or even thug/runner combo has nowhere near enough store to sustain even just 1 Mach speeds for more than 0.1 second at a time under the most favourable theory, and it would deplete their entire reserves. They most likely can sustain ~100m/s speeds for 10-15 minutes, but it would nearly deplete their entire stores, and those stores would have to be quite extreme to begin with. Effectively sonic speed attacks for non-compounder are impossible, and even 200 m/s attacks would deplete nearly their entire reserves for just one strike.

I love how you support your idea with potential statistics. I just don't think those statistics match the situation this time.

For a Steel compounder storage could become an issue but remember Wax was able to store a buildings worth of weight within his bracers so metal minds may have huge storage capacity and more metal means more capacity.

Second compounding appears to be described as exponential. You store 1 and burn it for aprox. 10 provided by preservation/hamony. Then burn 10 and get 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 and so forth until the metalmind is full. Larger or more metal minds more storage. the initial storage might be 10% speed storage for 1 minute to 100% for 1 minute and so on. This increased balanced between greater time and greater speed. Wax had thousands of times more than his own mass in just his bracers so storage might not be a problem until well into the compounding. That means that this person is storing first 2 mph for 1 minute to 20 mph to 200 mph for 1 minute or 20 mph for 10 minutes and so on. The faster you tap the speed you lose some of the time so maybe 200 mph for 0.9 minutes instead of 1 or something like that. Though 20 mph for 10 minutes would go to 200 mph for 10 minutes.

Storing Pewter speed starts out faster 3x sprint speed for entire burn of Pewter or perhaps as much as 10x speed for entire flare length of pewter flared. The more pewter you burn or flare the more time or speed you have but it is multiplicative and will eventually be surpassed by compounding. That means this person is probably storing around 45 mph for the length of burn.

Long before air resistance became an acceleration problem escape velocity would be, but the friction from air resistance could become an issue before it causing acceleration problems as well. A steel compounders pushes could also be potentially more powerful than Duralumin steel for longer though probably not much longer because the steel would burn faster so you would need more steel to burn.

On 4/4/2021 at 11:53 AM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

If abilities are part of Identity, why does spiking the ability out not change his Identity?

It does change Identity but Identity is constantly evolving anyway.

On 4/4/2021 at 7:50 PM, Bigmikey357 said:

@Publius

I can see your argument and it seems plausible but not exactly practical. It seems to me you could achieve these goals much simpler with medallion tech. You'd probably prefer Hemalurgy because nobody except the spiked person can use the powers granted but the logistics of using that much hemalurgy is rather daunting and messy.

You have outlined the steps already. Getting the human material is going to be a huge challenge in the first place. But say you do so. There's going to be some diminishing returns involved, probably after the first half dozen times you do it. There will also be losses, lots of them. You gonna have the people you most want to utilize be some of the most violent protesters. You need a way to guard your operation or get a bunch of metalborn to buy into the scheme. But even waving away that obstacle you're losing 3 of 4 people to make one super soldier with compound healing and one extra power. No mistborn, they don't exist in nature anymore. You could of course make one but then you get an Inquisitor and that's going to be extremely difficult to control, or you get a completely new Hemalurgic construct with unknown strengths and more importantly, weaknesses.

Or maybe you can make new Bands, but that's something only Kelsier knows how to do and I'm just not seeing him share the secret. And as far as using him to go attack Roshar, that's even more unlikely unless it's his program. I can't see Marsh, the only guy with any Atium left, even doing that.

Actually with an Aluminum compounder I think you could create your spike factory easier since they can also heal their spiritweb and you need only have spikes granting allamantic and or feruchemical powers for them to use to create open metal minds. by switching spikes they could potentially create something like the bands of mourning.

Frustration · April 7, 2021

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

With Identity as a person or things map on the spiritweb connection would be where Identities overlap. Identity is also not static. Every experience, new connection, loss of connection, new thing you learn, personality, talent, injury (especially spirit), environment, and so on changes the Identity, maybe not allot but some. The identity locks on things seem to be somewhat flexible not strict in requiring exactly the identity creating them, or perhaps evolve with the person or thing.

It does change Identity but Identity is constantly evolving anyway.

Source?

1 hour ago, BenduLuke said:

Actually with an Aluminum compounder I think you could create your spike factory easier since they can also heal their spiritweb and you need only have spikes granting allamantic and or feruchemical powers for them to use to create open metal minds. by switching spikes they could potentially create something like the bands of mourning.

