White Sand and Stormlight

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

The sand that turns white from stormlight is obviously from white sand. If this sand is charged by using stormlight, can a radiant use the sand like a gem? In other words, is the sand a kind of gem regarding stormlight?

[+Oltux72]

Probably not, as Khrissalla mentions that Sandmastery draws most of its power not out of the sand, but directly from the Spiritual Realm. You also can use your ribbons pretty much indefinitely and they turn black only as you drop them.

[Honorless]

On 6/23/2021 at 3:57 AM, Hoid the Drifter said:

The sand that turns white from stormlight is obviously from white sand. If this sand is charged by using stormlight, can a radiant use the sand like a gem? In other words, is the sand a kind of gem regarding stormlight?

Recall back to the Kholinar mission in book 3, Kaladin couldn't use his powers without getting detected but Shallan could. Later on, when they enter Shadesmar with their limited supply of Stormlight, they notice that Lightweaving used far less Stormlight than Gravitation.

Now recall the scene where Hoid's White Sand detected Shallan's Lightweaving. The black sand turned white just from proximity to Shallan's Lightweaving.

On Taldain, in White Sand, it took black sand 4 hours to recharge and turn into white sand again.

In RoW, Navani differentiates between Light and its radiation

Quote

“I couldn’t get Lifelight and Stormlight to recombine, but I don’t know if this counts as truly splitting them apart—as I’ve only split their radiation, not the pooled Light itself.”

And Taldain's Investiture is distributed by sunlight. Which might mean it's not a gaseous form of Investiture like Stormlight is but Investiture radiation, like the light that everything connected to the Spiritual Realm gives off.

Even disregarding that last part which is just my theory, OB pretty much confirms it. White Sand can contain much less Investiture compared to gemstones. So it's really not a good Investiture storage unit but it's a pretty great Invested Arts usage detector.

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

2 hours ago, Honorless said:

Recall back to the Kholinar mission in book 3, Kaladin couldn't use his powers without getting detected but Shallan could. Later on, when they enter Shadesmar with their limited supply of Stormlight, they notice that Lightweaving used far less Stormlight than Gravitation.

Now recall the scene where Hoid's White Sand detected Shallan's Lightweaving. The black sand turned white just from proximity to Shallan's Lightweaving.

On Taldain, in White Sand, it took black sand 4 hours to recharge and turn into white sand again.

In RoW, Navani differentiates between Light and its radiation

And Taldain's Investiture is distributed by sunlight. Which might mean it's not a gaseous form of Investiture like Stormlight is but Investiture radiation, like the light that everything connected to the Spiritual Realm gives off.

Even disregarding that last part which is just my theory, OB pretty much confirms it. White Sand can contain much less Investiture compared to gemstones. So it's really not a good Investiture storage unit but it's a pretty great Invested Arts usage detector.

thanks!

[mathiau]

2 hours ago, Honorless said:

And Taldain's Investiture is distributed by sunlight. Which might mean it's not a gaseous form of Investiture like Stormlight is but Investiture radiation, like the light that everything connected to the Spiritual Realm gives off.

That's not necessarily true, it could also be transparent gaseous investiture emitted by Taldain's sun

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

1 minute ago, mathiau said:

That's not necessarily true, it could also be transparent gaseous investiture emitted by Taldain's sun

I think @Honorless is right. Otherwise, the reason the sand would glow is because of the gaseous form of investiture; in this case, that's stormlight. so a radiant should be able to reclaim stormlight from sand.

By the way, if sand was put in a box of metal on Scadrial, what would happen? what about in the same room as an Elantrian?

[mathiau]

18 minutes ago, Hoid the Drifter said:

I think @Honorless is right. Otherwise, the reason the sand would glow is because of the gaseous form of investiture; in this case, that's stormlight. so a radiant should be able to reclaim stormlight from sand.

I don't follow your reasoning, the idea that the lichen becomes white because it was fed by investiture (a bit like a sunflower raising it's head when the sun shines) is still perfectly valid and there's still no reason for radiants to be able to reclaim it.

Quote

By the way, if sand was put in a box of metal on Scadrial, what would happen?

Nothing, the metal is just the key to open the power, it doesn't emit any power by itself.

Quote

what about in the same room as an Elantrian?

I think it'd slowly become white from the investiture that's feeding the Elantrian.

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

5 hours ago, mathiau said:

I don't follow your reasoning, the idea that the lichen becomes white because it was fed by investiture (a bit like a sunflower raising it's head when the sun shines) is still perfectly valid and there's still no reason for radiants to be able to reclaim it.

The point i was disputing was gaseous investiture. if that was true, stormlight, which is a gaseous investiture, which we know because it comes straight from a perpendicularity to the spiritual, should be the same.

unless there are any WoBs that argue with me?

[Honorless]

@Hoid the Drifter, we don't know much about how Investiture distribution systems really work, only some very different examples of them, I imagine there's a bit more going on. On Scadrial, with the Heralds and with Odium, it's via direct link to the respective Shard(s), on Nalthis the Shard seems to act both passively and directly in different cases, Threnody is irradiated with Investiture, Sel's Investiture is in the wrong realm, Roshar's systems predate the Shards' arrival, First of the Sun's system is also probably older than Autonomy's Avatar.

I don't think we can predict types & behaviours of Investiture from how they're distributed or vice-versa yet.

Also, I don't know about reclaiming Investiture from the white sand lichen, as I pointed out, it's a miniscule amount, so I'm not sure it would be very useful.

Edited June 28, 2021 by Honorless

[miqius]

I think of charging white sand as overcoming an energy gap.

The microorganisms on the sand need a certain amount of energy to become a (allomantic metal-like) focus that lets Investiture pass from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical. That energy would be provided by the radiation of Investiture, so the sand is never actually Invested.

Once it's been used as a focus for an indefinite time by a sand master, it returns to the original state. It bothers me that it's indefinite since metals disappear after a time of using them as focus, but of course it's not the same, the lichen is alive and creates a sort of bond with the sand master that allows the magic, it's not just a piece of metal.

Maybe radiation from Investiture of different Shards takes different times/intensities to turn the sand white(?), since they're associated to diferent frequencies, so they would carry different amounts of energy. There's a looooot of stuff an in-world scientist can study with white sand and the presumed fixed energy gap, I'm so hyped.

Edited June 25, 2021 by Miqius

[mathiau]

On 25/06/2021 at 5:53 AM, Hoid the Drifter said:

The point i was disputing was gaseous investiture. if that was true, stormlight, which is a gaseous investiture, which we know because it comes straight from a perpendicularity to the spiritual, should be the same.

unless there are any WoBs that argue with me?

I know, I was disputing your counter argument

Navani was able to create Towerlight without a perpendicularity and Kal did the same with stormlight. Also, Lift.

Also there's no indication that there is not a perpendicularity in Taldain's sun

[Hoid the Former Drifter]

ok fair point.