Known and Hypothetical Bondsmith Powers

[Trusk'our]

Here are the confirmed Bondsmith powers that I know of.

1. Bondsmiths can see the Connections of someone they touch.

2. They can make new Connections or remove previously existing Connections and give those to themselves or someone else. This allows them to learn others' languages instantly or to potentially steal spren bonds.

3. They can see into someone's past by viewing their Connections.

4. They can summon a perpendicularity at will, no outside investiture required.

5. They can create life-like visions.

We’ve seen Dalinar look at Nale’s past, so perhaps it is possible to look at someone else’s future or to look at your own past or future with Bondsmith powers. You likely couldn't see someone else's future during a fight as it seems to require physical contact, but you might be able to see your own future similar to Allomantic electrum. We've probably already see Ishar doing this with considerable skill when he fought Dalinar, I would venture to guess.

This quote says that you might be able to make yourself immortal by manipulating Connection, and I suspect that Bondsmiths could therefore grant this ability, as well as providing something akin to the Oathpact and it’s powers of immortality.

Quote

Doom-Slayer

So how do the exact mechanics of Feruchemy in relation to Compounding work?

This confusion is primarily around how [the Lord Ruler] gets his near infinite age.

Okay. So first off, I understand the concept of how they work. Feruchemy is net zero, Allomancy is net positive, combine them and you end with a net positive Feruchemy ability.

So how Feruchemy normally works... you take say weight, store half your normal weight and then you can access it whenever you want. So you (originally X weight) are taking A weight, storing it, and then you are at (X-A) weight, with access to A. So we have a metalmind that store magnitude with the efficiency of how its received based on how quickly or slowly it is drawn upon.

All the metalminds except atium seem to act this way. Atium seems to work as storing magnitude/time rather than just magnitude. The way I understand it is that say a 30 year old person becomes 50 years old for 1 day, this would give access to 20 years difference for a 1 day period.

The Lord Ruler then exploits this by gaining access to say 20 years difference over 10 days (magnification by Compounding) which he then slowly feeds into himself to lower his age.

Why this difference? I'm assuming its to maintain a neutral "body age" because with just magnitude a person could permanently make themselves younger by Compounding.

With just magnitude of "20 years of youth" being stored, if the Lord Ruler magnified it, he could turn it into "200 years of youth" and then he would never need the constant stream off youth (and wouldn't have died without the bracelets)

Hope this makes sense.

Brandon Sanderson

All right, so there are a few things you have to understand about cosmere magics to grok all of this.

First, is that magics can be hacked together. You'll see more of this in the future of the cosmere, but an early one is the hack here--where you're essentially powering Feruchemy with Allomancy. (A little more complex than that, but it seems like you get the idea.)

The piece you're missing is the nature of a person's Spiritual aspect. This is similar to a Platonic idea--the idea that there's a perfect version of everyone somewhere. It's a mix of their connections to places, people, and times with raw Investiture. The soul, you might say.

(Note that over time, a person's perception of themselves shapes their Cognitive aspect as well, and the Cognitive aspect can interfere with the Spiritual aspect trying to make the Physical aspect repair itself.) Healing in the cosmere often works by aligning your Physical self with your Spiritual self--making the Physical regrow. More powerful forms of Investiture can repair the soul as well.

However, your age is part of your Connection to places, people, and times. Your soul "knows" things, like where you were born, what Investiture you are aligned with, and--yes--how old you are. When you're healing yourself, you're restoring yourself to a perfect state--when you're done, everything is good. When you're changing your age, however, you are transforming yourself to something unnatural. Against what your soul understands to be true.

So the Spiritual aspect will push for a restoration to the way you should be. With this Compounding hack, you're not changing connection; it's a purely Physical Realm change.

This dichotomy cannot remain for long. And the greater the disparity, the more pressure the spirit will exert. Ten or twenty years won't matter much. A thousand will matter a lot. So the only way to use Compounding to change your age is to store up all this extra youth in a metalmind, then be constantly tapping it to counteract the soul's attempt to restore you to how you should be.

Yes, all of this means there are FAR more efficient means of counteracting aging than the one used by the Lord Ruler. It's a hack, and not meant to be terribly efficient. Eventually, he wouldn't have been able to maintain himself this way at all. Changing Connection (or even involving ones Cognitive Aspect a little more) would have been far more efficient, though actively more difficult.

Though this is the point where I ping [Peter Ahlstrom] and get him to double-check all this. Once in a while, my fingers still type the wrong term in places. (See silvereye vs tineye.)

It seems likely that a Bondsmith could cut off a magic user from their investiture by removing their Connection to their Shard, perhaps even magic users who aren't bonded to a spren, as all uses of magic (except for fabrials) require a Connection to a Shard as far as I know.

A Bondsmith could perhaps edit spiritwebs by removing, adding, and moving around their natural Connections to places, people, and times.

Honestly, they might not have the raw combat potential of a Fullborn, or have the many benefits of holding the 10th Heightening, but if half of these hypothetical abilities turn out to be achievable, then they are very, VERY powerful if they play their cards right.

[Trusk'our]

I just thought of this today; Forgery on Sel is basically just rearranging and creating false Connections, and overwriting your spiritweb. What you are, at your core of self. If a Bondsmith can alter your Connections in a similar manner, that would be terrifying. First of all, Forgery is very limited in what it can accomplish because it has very little investiture to work with. Bondsmiths, however, have access to more raw investiture than any other radiant, meaning that they may not need to rely on believability like a Forgery, they can just change themselves, or you, in any way they want. I can now envision a scene like this happening with Dalinar or Navani “Oh, you’re a 7000 year old Fused? Well, we wouldn’t want you to benefit from all that time training, let’s just remove the Connection to that time, maybe give it to my Windrunner over there. He’ll make much better use of it.” They also might be able to hack any magic system, since they can just rewrite their past to say that they gained access to it. Seems really, really powerful. Assuming that this is even something that can be done, of course.

