Connection shenanigans

[therunner]

When trying to figure how to Connect himself to Beaconites so he can siphon off Torment, Sigzil says this:

Quote

So this sunheart can’t draw strength from your soul, because it’s from this planet, and you aren’t.

“Exactly. Linguistic Connection isn’t enough. I’d need something more to be able to draw upon this.” He could feed off their power, like he could almost all forms of Investiture. But the sunhearts refused to let him put anything back in, to lance his soul, because they didn’t accept him as one of them.

It’s useless to you, then?

“I could maybe hack it with some rare devices,” he said. “Which I don’t have access to here.” With a sigh, he heaved himself from the seat.

So devices that manipulate Connection to greater extent than simply Linguistic Connection are rare. That implies that either F-Duralumin medallions are rare devices, or (more likely in my opinion) that F-Duralumin medallions are incapable of such manipulation.

Whether regular F-Duralumin would be capable of it is a question, though I think not.

[Treamayne]

On 10/2/2023 at 9:36 AM, therunner said:

When trying to figure how to Connect himself to Beaconites so he can siphon off Torment, Sigzil says this:

So devices that manipulate Connection to greater extent than simply Linguistic Connection are rare. That implies that either F-Duralumin medallions are rare devices, or (more likely in my opinion) that F-Duralumin medallions are incapable of such manipulation.

Whether regular F-Duralumin would be capable of it is a question, though I think not.

I think Nomad's issue here is actually related to Hoid's issue in TotES. Hoid specifically mentioned "needing an invitation" and Nomad receives exactly that - Natives volunteerily accepting him as one of their own. After that event, his Connection issue seemed to be solved.

[JustQuestin2004]

9 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I think Nomad's issue here is actually related to Hoid's issue in TotES. Hoid specifically mentioned "needing an invitation" and Nomad receives exactly that - Natives volunteerily accepting him as one of their own. After that event, his Connection issue seemed to be solved.

So Invitation isn't just an Elantrian thing?

Maybe this is how one can more naturally Connect themselves to a particular planet? By Connecting to the people already living there? Friendships are Connections after all.

[Treamayne]

7 minutes ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So Invitation isn't just an Elantrian thing?

Can't know for sure without more information, but they at least seem related to me. . .

[therunner]

7 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I think Nomad's issue here is actually related to Hoid's issue in TotES. Hoid specifically mentioned "needing an invitation" and Nomad receives exactly that - Natives volunteerily accepting him as one of their own. After that event, his Connection issue seemed to be solved.

Even then it implies that just brute forcing at least some kinds of Connection is not easily done.
Connection medallions are relatively common already in Era 2, so by Era 4 they should be rather common place, yet Nomad refers to 'rare devices'.

So F-Duralumin (at the very least in medallions) is not as versatile/strong as we may have believed.

[+Oltux72]

7 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

So Invitation isn't just an Elantrian thing?

(Komashi)

Spoiler

Isn't that what the spirit needed to connect Yumi and Nikaro?

 

4 minutes ago, therunner said:

So F-Duralumin (at the very least in medallions) is not as versatile/strong as we may have believed.

We do not know what they store. Is it raw unspecific Connection or something along the lines of "Connection to your homeland". If it were the former, Connector Ferrings should effectively have the Surge of Adhesion. They do not.

[therunner]

2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

We do not know what they store. Is it raw unspecific Connection or something along the lines of "Connection to your homeland". If it were the former, Connector Ferrings should effectively have the Surge of Adhesion. They do not.

Surge of Adhesion is different from that, it is not just Conenction ability. And Connector Ferring can only effect his own Connections, whereas Spiritual Adhesion/Bondsmith Connection manipulation does not have that restriction.

But it does not matter what they store, whatever it is, it cannot just Connect user to other people/planet strongly enough. Connection medallions are not rare, and so they cannot do it.

[+Bzhydack]

I think this "something more" what Sigzil lacked at that moment was proper Identity. Investirure on Canticle, similar to Nalthis, is linked to being properly part of local sociaty. Because there are not many people on Canticle it was enough when just 135 of acepted Sigzil as one of them.

[Duxredux]

Connection can Connect you to a region and location, but I'm guessing it would take a lot to brute force a Connection to a person that involves changing the degree that they trust or accept you, like unchained Bondsmith brute forcing. I doubt most Connection hacks allow you to bypass the natural protections and resistance that another person's Spiritweb undoubtably has to prevent such intrusion, since you'd have to overwrite portions of their memory and Identity. Sound anything like the Charred and the cinderhearts that we know are derived from tech available to the Scadrians in use by the Cinder King (some variant on the principles of using Hemalurgic spikes to control people and Connection)? It's definitely possible to force Connection, but I think it would take an incredible amount of power and finesse to brute force trust and acceptance without damaging the underpinnings of why people trust each other in the first place, their personal history with the person, how their own identity has been slightly changed by their association with the person.  Without those components, it seems it would be very likely for people to try to break out of the "trust spell" made by artificial Connection.

Quite a few components of TSM are about Connection and the distinctions between giving, receiving, and taking Connection. I'm leaning towards @Treamayne's interpretation that like becoming an Elantrian, the ability to access the particular powerset of these Threnodites required acceptance on their behalf. Up until Nomad finally got a powersource and Aux got his Connection up and running, he barely recognized anything about the Cinder King, Rebeke, or any of the people. Forming a Connection to the planet allowed him to speak their language, recognize the Threnodite heritage, maybe even understand the people and the planet better, it's hard to say how much was Connection and how much was being able to stop and pay attention while not being dragged around on fire or being shot at.

