Hoid's Restrictions and Illusion Prisons

[CryoZenith he/him]

So, we have this gem

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Paladin Brewer

If a person had the power of Mistborn and other powers like Surges, could he use duralumin to power the Surges?

Brandon Sanderson

This is possible.

Skyward Houston signing (Nov. 19, 2018)

As of right now, we know of one person who can burn duralumin who is also a Knight Radiant. I won't keep this suspenseful, but yeah, it's Hoid.

So, it is hypothetically possible to supercharge Lightweaving with duralumin. Jury's out on what that might look like, but one possible direction you can take this is that supercharging Lightweaving allows you to trap people in persistent illusions (maybe?).

Here's my curiosity. If Hoid *were* able to trap people in persistent illusions, that would give him a way to be useful in combat in spite of his magical restriction against hurting people. Unless... Hoid believes that trapping people in persistent illusions hurts them in a sense? Hard to tell, but I personally lean towards Hoid seeing this as non-damaging, so, might work.

[Quantus he/him]

He's "recently" discovered that he can hurt a cognitive entity, and he can certainly Do Harm on a normal emotional level (often as Wit, for example).  I think anything an illusion could do would be fine for being non-physical harm.  He would not be able to Trick somebody off a cliff or anything that is indirect but still physical like that, I assume.

But a half-step to the left would be the normal Illusion rules (like anchoring it to a gem, etc) but with a significantly increased Duration.  I could easily see it supplementing the Surge effect with Preservation/Allomantic Investiture (similar to Compounding) such that it lasts a lot longer than the initial Stormlight would accomplish.  

Edited January 17, 2022 by Quantus

[Anomander Rake he/him]

Quote

Questioner

Shallan's Lightweaving. How does she make those physical? Is it light becoming matter?

Brandon Sanderson

So I'm not going to answer this one either, so you get another RAFO card. But I'll tell you which way to think. Here, energy and matter are basically the same thing. Investiture, energy, and matter are the same thing in the Cosmere.

In our world, when we touch, we are touching energy, right? We are not actually touching. The atoms are repelling each other or whatever. I'm not a physicist. I'm sorry, physicists!

Contact is a weird, weird thing. Keep in mind, investiture is another state of matter and energy in the Cosmere. It's not really that hard to extrapolate along.

Legion Release Party (Sept. 19, 2018)

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Questioner

Lightweaving on Roshar, is it more of a Physical thing or Cognitive Realm thing?

Brandon Sanderson

Lightweaving? I would say it's a hybrid between the two.

Questioner

So there's a Physical effect, but also a Cognitive component to that?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, and then even a little bit of a Spiritual component. Lightweaving tends to involve, I'd say it's mostly Physical. Mostly you're not changing what someone's mind is, but you're actually changing light. Mostly Physical, but Lightweaving in particular has a lot like- you'll see weird things happening with Lightweaving on occasion, that are kind of a little bit of Cognitive and Spiritual influence that's happening. So keep your eyes on that. Yeah, I would say, if you're asking is light actually being changed yes, it is.

Prague Signing (Oct. 26, 2019)

I think that's a reasonable possibility!  I'm immediately reminded of what I believe was an off hand comment from Jasnah about Shallan's illusions having a "mass" to them; there is some relation between Investiture, Mass, and Energy we are not yet privy too.  iirc it was near the conclusion of the Battle of Thaylen field, when we had the 10 order meetup.

Perhaps lightweaving connects (I mean the word in the non-cosmere way, though it could also affect cosmere capital-C Connection!) the idea in your head in the CR to its illusory counterpart in the PR?  Duralumin supercharges that connection, allowing it to fully manifest in the PR with mass and everything?

[CryoZenith he/him]

Haha, that is definitely a possible way supercharged Lightweaving could work. It's not what I was thinking of, though. I was rather imagining imprisoning someone's senses into a (still only light-based and intangible) illusion that lasts very long. So, basically, if Hoid burns duralumin while lightweaving a wall in front of you, I imagine you could still walk through the wall, but that walking through the wall would not make the wall dissolve, and that staying inside the wall would render you temporarily blind.

But your suggestion would be even more useful-in-combat.

