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About fabrials


Saignenuit

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Hello all ! I wanted to ask you if you could explain me how the 4th bridge actually work (I don't really understood, maybe it is because I haven't read so many books in english).  I asked on discod and people explained me, but I wanted to have different point of view on the question. And if also someone could explain me glove fabrial that Navani tried (from part 2, the first test was on chapter 19 from part 1).

(I've only read the first 2 parts for the moment)

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The Fourth Bridge is kind of complicated. There's two concepts that need to be understood (both of which are delved into a bit in Dawnshard, if you haven't read that yet):

  • Aluminum can be used to cut off a plane of motion from a conjoined fabrial, if positioned appropriately. For an example from Dawnshard, you can cut off the horizontal transfer of motion, and thus move each half independently left and right and forwards and back all you want, but leave the vertical transfer intact, so that moving one half up or down will still move the other.
  • Conjoiners move in accordance to the frame of reference of people nearby. Thus, forwards, backwards, up, down, etc are relative. For example, if you take a pair of reversed conjoiners on a ship, you're not going to end up with one shooting the other backwards due to the forward motion of the ship, because they share a frame of reference. Similarly, the motion of the planet through space doesn't lead to very quick and uncontrollable space pens.
    In a related vein, motion is relative. If a person on one side of the planet raises their spanreed A straight up, and spanreed B is on the other side of the planet, B isn't going to go down just because that's the direction A was moved in. It's going to move in the direction everyone around it perceives as up. Move A forwards, and B will move in the direction people nearby expect to be forwards, even if it's not technically the same direction A was moved.

The Fourth Bridge combines these concepts, and uses two giant gemstone lattices for movement:

  • One has all horizontal movement cut off, and is raised and lowered by a ton of pulleys off a plateau near the tower, to control the vertical movement.
  • One has all vertical movement cut off, and is pulled by a line of chulls, to control horizontal motion. When they reach the end of the open space, they can temporarily disjoin, rotate, and then rejoin and march back. Because direction is relative, this will work fine, and the ship will continue to move forwards.
    (Note: the book's phrasing of the last part is ambiguous; it's possible that they keep the fabrials disjoined the entire journey back and just use more chulls. I put what my reading of it was, but I can't be certain that's what was meant.)

Disclaimer: This is how I understand what was said in the book, but some of this strains my head to visualize, so I could be mistaken.

 

Edit: Sorry, forgot to explain the glove. This one, I'm a bit confused on how exactly they accomplish it, but it's sort of similar. Instead of merely ignoring force, however, it redirects it relative to the orientation of the gem. Normally, when the weight is dropped with one end, the other end goes shooting up into the air. However, by using this redirection, it instead pulls you in the direction you're pointing the glove, because it sees that as the correct direction to move.

Edited by LewsTherinTelescope
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