Ishar's Perpendicularity

[Mage]

So I was listening to the Ishar Shardcast, and they mentioned this topic, and how it was weird, but never got into any of the details or made any speculations.

Therefore, I pose the question to you all: How the heck did Ishar open a perpendicularity, and what was the nature of the perpendicularity.

First, some of the stuff we know. Elsecallers and Willshapers have the surge that allows them to open a small perpendicularity: transportation. However, Dalinar, a Bondsmith, has opened Honor's perpendicularity using his Spiritual Adhesion to unite the realms or some mumbo jumbo like that. We know that Ishar has the Bondsmith Honorblade and is not restricted by Honor anymore, and therefore can do all sorts of scary stuff.

Second, some of the stuff we don't know, but can probably guess. He probably isn't using Cultivation's or Odium's perpendicularities. Cultivation's is stable in the Horneater peaks, and Odium is invested on Braize and probably wouldn't want to Invest himself to the extent of giving someone the ability to open his perpendicularity.

With all of this in mind I have a couple of theories, but little proof of either one.

1. Ishar is also opening Honor's perpendicularity. It isn't unreasonable to think that two people can have the same ability. An Honorblade is of Honor, just like the Stormfather is. (I wonder if he and Dalinar could open it at the same time (if this guess turns out to be right)).
2. Since Ishar was the one to initially bind the surges (probably using the same Honorblade), now that Honor is dead he could just as well un-bind the surges. I don't know the mechanics of "binding the surges" but he potentially could change the way surgebinding worked for his blade or for him, and granted himself the surge of transportation.

Those are my most reasonable guesses. I also have some more out there ideas of which I will make a brief list

1. Hemalurgy
2. While manipulating Dalinar's Connection to the Stormfather he briefly took the ability to open Honor's perpendicularity
3. Nightblood???

Let me know what you all think (or if there is a known answer to this that I have totally missed). And I am proud of you if you actually read all the way through this massive post.

[Bejarden]

I think the Honorblade is giving him the same Surge Dalinar uses to open the Perpendicularity 

It never seemed that weird to me, at least no weirder than Dalinar 

It was probably Honors Perpendicularity 

[+Bzhydack]

5 minutes ago, Mage said:

While manipulating Dalinar's Connection to the Stormfather he briefly took the ability to open Honor's perpendicularity

For sure not. Ishar Has troops in Shadesmar, and he hunts Sapient Spren. This mean he Opened Perpendicularity many times, before he even met Dalinar.

I also think this is Honor's Perpendicularity. IT can be more than one Shard's Perpendicularity.

[Mage]

4 minutes ago, Bejardin1250 said:

I think the Honorblade is giving him the same Surge Dalinar uses to open the Perpendicularity 

It never seemed that weird to me, at least no weirder than Dalinar 

It was probably Honors Perpendicularity 

Yeah, that is the one that seems the most likely to me. I still wonder what would happen if they both tried to summon Honor's perpendicularity in two different places. I really need to reread that Ishar scene.

[+asmodeus]

I think we've been making an assumption in saying that Shards have a perpendicularity, almost like... a possession of some kind, in a "Hi, I'm Honor, and this here, is my perpendicularity" manner. The way the text talks about it may seem that way, but... I don't think that's quite the case.

Any place where you can have enough investiture, you're going to be able to pierce the realms and have a perpendicularity. So... in that sense, "Honor's perpendicularity" is kind of not exactly a thing. Like... there is a small, weird perp even in the Highstorms, as they expose the gems to the spiritual, in that timeless moment that comes at their eye. There would have to be another kind of perp at the heart of the Sibling, too, and not that different from the Highstorm perp, except this one pulls invetiture from both Honor and Cultivation and mixes them together.

So... what people like Dalinar and Ishar are doing then, is not strictly summoning "Honor's perp" to them, it... would have to be more "I'm going to use this power of Honor to open a perpendicularity here." Which would be actively different from Transportation, which would be more about travel, being "a force that pulls people through realms" and somehow also a force of motion, separate from gravitational acceleration.

We've seen multiple powers interact with Connection, like how Illumination has a small Connection component to it, so... people with access to Transportation and Transformation being able to slip through realms would not exclusively limit the ability to open perpendicularities to them either.

What the Bondsmiths do is more general, and is specifically opening a perp all the way through the spiritual, and pulling a Shard's power through it (which makes a lot of sense, considering at least two of the three bondsmith-spren are Light generators), whereas for soulcasting and for Transportation, you need to expend stormlight, and don't get a window into the spiritual to pull more of it through.

[Inquisitor #5]

I'd need to re-read that part, but I remember getting the impression that Ishar saw Dalinar doing his thing and at that point realised that he could maybe also do that, though who knows how he has agents in Shadesmar then.

The perpendicularity thing is new, as far as we know, Honor no longer lives to enforce his laws and all that, so this shouldn't be a trick from back in the day for Ishar.

The Stormfather also says "I didn't feel him" or something like that when Ishar is doing the thing, which either means he thinks it's Honor's perpendicularity and Ishar somehow circumvented him to open it or he thinks it's not Honor's perpendicularity, since he can't feel it.

2 hours ago, asmodeus said:

I think we've been making an assumption in saying that Shards have a perpendicularity, almost like... a possession of some kind, in a "Hi, I'm Honor, and this here, is my perpendicularity" manner. The way the text talks about it may seem that way, but... I don't think that's quite the case.

