What was the Voidlight in the Void?

[The Technovore]

Right, so it's in CH. 97 of RoW that Navani makes anti-voidlight, and this brought up a lot of questions for me, and maybe someone has some answers here. So in the previous Navani chapters she's learning a lot about Cosmere and Roshar and the three pure tones and vibrations and so on and so forth. She also gets an interesting tidbit from Raboniel that the interplanetary space in the Physical Realm is not traversable (yet), even by Radiants. They sent Fused into the sky with plenty of Voidlight but they still died. 

So Navani gets the idea to put the voidlight in a vacuum to divorce it from the tones of Odium "For the first time in its existence."

Quote

"What are we doing?" Raboniel asked softly. 

"I believe this is the only way to completely separate Voidlight from the songs of Roshar," Navani explained. "There can be no sound in a vacuum, as there is no air to transfer the waves. So as this gemstone ejects Voidlight, I'm hoping the Light will not be able to 'hear' Odium's rhythms--for the first time in its existence."

...

She [Navani] grabbed her bow, then pressed the plate against the side of the vacuum chamber and began playing her anti-voidlight tone. Raboniel winced at the sound. "The Light won't be able to hear," she said. "It's in a vacuum, as you said."

"Yes, but it's moving across, and will soon touch the empty diamond at the other side," Navani said. "I want this to be the first thing it hears when it touches matter."

...

Voidlight eventually touched the empty diamond and was pulled inside. She waited until a good measure of it had been drawn, then had Raboniel undo the clasp separating the diamond's enclosure from the vacuum. Navani opened this to a little pop of sound, then puckled out the diamond. It glowed faintly violet-black [stygian violet?]. She stared at it, looking closer, until...

Yes. A faint warping of the air around it.

So to my point. She divorced the Voidlight from Odium's tones. She divorced the investiture from... from what, it's Connection? It's Intent? And then warped it, changed it entirely. Anti-noise sounds a lot like normal noise but the entire point is that mathematically it's a dramatic difference. So, what was the Voidlight when it was in the vacuum? Just... Light? AdonalsiumLight? Could she have turn that Voidlight into Stormlight, or Towerlight, with different tones? Because if so, the implications there are massive. 

Or there's some WoB that's already out there that's going to massively disappoint me because "no that's not how it works at you're an idiot @The Technovore." Or I just completely misread that passage, but I do also notice that it's referred to as Voidlight and as Light inside the vacuum. So what's going on here?

[Frustration]

It's still Voidlight, it just has a different polarity, while in a Vacuum it simply doesn't have a polarity

I don't think you could make it Stormlight or something else, easily, though what would happen if you did anti-stormlight rhythm to Voidlight remains a mystery.

[The Technovore]

On 12/21/2020 at 9:24 PM, Honorless said:

Yup! And unlike the case of Stormlight and Voidlight, Preservation and Ruin's Investiture did repel one another and annihilate one another upon contact! Wonder what that might imply...

 

On 12/22/2020 at 5:59 AM, IndigoAjah said:

Just as all Shards seem to produce Godmetals, I'm sure they all have Godrhythms too. 

 

I like this line of reasoning. Surely the Well of Ascension's Beat that Vin heard is Preservation's Rhythm? Maybe, as Bronze can pick up the difference in Allomatic Metals being burned, it can also be used to distinguish between different Surges being used? And Copperclouds can stop you doing that, and block Listeners/Fused from listening to the Rhythms on Roshar?

 

On 12/22/2020 at 3:20 PM, Ishar said:

There's a couple. Here's one, and here's another.

I find this particularly interesting, especially when you look at what actually distinguishes shards, and how anti-lights are/were made. What distinguishes Shards mainly is intent. So the idea that you take a Shards light, isolate it from all sound/rhythms, then give it a different sound to change it to anti-light implies that intent is held in sound/rhythms, and that investiture holds intent by holding sounds/rhythms. I am pretty sure that if this were the case, it would open a very large can of worms about intent in the Cosmere. This makes me wonder if sound/rhythms were used in the process of creating Nightblood.

Edit: I just found a thread that appears to be exactly about the larger role of Rhythms and Identity in the Cosmere, but it contains Dawnshard spoilers, and as I have yet to read Dawnshard, I am not going to be looking at that thread yet.

 

On 12/22/2020 at 6:34 AM, IndigoAjah said:

So, if the (very possible though I don't really like it - I prefer 4 groups by Type of Intent) theory that every Shard has its opposite is true, then this means they've played, with say AntiVoidlight, the Rhythm and made the Light of, say Devotion... (My proposed opposite to Odium)

 

Could that be used to tap magic systems like the AonDor on Roshar?

Some quotes from "RoW Rhythms vs Mistborn Rhythms"

Turns out I'm not the only person asking these questions. This could be just as exciting as I originally thought it could be. If it's possible to convert Investiture from intent to another, it might be possible to just completely annihilate Odium. Turn all his Voidlight into Stormlight. However if this was feasible, why didn't R-Odium do that to Dominion and Devotion, or Ambition? hmmmmm...

[ScadrianTank]

If Navani's understanding of the Lights is correct and they don't produce the Rhythms on their own but echo them, all that changes when you place Investiture in a vacuum is that it goes silent and deaf.  It changes the moment it starts to hear and echo the Rhythms again.
So Voidlight in a vacuum is still Voidlight, Odium's Investiture.

It has several interesting implications for the future of the cosmere. For one, you won't be able to use Allomantic Bronze as a radar for a spaceship. And for another, if converting one Investiture into another is possible via a Rhythm and similar process, it would also happen the moment it can echo the sound again.