The way I interpret those WoB's is basically that (to use D&D analogous terminology) Lightweaving involves both evocation as well as telepathy, but that it's primarily evocation. So the properties of your mind have some effect on how you see Lightweaving, but someone who is completely immune to mind-affecting magic would still see lightweaving illusions. In order to pierce Lightweaving, there has to be something special about your eyesight, not about your mind necessarily.

Edited January 17, 2022 by CryoZenith

[NameIess]

I don't think that A-duraluminum would be very useful to Radiants. Duraluminum doesn't increase the efficiency of investiture, only allows you to use it more quickly. For allomancers, whose power is limited by the speed at which they can burn their metals, that is incredibly useful, allowing them to have vast power for extremely limited amounts of time. However, "vast powers for extremely limited amounts of time" is the definition of the KR. I can't remember a single time in the series where any KR has hit a limit to the amount of stormlight they can use at one time. Kaladin never thinks anything about a certain number of lashings he can do at one time, Shallan never hits a limit to the number of illusions that she can upkeep, even Jasnah is limited in her soulcasting by the amount of stormlight she holds, not her ability to use that stormlight. Sure, Radiants get tired using their powers, like Shallan at the end of OB, but that seems to be more of a mental thing, with Shallan suffering from the mental strain of keeping up hundreds of illusions for an extended period of time. Not a limit to how much stormlight she can use, but an exhaustion from the focus required to make that many illusions. Since the KR don't seem to be limited by the amount or speed at which they can use stormlight at, but rather the amount of stormlight they can hold and the mental fortitude to command that stormlight, I see no reason why duraluminum would do anything other than give the KR a slight boost in using very large amounts of stormlight for things that don't require much mental concentration. For example, burning duraluminum might help Kaladin lash a rock 100 times more quickly than he otherwise could. I doubt it would allow KR to do things that they otherwise couldn't do.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Nameless

[Anomander Rake he/him]

 

2 hours ago, CryoZenith said:

Haha, that is definitely a possible way supercharged Lightweaving could work. It's not what I was thinking of, though. I was rather imagining imprisoning someone's senses into a (still only light-based and intangible) illusion that lasts very long. So, basically, if Hoid burns duralumin while lightweaving a wall in front of you, I imagine you could still walk through the wall, but that walking through the wall would not make the wall dissolve, and that staying inside the wall would render you temporarily blind.

But your suggestion would be even more useful-in-combat.

The way I interpret those WoB's is basically that (to use D&D analogous terminology) Lightweaving involves both evocation as well as telepathy, but that it's primarily evocation. So the properties of your mind have some effect on how you see Lightweaving, but someone who is completely immune to mind-affecting magic would still see lightweaving illusions. In order to pierce Lightweaving, there has to be something special about your eyesight, not about your mind necessarily.

Ah I see!  That would be even cooler than my guess.  I feel you might be wrong in that the viewers mind affects the lightweaving, IMO it's the lightweavers mind who totally governs the illusion, but I digress.  That D&D language is well put though!  Nice.

1 hour ago, Nameless said:

I don't think that A-duraluminum would be very useful to Radiants. Duraluminum doesn't increase the efficiency of investiture, only allows you to use it more quickly. For allomancers, whose power is limited by the speed at which they can burn their metals, that is incredibly useful, allowing them to have vast power for extremely limited amounts of time. However, "vast powers for extremely limited amounts of time" is the definition of the KR. I can't remember a single time in the series where any KR has hit a limit to the amount of stormlight they can use at one time. Kaladin never thinks anything about a certain number of lashings he can do at one time, Shallan never hits a limit to the number of illusions that she can upkeep, even Jasnah is limited in her soulcasting by the amount of stormlight she holds, not her ability to use that stormlight. Sure, Radiants get tired using their powers, like Shallan at the end of OB, but that seems to be more of a mental thing, with Shallan suffering from the mental strain of keeping up hundreds of illusions for an extended period of time. Not a limit to how much stormlight she can use, but an exhaustion from the focus required to make that many illusions. Since the KR don't seem to be limited by the amount or speed at which they can use stormlight at, but rather the amount of stormlight they can hold and the mental fortitude to command that stormlight, I see no reason why duraluminum would do anything other than give the KR a slight boost in using very large amounts of stormlight for things that don't require much mental concentration. For example, burning duraluminum might help Kaladin lash a rock 100 times more quickly than he otherwise could. I doubt it would allow KR to do things that they otherwise couldn't do.