Given that pretty much every Shard we've met (that is, knowingly been to the planet where this Shard resides) seems to have one, Cultivation's in the peaks, Honor's is confirmed as moving, Preservation's was the Well, Ruin's was the Pits, Devotion's is the pool in Elantris, it seems safe to speculate about a singular perpendicularity per Shard*, a place where their pure essence pools.

*Autonomy and her avatars mess this up a bit, assuming the pool on Patji to be a perpendicularity.

 

¤_¤

[+asmodeus]

1 minute ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

I'd need to re-read that part, but I remember getting the impression that Ishar saw Dalinar doing his thing and at that point realised that he could maybe also do that, though who knows how he has agents in Shadesmar then.

I agree here. The fact that Ishar has people in Shadesmar, the fact that he's able to somehow reach in and "touch" spren in such a way that he can force them manifest physically in a very creepy, weird way, and the fact that the perp was meant to be a clear exit strategy makes me think that this is an ability he's familiar with. Though... when he gained it, I don't know.

4 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Given that pretty much every Shard we've met (that is, knowingly been to the planet where this Shard resides) seems to have one, Cultivation's in the peaks, Honor's is confirmed as moving, Preservation's was the Well, Ruin's was the Pits, Devotion's is the pool in Elantris, it seems safe to speculate about a singular perpendicularity per Shard*, a place where their pure essence pools.

*Autonomy and her avatars mess this up a bit, assuming the pool on Patji to be a perpendicularity.

My only real take on this is that perps do not inherently require shards to make them, and since there are only really sixteen base "flavors" of investiture, there is nothing that realmatically stops you from creating 19 perps using... say pure Odium investiture.

But, this is different from Odium actively going to a planet, investing in it heavily, and that creating a natural perp on that planet. You and I would call this perp "Odium's perp," which would make sense, because it is Odium's. But that is different from saying that Odium, the shard, only has one perpendicularity, as if it was a specific object in his possession. As you yourself point out, Drominad seems to have a naturally occurring perp simply because it is naturally invested enough to have one, and that perp is associated with Autonomy. There are other places that could have a perpendicularities made of... say pure... Ambition, outside of Threnody.

Basically, what I'm trying to get at, is that discussion around opening a perpendicularity should be able to be done, without us having to think about it in terms of "how are these two people able to summon this one specific thing?" It's not shared, Dalinar does not have one instance of a perpendicularity, he has the ability open a new one, even if it is personally taxing to him, at will.

Apparently, so does Ishar. At least nowadays.

[Inquisitor #5]

2 hours ago, asmodeus said:

My only real take on this is that perps do not inherently require shards to make them, and since there are only really sixteen base "flavors" of investiture, there is nothing that realmatically stops you from creating 19 perps using... say pure Odium investiture.

Oh, I'm not saying that only 16 perpendicularities can exist, or anything like that. Presumably you could open a functionally endless number of perpendicularities per Shard, I'd just make a distinction between [Shard]'s perpendicularity and perpendicularity opened using [Shard]'s investiture.

The former I'd contend is the natural point where the Shard's power gathers, which seems to be limited to one per Shard per planet at most.

2 hours ago, asmodeus said:

Basically, what I'm trying to get at, is that discussion around opening a perpendicularity should be able to be done, without us having to think about it in terms of "how are these two people able to summon this one specific thing?" It's not shared, Dalinar does not have one instance of a perpendicularity, he has the ability open a new one, even if it is personally taxing to him, at will.

What Dalinar does has been identified as opening Honor's perpendicularity, as opposed to opening a perpendicularity. It behaves the way Honor's perpendicularity presumably behaves, recharging spheres, which is not a known function of what Elsecallers and Willshapers do. I contend that opening a perpendicularity using Honor's investiture would not recharge spheres, opening Honor's perpendicularity would.

I guess we need to see if what Ishar does recharges spheres or not, if it doesn't I'm totally on-board with him "just" opening a perpendicularity, if it does everything goes hecka weird.

 

¤_¤

[+asmodeus]

54 minutes ago, Inquisitor #5 said:

Oh, I'm not saying that only 16 perpendicularities can exist, or anything like that. Presumably you could open a functionally endless number of perpendicularities per Shard, I'd just make a distinction between [Shard]'s perpendicularity and perpendicularity opened using [Shard]'s investiture.

The former I'd contend is the natural point where the Shard's power gathers, which seems to be limited to one per Shard per planet at most.

I guess the only real point of contention between what you're saying and what I'm saying, right now, is whether there is a distinction to be made. Personally, I don't see a distinction, to me they're all just perpendicularities, and each, depending on how it's made and all, is going to have some characteristics unique to it. Like how Dalinar's perpendicularity has no liquid pool, he can just pinch the realms and create a pillar of Light, whereas the Well of Ascension was a pool that filled with glowing liquid-like Investiture over a period of 1024 years.

Now, that being said, there is some kind of distinction between the shard's investiture investing a place and the vessel personally "going" to a place and investing in it. So... I could see certain perps having an additional significance to the vessel or the shard in some way.

But in general, I just feel that calling something x's perpendicularity is just more writing convention, than something with massive realmatic significance.