[mathiau]

If the magnets analogy is correct then it was normal Voidlight, it's just that the Rhythms of Roshar were too strong for Navani's plate to have any effect on it.

18 hours ago, The Technovore said:

Some quotes from "RoW Rhythms vs Mistborn Rhythms"

Turns out I'm not the only person asking these questions. This could be just as exciting as I originally thought it could be. If it's possible to convert Investiture from intent to another, it might be possible to just completely annihilate Odium. Turn all his Voidlight into Stormlight. However if this was feasible, why didn't R-Odium do that to Dominion and Devotion, or Ambition? hmmmmm...

I can see two possibilities:

1. It's very long and Odium wanted to destroy all his main targets (Ambition, Domination and probably Honour) before trying to do it.
2. Completly destroying a Shard would create an imbalance in the Cosmere big enough that Odium fears the consequences, or that it would shift the intent of every remaining Shards so that the universe is still complete.

Edited February 7, 2021 by mathiau

[KSub]

On 06/02/2021 at 1:08 PM, The Technovore said:

Right, so it's in CH. 97 of RoW that Navani makes anti-voidlight, and this brought up a lot of questions for me, and maybe someone has some answers here. So in the previous Navani chapters she's learning a lot about Cosmere and Roshar and the three pure tones and vibrations and so on and so forth. She also gets an interesting tidbit from Raboniel that the interplanetary space in the Physical Realm is not traversable (yet), even by Radiants. They sent Fused into the sky with plenty of Voidlight but they still died. 

So Navani gets the idea to put the voidlight in a vacuum to divorce it from the tones of Odium "For the first time in its existence."

So to my point. She divorced the Voidlight from Odium's tones. She divorced the investiture from... from what, it's Connection? It's Intent? And then warped it, changed it entirely. Anti-noise sounds a lot like normal noise but the entire point is that mathematically it's a dramatic difference. So, what was the Voidlight when it was in the vacuum? Just... Light? AdonalsiumLight? Could she have turn that Voidlight into Stormlight, or Towerlight, with different tones? Because if so, the implications there are massive. 

Or there's some WoB that's already out there that's going to massively disappoint me because "no that's not how it works at you're an idiot @The Technovore." Or I just completely misread that passage, but I do also notice that it's referred to as Voidlight and as Light inside the vacuum. So what's going on here?

 

So if I'm correct voidlight/stormlight etc. is a physical thing. It's equivalent to gaseous investiture like mist or breaths.

When it's in the vacuum it is still voidlight. It's keyed for lack of a better word to Odium. We know that all investiture comes from Adonalsium, so all investiture is of every shard. We have seen shards corrupt investiture. That is different but I think it's also kind of the same.

In the void it is separated from all the rhythms of roshar, so using the proper tone Navani was able to reprogram it. There was too much interference when it wasn't in the vacuum. So I think, yes, it could have been changed into any investiture. 

My personal theory is that this is what Autonomy has been doing, converting investiture for its various avatars. But that's another story.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

1 hour ago, KSub said:

all investiture comes from Adonalsium, so all investiture is of every shard

I mean... not really? If you smash a plate, each piece is not of every other piece. 

[The Technovore]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:23 AM, Frustration said:

It's still Voidlight, it just has a different polarity, while in a Vacuum it simply doesn't have a polarity

I don't think you could make it Stormlight or something else, easily, though what would happen if you did anti-stormlight rhythm to Voidlight remains a mystery.

 

1 hour ago, KSub said:

When it's in the vacuum it is still voidlight. It's keyed for lack of a better word to Odium. We know that all investiture comes from Adonalsium, so all investiture is of every shard. We have seen shards corrupt investiture. That is different but I think it's also kind of the same.

 

Okay so this brings me to another thought, but I'm tired so this is probably going to make no sense, but... okay I can see now that likely was still Voidlight like Frustration said, just missing polarity, (because prior to that scene was a scene talking about axi, so it makes sense, even when mixing lights there was no conversion but an emulsification to mix "oil" and "water") but now I'm thinking about the trouble with off-world Investiture. Why exactly does it not work? It's distance from Intent, right? There's a lot in RoW talking about how Investiture needs Intent for it to work. In the vacuum, the voidlight was divorced from the rhythms, which could like a weakening of its Connection, (there have been connections between the Roshar Rhythms and the Shaod, perhaps the same mechanics apply?) but perhaps in a more-potent vacuum, given some distance, could it divorced completely from its Intent? It would just be raw (likely completely useless) Investiture, but could it given a new Intent, keyed to a new Shard, when it's brought back?  

This would likely need a very secure vessel for the investiture, because I can just imagine taking a gem into space and watching it rapidly become dun as the Voidlight rushes back to Odium, but maybe a perfect crystal? It sounds far-fetched even as I describe it lol.

Edited February 8, 2021 by The Technovore

[mathiau]

5 hours ago, KSub said:

So if I'm correct voidlight/stormlight etc. is a physical thing. It's equivalent to gaseous investiture like mist or breaths.

You are

Quote

Questioner

I know that there's three sorts of forms that magic presents itself in, the liquid and the solid and air. What would Breath be?

Brandon Sanderson

Breath is definitely like mist, it is in the form of the air.

Questioner

And is Stormlight the same?

Brandon Sanderson

Stormlight is the same.

Words of Radiance Philadelphia signing (March 21, 2014)

[18th Shard]

I imagined it more like a magnetic orientation - suppose being in Roshar orients Voidlight "north", but by putting it in a vacuum, Navani removed the Voidlight from a Intent "magnetic" orientation, which allowed her to re-orient it to a "south" pole. The substance didn't change, but the effect is equal and opposite.