Aluminum removes foriegn investiture it doesn't add, Hemalurgy removes that part of the spiritweb how does aluminum fix that?

therunner · April 8, 2021

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

I love how you support your idea with potential statistics. I just don't think those statistics match the situation this time.

For a Steel compounder storage could become an issue but remember Wax was able to store a buildings worth of weight within his bracers so metal minds may have huge storage capacity and more metal means more capacity.

Storing Pewter speed starts out faster 3x sprint speed for entire burn of Pewter or perhaps as much as 10x speed for entire flare length of pewter flared. The more pewter you burn or flare the more time or speed you have but it is multiplicative and will eventually be surpassed by compounding. That means this person is probably storing around 45 mph for the length of burn.

I think you misunderstood me on the storage point: I meant that storing the attribute is problematic, not that the metalminds are not large enough. Weight is probably the easiest attribute to store (Wax does it at all times because he has weight all the time, and it has no negative repercussions) but Speed requires you to

Move to store (and probably the more you move the more you can store)
To be slowed down while you are trying to move when storing.

Per the numbers in the post you have quoted, non-compounder simply cannot store enough speed to move at sonic speeds for more then milliseconds, even in extreme cases of storing effectively for half their waking hours for a year.

I have analyzed pewter storing as well, burn gives you 2x the speed and flare 3x the speed, so I have no idea where the 10x speed you are writing came from. This is what I wrote on pewter (100% speed is 9 m/s, as feruchemy starts to give diminishing returns after a certain point which seems to be capped at 100% of the natural attribute or less)

Quote

Now of course someone with A-pewter could get around some of this, burning pewter roughly doubles the physical attributes and flared triples, this results in

For storing this is effectively just a multiplier, thug/runner combo could have 3x the size of his stores, so after a year he could have 4500 hours of 100% speed stored, and since he could maintain sprint for the entire time his store would roughly roughly double again for 9000 hours of 100% speed after a very intense year of 8 hours sprints every day. Now this assumes that pewter speed is storable (when moving!) as I see no reason why it should not be, the Thug is physically moving at those speeds.When just tapping the steelminds could get 4hours 30 minutes of 100m/s or 46 seconds at 190 m/s, or 0.1 second at ~280m/s, so still not enough to reach sonic speeds for any useful amount of time.

Now they can also burn/flare when steeltapping but that will effectively just give them a discount as I would assume a-speed and f-speed would be additive, i.e. when flared thug/runner is moving at 27m/s max so to get to 99m/s he needs to tap only at 8x the speed, as feruchemy seems to be relative the base state of Feruchemist. This effectively makes it cheaper for them to run at such speeds, but it is not enough to let them move at/near sonic speeds, they would still get not even 0.02 second at Mach 1 speeds.

I have taken into accountant 1) Flaring 2) Sprinting 8 hours every day 3) Flaring pewter and then tapping steel, and it still does not provide sufficient benefit. Even if the Thug/runner sprinted 16 hours every day, stored that and did it for 50 years, they would not be able to move at Mach 1 for more than 1 second, the exponential diminishing returns are simply too strong.

There is that issue with people tapping steel burning metals faster, but I do not think it makes them any stronger, it just wastes their reserves faster (Brandon in the source WoB likens it to bendalloy bubble, and those do not make you any stronger due to faster burn), so I do not think it is relevant for this analyses as I have said in the original post

Quote

There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/402/#e13501), saying that burning metals while tapping speed increases the speed of burn, likening to what would happen inside bendalloy bubble. However I do not think this means that the metal gives greater benefit, consider this:

Thug burns pewter when someone puts up bendalloy bubble around him, for him inside he continues to burn and is 2x/3x as strong due to pewter, however to those outside he is burning 11x times faster, so that when the bubble bursts his stores are 11x times more depleted and yet he was not 22x/33x stronger for the duration. Since Brandon likens tapping speed to the speedbubble in the WoB, I think metals will simply burn faster inside the steelrunner but still impart the same benefit, as to him they burn at the usual rate, i.e. steelrunner burning metals will go through his reserves faster, but will not get any greater benefit.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Second compounding appears to be described as exponential. You store 1 and burn it for aprox. 10 provided by preservation/hamony. Then burn 10 and get 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 and so forth until the metalmind is full. Larger or more metal minds more storage. the initial storage might be 10% speed storage for 1 minute to 100% for 1 minute and so on. This increased balanced between greater time and greater speed. Wax had thousands of times more than his own mass in just his bracers so storage might not be a problem until well into the compounding. That means that this person is storing first 2 mph for 1 minute to 20 mph to 200 mph for 1 minute or 20 mph for 10 minutes and so on. The faster you tap the speed you lose some of the time so maybe 200 mph for 0.9 minutes instead of 1 or something like that. Though 20 mph for 10 minutes would go to 200 mph for 10 minutes.