This feels closed minded; not that you disagree, but in your narrow interpretation of things.  We have ZERO idea how allomancy and other magic systems interact, and duralumin has already proved to do some funky stuff with the whole Elend seeing the SR bit.  We dont know nearly enough to pigeonhole it yet

[NameIess]

19 minutes ago, Anomander Rake said:

This feels closed minded; not that you disagree, but in your narrow interpretation of things.  We have ZERO idea how allomancy and other magic systems interact, and duralumin has already proved to do some funky stuff with the whole Elend seeing the SR bit.  We dont know nearly enough to pigeonhole it yet

No, duraluminum has been very consistent. Elend burned Atium fast enough to see into the spiritual realm. That's not duraluminum being funky; it did exactly what you'd expect it to. That's Atium being funky. I see no reason that duraluminum would give extra investiture to a surgebinder, and to give them extra control over their powers would be basically the opposite of its normal effect, so all it should do is force them to expend all their stormlight in one burst, which they could do anyways. The one advantage that I could see making sense for it to have is preventing stuff like what happened to Kaladin at the end of tWoK when he expended too much stormlight all at once to save bridge 4. However, it could just as easily do nothing to prevent that, or even make it worse.

[CryoZenith he/him]

We have two separate WoB's where Brando is asked if duralumin worked with surgebinding and said yes. (this is the other one, the first being the one in the OP)

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Dwarven_Hydra

Would a Duralumin Gnat Surgebinder be able to use duralumin to do a super Surge?

Brandon Sanderson

This (Duralumin+Surgebinding) would work.

General Signed Books 2019 (July 2, 2019)

Now, yes, those things only say that the two magics positively interact, not that the interaction is explicitly very useful. However, from past WoB's, Brandon *does* have a tendency to throw us a bone and tell us when interactions are useless even if possible. It's all very hypothetical either way.

[NameIess]

5 hours ago, CryoZenith said:

We have two separate WoB's where Brando is asked if duralumin worked with surgebinding and said yes. (this is the other one, the first being the one in the OP)

Now, yes, those things only say that the two magics positively interact, not that the interaction is explicitly very useful. However, from past WoB's, Brandon *does* have a tendency to throw us a bone and tell us when interactions are useless even if possible. It's all very hypothetical either way.

Duraluminum wouldn't be completely useless, it just wouldn't be magic-system redefining like duraluminum was to Mistborn.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Nameless

[Olmund]

True, surgebinding is limited by the available investiture, but I can think of instances in which an accelerated surge could have potent effects, especially in overcoming Tanavast's (already failing) safeguards:

- Surge of cohesion accelerated to allow nuclear fusion (intent likely necessary). A small bottle of water could be transformed into a Hydrogen bomb.

- Surge of division accelerated to allow nuclear fission (not as useful as above, since there are fewer heavy elements available).

 

I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that accelerated surges could have other potent effects that people have mentioned here (lightweavers could perhaps overcome an arbitrary threshold necessary to transform their illusions into micro-splinters with fully trapped investiture -- similar to Re-Shephir's shadow creatures -- thus the illusions could potentially last much longer or exhibit entirely different properties). I think we'll have to wait and see (or RAFO) before judging the whether a duralumin-powered surge is "game-breaking" or not. 

[Anomander Rake he/him]

On 1/17/2022 at 9:33 PM, Nameless said:

No, duraluminum has been very consistent. Elend burned Atium fast enough to see into the spiritual realm. That's not duraluminum being funky; it did exactly what you'd expect it to. That's Atium being funky. I see no reason that duraluminum would give extra investiture to a surgebinder, and to give them extra control over their powers would be basically the opposite of its normal effect, so all it should do is force them to expend all their stormlight in one burst, which they could do anyways. The one advantage that I could see making sense for it to have is preventing stuff like what happened to Kaladin at the end of tWoK when he expended too much stormlight all at once to save bridge 4. However, it could just as easily do nothing to prevent that, or even make it worse.