[+Bzhydack]

Maybe, but Im sceptical.

There is some... Spiritual Inertia (lets call this this way) in Cosmere. Your soul knows who you supose to be and what you supose to know/do/can etc. And any active attempt to change this is generating eee.... Spiritual Resistance? Of some sort. Remember Lord Ruler? His soul knew how old he should be, so when he stops fooling his Soul with magic, he reverted to his deafult state and this killed him. With soulstamps we can see this also very well.

So maybe this will be possible, but amount of skill and power required to do this will be astronomical, and effect probably wont last very long on living organism. We deal not only with simple Connections, we deal also with Identity and while it is also made from connections, they are very complicated and with many layers. And we must deal also with Spiritweb itself, mess with Spiritual Realm and Spiritual Ideal itself.

So, im sceptical.

[Trusk'our]

On 1/18/2022 at 9:09 PM, Bzhydack said:

Maybe, but Im sceptical.

There is some... Spiritual Inertia (lets call this this way) in Cosmere. Your soul knows who you supose to be and what you supose to know/do/can etc. And any active attempt to change this is generating eee.... Spiritual Resistance? Of some sort. Remember Lord Ruler? His soul knew how old he should be, so when he stops fooling his Soul with magic, he reverted to his deafult state and this killed him. With soulstamps we can see this also very well.

So maybe this will be possible, but amount of skill and power required to do this will be astronomical, and effect probably wont last very long on living organism. We deal not only with simple Connections, we deal also with Identity and while it is also made from connections, they are very complicated and with many layers. And we must deal also with Spiritweb itself, mess with Spiritual Realm and Spiritual Ideal itself.

So, im sceptical.

It's true that there would be some resistance that the soul would exert, but Bondsmiths are very powerful in terms of raw investiture. If anything other than a Shard can effect your spiritual aspect, it's a Bondsmith. 

Also, the Lord Ruler didn't change his actual soul, just his physical body, which meant that his soul kept trying to move back to where it should have been because it thought that it should have been something else. 

I believe that most changes made to your soul would be temporary, but they could be maintained the way Soulstamps are; just give them some occasional upkeep. 

[NameIess]

On 1/18/2022 at 9:09 PM, Bzhydack said:

Maybe, but Im sceptical.

There is some... Spiritual Inertia (lets call this this way) in Cosmere. Your soul knows who you supose to be and what you supose to know/do/can etc. And any active attempt to change this is generating eee.... Spiritual Resistance? Of some sort. Remember Lord Ruler? His soul knew how old he should be, so when he stops fooling his Soul with magic, he reverted to his deafult state and this killed him. With soulstamps we can see this also very well.

So maybe this will be possible, but amount of skill and power required to do this will be astronomical, and effect probably wont last very long on living organism. We deal not only with simple Connections, we deal also with Identity and while it is also made from connections, they are very complicated and with many layers. And we must deal also with Spiritweb itself, mess with Spiritual Realm and Spiritual Ideal itself.

So, im sceptical.

I agree with @Trusk'our on this one. Unchained Bondsmiths are meant to be upright terrifying. Ishar somehow caught Ashyn on fire forever by tampering with bondsmith powers. Ishar was about to casually rip away both Dalinar's bond to the Stormfather and his enmity with Odium. If Bondsmiths struggled to change normal mortal souls, I see no reason that the Stormfather and even Odium would be so nervous about the possibility. Sure, soulstamps, soulcasting, and even compounding have a hard time fooling or changing souls, but Bondsmiths are meant to be different. An unchained Bondsmith has the power of a Shard, without the restrictions that normally bind Shards.

[+ShardlessVessel]

I want to note that these are powers Dalinar has displayed. Knights Radiant gain their powers from their spren; within each Order the powers are very similar because the spren are very similar, but each Bondsmith bonds a radically different spren from the others.

What I'm trying to say is that Navani's powers may be different from Dalinar's.

[Frustration]

1 hour ago, ShardlessVessel said:

What I'm trying to say is that Navani's powers may be different from Dalinar's.

Oh they would.

I'll add the WoB later but if Dalinar we're to die and someone else bonded the Stormfather  their surges might behave differently than Dalinar's

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

Bondsmith

I will unite

Bondsmith oaths are focused on unity, unification, and bringing others together. However, this is a loose theme, as there are so few Bondsmiths—and the three sources of their powers are so different in personality—that the oaths can end up taking a variety of different shapes, depending on the situation.

Anyone can become a Bondsmith, subject to persuading one of the three spren who grant Bondsmith powers. Those powers tend to work differently for one Bondsmith than another, and even those Surges they share with other Orders tend to work differently for Bondsmiths.

The Bondsmiths are unusual in that there are never more than three full members. Historically, they worked to resolve disputes and help set up functioning governments. Even though there can only be three full members, there were times that some Bondsmiths did take squires. Beyond that, many of the retinues that protected the Bondsmiths were considered members of the Order–going so far as to swear oaths, even though they didn’t have a spren and never would. Some even called this the most pure form of being a Radiant, because these were oaths sworn not in the name of gaining powers, but simply for the good of the oaths themselves.

Bondsmiths are generally the heart and soul of the Radiants, the most protected and highly regarded of the Orders, capable of doing incredible things with the nature of oaths, bonds, and power. The Order, including the aforementioned squires and attendants, tends to attract the peacemakers of the world, those who want to bring people together rather than divide them.

The Ten Orders of Knights Radiant (June 9, 2020)

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Frustration