Your analyses of the loses ignores the WoB I shared in my post, which says that you get loses you get when tapping faster are much greater than 9/10, and are progressively greater. There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/153-hal-con-2012/#e2803) saying that loss of withdrawal of large amount of attribute does not depend on the rate of storage, so compounder could not get around it, they would need to make large enough stores to effectively neutralize faster tapping loses if they wanted to tap fast.

I agree that compounder could break sound barrier, we do see Marasi (who used BoM) do it after all. I avoided talking about them in the analyses because we have very few hard numbers on compounding, all we know is

It multiplies the investiture/stores by ~10.
You need to burn the metalmind with the storage. Now, since burning a few small vials of metal can take tens of minutes, to burn entire metalmind will probably take hours, but it depends on the size of the metalmind.
We do not know if the metalmind being invested makes it burn slower (there being 'more' to burn).

Now, to break the sound barrier for 100 second per my more optimistic analyses, you would need to compound about 6-7 times (assuming you start with those 1500 hours of 100% speed stores), which would probably take at least a week? But as we have no hard numbers it is hard to say, but it is realistic for compounder to achieve.

Now we have seen Marasi move at conservatively Mach ~7 for 0.5 second at most and she was already worried about depleting the stores too fast. Since BoM were most likely built by Fullborn/semi-Fullborn their stores were compounded, but by how much we again have no clue. To get Mach 8 would require to tap at ~250x speed of normal 100% tapping, per the Scenario 1 (T, time of storage when tapping n-fold is T = T_0/n *5/6 * (3/5)^(n-1) , with T_0 being the starting store) so if you started with 10^50 hours of stored speed (i.e. you compounded the same store about 50 times, taking a lot longer than a week) even then you would be left with 10^(-6) hours of tapped Mach 7 speed, i.e. ~4 miliseconds.

So Mach 1 definitely doable for compounder, Mach 7 also doable but it would require some ridiculous stores going by information we have available.

8 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Actually with an Aluminum compounder I think you could create your spike factory easier since they can also heal their spiritweb and you need only have spikes granting allamantic and or feruchemical powers for them to use to create open metal minds. by switching spikes they could potentially create something like the bands of mourning.

While I think aluminum might heal the spike wound (but it would require a lot of compounding first, as the damage is even greater that the one caused by shardblades) this might not make it economical as aluminum is not that common on Scadrial yet. They would be able to create unkeyed metalminds, but not medallions as those require Excisors to create and we have no clue what those are (and some speculate they have to do with Hemalurgy). So they could not make even simple medallions, much less BoM.

Quote

10 hours ago, Bzhydack said:

2. Lashing seems to be directly dependent on Radiant Perception of proper Gravity. Probably for every Rosharan Radiant one Lashing is equal Rosharan Gravity. Things get interesting when someone from outside of Roshar will get Bond. I really want to see this, like Felt bonded Honorspren and his Lashing are stronger than normal ones

Quote

9 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

My guess is the amount they instinctively go for as "one Lashing" would be different, but that it would use more or less Light accordingly. So in other words, I don't think there's anything special about one Rosharan Lashing, it's just that they naturally gravitate (heh) towards that amount because it's what they think of when they hear "gravity". I could be wrong, though.

Yeah, I think it would be one of these two cases, leaning probably closer to the second one, i.e. non-Rosharans would lash harder, but it would take comparatively morel light.

Edited April 8, 2021 by therunner
spelling

**LewsTherinTelescope** · April 8, 2021

15 hours ago, BenduLuke said:

Actually with an Aluminum compounder I think you could create your spike factory easier since they can also heal their spiritweb and you need only have spikes granting allamantic and or feruchemical powers for them to use to create open metal minds.

We do not know that they heal their spiritweb. We have been told it works by "negating and sucking out", specifically contrasted with healing.