IDK.  I think about it like Impact in physics, where a large force applied over a very short time can have very different effects from a proportionally smaller force applied over a proportionally longer amount of time - equal work done, differing results.  Burn a bit of atium, get a bit of future sight, burn enough quickly enough and the results change.  I just feel like duralumin is designed to make magic systems more useful, even if it makes the intermagic stuff a bit fudgy - having duralumin aided lashing and lightweaving just be an explosion of light or some wicked fast acceleration (on second thought, Mach speed Kal ain't so bad XD) would be a let down, though maybe that's a bit subjective

[NameIess]

Just now, Anomander Rake said:

IDK.  I think about it like Impact in physics, where a large force applied over a very short time can have very different effects from a proportionally smaller force applied over a proportionally longer amount of time - equal work done, differing results.  Burn a bit of atium, get a bit of future sight, burn enough quickly enough and the results change.  I just feel like duralumin is designed to make magic systems more useful, even if it makes the intermagic stuff a bit fudgy - having duralumin aided lashing and lightweaving just be an explosion of light or some wicked fast acceleration (on second thought, Mach speed Kal ain't so bad XD) would be a let down, though maybe that's a bit subjective

Mach speed Kal can already happen. Give him enough stormlight and he can do it. Your analogy of large force over small time compared to small force over large time doesn't work because Radiants can already do large force over large time. They are limited by two factors: the strength of their intent, and their available stormlight. Duraluminum neither increases the available stormlight nor increases the strength of their intent. Therefore, it would have little or no beneficial effect for Radiants.

[Anomander Rake he/him]

1 hour ago, Nameless said:

Mach speed Kal can already happen. Give him enough stormlight and he can do it. Your analogy of large force over small time compared to small force over large time doesn't work because Radiants can already do large force over large time. They are limited by two factors: the strength of their intent, and their available stormlight. Duraluminum neither increases the available stormlight nor increases the strength of their intent. Therefore, it would have little or no beneficial effect for Radiants.

Forgive me, it seems I did a poor job of fully explaining myself.  I mean to say that I think duralumin lets someone expend more investiture in the same amount of time than they would be able to without, as if there is a physical limit to the amount of investiture you can actively channel that duralumin tampers with.

Think of the radiant or mistborn as a pipe with some fixed diameter.  Active use of investiture, such as lashing or steelpushing, sends investiture though the pipe.  By way of their intent, the radiant or mistborn can control the pressure in the pipe (how hard am I lashing / pushing myself?).  My view is, like a muscle has a max strength, that there is a limit to which someone can adjust that pressure, though the "limit" can and will change based on their radiant oath or strength as a mistborn or any other number of cosmere phenomena.  Just as well, since we know many of the magics are designed so you don't hurt yourself (steelrunning not shattering your legs), perhaps it is the opposite, and the limit is defined by how much pressure the pipe can take - or rather, how much investiture your body can channel at a given time.

[NameIess]

3 minutes ago, Anomander Rake said:

Forgive me, it seems I did a poor job of fully explaining myself.  I mean to say that I think duralumin lets someone expend more investiture in the same amount of time than they would be able to without, as if there is a physical limit to the amount of investiture you can actively channel that duralumin tampers with.

Think of the radiant or mistborn as a pipe with some fixed diameter.  Active use of investiture, such as lashing or steelpushing, sends investiture though the pipe.  By way of their intent, the radiant or mistborn can control the pressure in the pipe (how hard am I lashing / pushing myself?).  My view is, like a muscle has a max strength, that there is a limit to which someone can adjust that pressure, though the "limit" can and will change based on their radiant oath or strength as a mistborn or any other number of cosmere phenomena.  Just as well, since we know many of the magics are designed so you don't hurt yourself (steelrunning not shattering your legs), perhaps it is the opposite, and the limit is defined by how much pressure the pipe can take - or rather, how much investiture your body can channel at a given time.

The thing is, Radiants aren't pipes. Radiants are dams. A Mistborn takes power from Preservation, and their "pipe" determines how quickly they can take that power. Radiants take power from spheres or Honor's perpecdicularity, but they are not limited by how quickly they can absorb power, but by how much power they can hold. Like seriously, name one time in the books where a Radiant was limited in how quickly they could use their powers. If there is a limit, then it is there because to use their powers more quickly would kill them.

[ILIYA]

On 18/01/2022 at 6:13 AM, Quantus said:

He's "recently" discovered that he can hurt a cognitive entity, and he can certainly Do Harm on a normal emotional level (often as Wit, for example).  I think anything an illusion could do would be fine for being non-physical harm.  He would not be able to Trick somebody off a cliff or anything that is indirect but still physical like that, I assume.

But a half-step to the left would be the normal Illusion rules (like anchoring it to a gem, etc) but with a significantly increased Duration.  I could easily see it supplementing the Surge effect with Preservation/Allomantic Investiture (similar to Compounding) such that it lasts a lot longer than the initial Stormlight would accomplish.  

Is that true, I thought he can't hurt normal physical people in the cognitive ability. Just that he can hurt cognitive shadows because they are not technically alive?  

 

Also about the post, I agree I think the hurting comes to intent so he can't use his lightweaving powers to intentionally cause physical harm to someone. Doesn't matter how an outsider might see, it's just Hoid's intention that matters. 

Edited January 20, 2022 by ILIYA

[CryoZenith he/him]

58 minutes ago, ILIYA said:

Is that true, I thought he can't hurt normal physical people in the cognitive ability. Just that he can hurt cognitive shadows because they are not technically alive?  

 

Also about the post, I agree I think the hurting comes to intent so he can't use his lightweaving powers to intentionally cause physical harm to someone. Doesn't matter how an outsider might see, it's just Hoid's intention that matters. 

See, Hoid's restriction is a really interesting blend between perception and objective fact, rather than being only one or only the other. If it was purely based on his perception, then he would never get surprised by something he thought himself incapable of doing but ended up being capable of. Which... is precisely what happened in Secret History. There isn't a one to one correlation between his restrictions and what he thinks his restrictions are, so his opinion can't be the only factor.

Speaking of, here's a cool question about Hoid. We know from WoBs that he can eat lab-grown meat. We also know from WoBs that he can eat real meat as long as he genuinely believes it is lab-grown meat. But would he be able to eat real meat, KNOWING it is real meat, as long as he genuinely believed that eating meat wasn't causing harm?

Basically, to drive the point home with the question above, would Hoid be able to Forge himself into a personality that completely ignored his restrictions? I don't think so. Which is why I think his restrictions are a hybrid.

[Quantus he/him]

3 hours ago, CryoZenith said:

Basically, to drive the point home with the question above, would Hoid be able to Forge himself into a personality that completely ignored his restrictions? I don't think so. Which is why I think his restrictions are a hybrid.

Well, I dont think Forgery could do it, but that's mostly just because I think whatever effect made him Immortal and impose the restriction are the same thing, are a Dawnshard effect, and as such would way above the Investment level that Forgery could affect and/or override.  Or worse, Forging it away would Forge away his Immortality and Snap him back to his real age like TLR.

[CryoZenith he/him]

The hypothetical I was exploring wasn't a Forgery that would make Hoid think he's unrestricted/forget about the restrictions. Or a Forgery that disabled/overrode the Dawnshard. That obviously wouldn't work. I was considering the thought experiment of Hoid Forging his *personality* in such a way that his perspective on what constitutes causing harm became much more narrow than his natural perspective. And I was advancing the hypothesis that *even that* wouldn't work completely. Which is a non-trivial hypothesis.

Basically, my current guess about how the restriction works is that rather than it being 100% based on his perspective/intention, it is heavily based on what he knows concretely, but not heavily based on his opinion on harm (or, in other words, that the restrictions care about his epistemic limits, but not about his ethical views). So, let's say that in the abstract, the restrictions are of the form "Don't do X. Don't do Y. Don't do Z.". I think the way they would work is that Hoid can, for example, do X, as long as he doesn't know that what he's doing is X, but as long as he knows that what he wants to do is X, he is not allowed to do it, even if he personally disagrees that X is harm-causing. That's what I mean by hybrid. This guess is compatible with both Hoid being surprised that he's able to do things he mistakenly thought would be restricted (such as the kicking Kelsier scene), as well as Hoid being able to eat real meat as long as he is mistaken about its provenience (as per WoB).

Edited January 20, 2022 by CryoZenith