Quote

Kurkistan

If you're on Threnody and you get withered by a shade, are you better off burning Allomantic aluminum, or tapping Feruchemical gold?

*laughter*

[clarification on the question]

Brandon Sanderson

They would both work pretty well. I would say if you burned aluminum, that would kind of have the effect that you are wanting it to have, which is the effect-- negating and sucking out, so that's probably safer. But the gold would work, too.

Kurkistan

So would it be fair to describe withering as a kind of cancerous Forging-

Brandon Sanderson

Sure.

Kurkistan

That just kind of slowly takes over your soul?

Brandon Sanderson

Sure.
Shadows of Self Chicago signing (Oct. 12, 2015)

BenduLuke · April 8, 2021

19 hours ago, Frustration said:

Source?

Aluminum removes foriegn investiture it doesn't add, Hemalurgy removes that part of the spiritweb how does aluminum fix that?

Source https://coppermind.net/wiki/Spiritweb

Aluminum does 2 things that are relevant.

1. It neutralizes investiture effects used against the allomancer.

2. It has the potential to restore the pre-investiture attack state of the spiritweb in full so making it as if it never happened.

Since Identity is the defined boundary of a persons spiritweb every new connection adds to that boundary since connections could be defined as overlaps in identity that new portion to the Identity can be stored and perhaps some of the other persons Identity with which the Truesoul has a connection with could be mirrored in their identity to be stored as well (the last part is mostly speculation beyond the connection overlap).

Take this for what it is worth to you but it seems to me that storing Identity is the ultimate storage in the Cosmere because it has the potential to store so many different things. In the case of metal arts tapping it would appear to be permanent unlike other things one could tap. A Trueself who was forged could potentially retain the forgery indefinitely or store that Identity to be used later for as long as needed beyond that they could potentially tap parts of multiple Identities for indefinite periods then store all or part of that Identity for use later. I really don't care if you think that is how it works, but give me a good reason why it can't work that way and I will consider it. Just because you don't think so wont persuade me so don't waste your time with that type of argument with me beyond saying you don't think so and that is OK with me just not persuasive.

12 hours ago, therunner said:

I think you misunderstood me on the storage point: I meant that storing the attribute is problematic, not that the metalminds are not large enough. Weight is probably the easiest attribute to store (Wax does it at all times because he has weight all the time, and it has no negative repercussions) but Speed requires you to

Move to store (and probably the more you move the more you can store)

To be slowed down while you are trying to move when storing.

Per the numbers in the post you have quoted, non-compounder simply cannot store enough speed to move at sonic speeds for more then milliseconds, even in extreme cases of storing effectively for half their waking hours for a year.

I have analyzed pewter storing as well, burn gives you 2x the speed and flare 3x the speed, so I have no idea where the 10x speed you are writing came from. This is what I wrote on pewter (100% speed is 9 m/s, as feruchemy starts to give diminishing returns after a certain point which seems to be capped at 100% of the natural attribute or less)

I have taken into accountant 1) Flaring 2) Sprinting 8 hours every day 3) Flaring pewter and then tapping steel, and it still does not provide sufficient benefit. Even if the Thug/runner sprinted 16 hours every day, stored that and did it for 50 years, they would not be able to move at Mach 1 for more than 1 second, the exponential diminishing returns are simply too strong.

There is that issue with people tapping steel burning metals faster, but I do not think it makes them any stronger, it just wastes their reserves faster (Brandon in the source WoB likens it to bendalloy bubble, and those do not make you any stronger due to faster burn), so I do not think it is relevant for this analyses as I have said in the original post

Your analyses of the loses ignores the WoB I shared in my post, which says that you get loses you get when tapping faster are much greater than 9/10, and are progressively greater. There is also this WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/153-hal-con-2012/#e2803) saying that loss of withdrawal of large amount of attribute does not depend on the rate of storage, so compounder could not get around it, they would need to make large enough stores to effectively neutralize faster tapping loses if they wanted to tap fast.

I agree that compounder could break sound barrier, we do see Marasi (who used BoM) do it after all. I avoided talking about them in the analyses because we have very few hard numbers on compounding, all we know is

It multiplies the investiture/stores by ~10.

You need to burn the metalmind with the storage. Now, since burning a few small vials of metal can take tens of minutes, to burn entire metalmind will probably take hours, but it depends on the size of the metalmind.

We do not know if the metalmind being invested makes it burn slower (there being 'more' to burn).

Now, to break the sound barrier for 100 second per my more optimistic analyses, you would need to compound about 6-7 times (assuming you start with those 1500 hours of 100% speed stores), which would probably take at least a week? But as we have no hard numbers it is hard to say, but it is realistic for compounder to achieve.

Now we have seen Marasi move at conservatively Mach ~7 for 0.5 second at most and she was already worried about depleting the stores too fast. Since BoM were most likely built by Fullborn/semi-Fullborn their stores were compounded, but by how much we again have no clue. To get Mach 8 would require to tap at ~250x speed of normal 100% tapping, per the Scenario 1 (T, time of storage when tapping n-fold is T = T_0/n *5/6 * (3/5)^(n-1) , with T_0 being the starting store) so if you started with 10^50 hours of stored speed (i.e. you compounded the same store about 50 times, taking a lot longer than a week) even then you would be left with 10^(-6) hours of tapped Mach 7 speed, i.e. ~4 miliseconds.

So Mach 1 definitely doable for compounder, Mach 7 also doable but it would require some ridiculous stores going by information we have available.

While I think aluminum might heal the spike wound (but it would require a lot of compounding first, as the damage is even greater that the one caused by shardblades) this might not make it economical as aluminum is not that common on Scadrial yet. They would be able to create unkeyed metalminds, but not medallions as those require Excisors to create and we have no clue what those are (and some speculate they have to do with Hemalurgy). So they could not make even simple medallions, much less BoM.

Yeah, I think it would be one of these two cases, leaning probably closer to the second one, i.e. non-Rosharans would lash harder, but it would take comparatively morel light.

Yes I think we have misunderstood each other.

First I got the Idea of how fast pewter burning might be from Vin being able to outrun a horse (40-45 mph) for a long period of time roughly 3x burning and guessing on what is possible with flare just more than 3x. Still if they sprinted everywhere for an hour while burning pewter they might be able to store 30mph for an hour of burning which is initially more than compounding can create. Estimating loss by tapping faster I don't have hard numbers on and can only speculate, but there is loss, but until tapped there is no loss.

Compounding on the other hand works differently. If you store 10% for 1 minute you might store about 1.5 mph for a sprint. Then you Burn that for a 10x return so now you have 15 mph for 1 minute no time change which you store. Next you have 150 mph for 1 minute again no loss due to change in time and if you extend that time to 10 minutes again no loss due to compression but you are only running 15 mph for that period. Next 1,500 mph then 15,000 mph = mach 19 for 1 minute or Mach 1.9 for 10 minutes or 150 mph for almost 2 hours again no time compression so no loss. From there you have 16 hours of 150 mph worth of speed stored and at the next compound you have almost a weeks worth of 150 mph. 150 mph should be enough to run circles around almost anybody in the cosmere, but if not you can tap it all the way back to your ultimate lossless 1 minute velocity which would be Mach 278 and would flay you in atmosphere without some kind of major protection. The compounder only needs to store the initial speed seed to get this result in just a few periods of compounding that is why Miles was almost impossible to kill while he had all his metal minds. How often will the steelrunner need to tap anywhere near that potential. How much of that potential will they tap to enhance their pushes if they can find an appropriate anchor to take advantage of it. How fast would a coin or bullet be moving if pushed by that kind of force and for how far. How much steel do you need to store that much speed?

So Pewter starts faster and increases linearly while compounding starts potentially much slower but increases exponentially because it has input from the shard.

I have been catching up on the surge discussion and it occurred to me that by definition metal arts are surges without oaths and thus without oath restrictions. Just food for thought when comparing Roshar with Scadrial.

5 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

We do not know that they heal their spiritweb. We have been told it works by "negating and sucking out", specifically contrasted with healing.

Aluminum both removes investiture injuries using allomancy and restores the spiritweb using feruchemy both of which allow for a form of healing. The restoration aspect might even heal physical injuries back to the last Identity store, or allows for progression healing by potentially removing the part of the identity that has accepted the injury as permanent depending on when the Identity was stored last.

From my perspective the potential of Aluminum metal art is beyond that of any other form of surge binding in the Cosmere see some of my other comments above for an idea why. I don't expect anyone else to agree with me.

Scadrian vs. Rosharan magic post RoW

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