My take is that people in the Cosmere have natural barriers, and 99% of the time if you need to get someone to trust you it's best using relatively mundane methods, being able to speak their language, understand their culture, try to form actual relationships with the individual. Connection makes it easier for bonds to form, in part because mutual understanding, communication, and recognition of historical background do genuinely make it easier to form relationships as opposed to the foreigner who speaks foreign words. If you think about it, and I am repeating myself a bit, in order to genuinely force someone to trust or accept you, you'll need to change far more than Connection. You'll need to write into their memories why they should trust you, otherwise it will never stick and probably would make no sense if they stopped to think about it at all. Yes, you can cheat and use Emotional Allomancy like Hoid almost certainly does, but creating new memories with they people by doing things that genuinely would help them choose to trust you is far easier and less intrusive then forcibly implanting memories and Identity modification. I'm sure it's possible to perform an alteration of a single person's memories to create artificial trust, but doing so for an entire community would take a tremendous amount of work and skill assuming you don't want the lies to be discernable. That's a lot of work when being the eccentric bard works almost as well.

Side note, I'm kind of sad if this is the case, but I'm now wondering if one of the reason that Hoid spent so much time with Shallan, helping her to deal with her fractured mind and self-loathing, particularly when telling the story of The Girl who Looked Up, is if he needed the "Rosharan special invitation" by becoming sufficiently accepted by Shallan to become one of her squires in order to bypass a foreigner / high-personal-Investiture restriction on bonding Design the Cryptic. This is mostly just passing thought, there probably isn't anything conclusive since I don't think we know of another foreigner who has bonded a Spren and Hoid is the outlier in nearly every circumstance he places himself in.

 

On 10/2/2023 at 7:36 AM, therunner said:

When trying to figure how to Connect himself to Beaconites so he can siphon off Torment, Sigzil says this:

Quote

So this sunheart can’t draw strength from your soul, because it’s from this planet, and you aren’t.

“Exactly. Linguistic Connection isn’t enough. I’d need something more to be able to draw upon this.” He could feed off their power, like he could almost all forms of Investiture. But the sunhearts refused to let him put anything back in, to lance his soul, because they didn’t accept him as one of them.

It’s useless to you, then?

“I could maybe hack it with some rare devices,” he said. “Which I don’t have access to here.” With a sigh, he heaved himself from the seat.

 

So devices that manipulate Connection to greater extent than simply Linguistic Connection are rare. That implies that either F-Duralumin medallions are rare devices, or (more likely in my opinion) that F-Duralumin medallions are incapable of such manipulation.

Whether regular F-Duralumin would be capable of it is a question, though I think not.

Same quote, different highlight, isn't this a known or suspected constraint of medallion tech, that either they can be filled or tapped but not necessarily both, or is that just my own internal interpretation? In this case Nomad wants to force an outward Connection that siphons from his soul rather than accepting a new inward one.

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Connection can Connect you to a region and location, but I'm guessing it would take a lot to brute force a Connection to a person that involves changing the degree that they trust or accept you, like unchained Bondsmith brute forcing.

<snip>

That's a lot of work when being the eccentric bard works almost as well.

Nice write-up. Thanks. Keep that in mind when reviewing this Venli Flashback (RoW Ch 52):

Spoiler

“It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?” the human said in the listener tongue, looking over the Shattered Plains. “Something terrible must have happened here. Doesn’t seem like those plateaus could have formed naturally.”

Venli attuned Anxiety. The woman spoke the words without a rhythm, yes, but they were perfectly understandable.

“How…” Venli said, then hummed to Betrayal.

“Oh, I’ve always been good with languages,” the female said. “My name is Axindweth. Though few here know me by that name, I give it to you.”

“Why?”

“Because I think we’re going to be friends, Venli,” she said. “I’ve been sent to search out someone like you. Someone who remembers what your people used to be. Someone who wants to restore the glory that you’ve lost.”

“We are glorious,” Venli said, attuning Irritation and standing.

“Glorious?” Axindweth said. “Living in crem huts? Making stone tools because you’ve forgotten how to forge metal? Living all your lives in two forms, when you used to have dozens?”

“What do you know about any of this?” Venli said, turning to leave. Her mother would be very interested to hear one of the humans had been hiding the ability to speak their language.

“I know much about too many things,” the woman said. “Would you like to learn how to obtain a form of power, Venli?”

Venli looked back. “We abandoned those. They are dangerous. They let the old gods control our ancestors.”

“Isn’t it odd,” Axindweth said, “how much stock you put in what your ancestors said? A dusty old group of people that you’ve never met? If you gathered a collection of listeners from the other families, would you let them decide your future? That’s all they were, your ancient ancestors. A random group of people.”

“Not random,” Venli said to Praise. “They had strength. They left their gods to find freedom.”

“Yes,” Axindweth said. “I suppose they did.”

Venli continued on her way. Stupid human.

“There were forms of power that could heal someone, you know,” the human said idly.

Venli froze in place. Then she spun, attuning Betrayal again. How did she know about Venli’s mother?

“Yes,” Axindweth said, toying with one of her rings, staring out away from Venli. “Great things were once possible for your people. Your ancestors, the ones you revere, might have been brave. But have you ever asked yourself about the things they didn’t leave you in songs? Have you seen the holes in their stories? You bear the pain of their actions, living without forms for generations. Exiled. Shouldn’t you have the choices they did, weighing forms of power against your current life?”

“How do you know all these things?” Venli demanded, walking back. “How do you know about forms of power? Who are you?”

The woman removed something from within her covered sleeve. A single glowing gemstone. Blood red.

“Take that into a storm,” the woman said. “And break it. Inside, you will find a path toward saving those you love.”

The woman stood and left the gem sitting on the rock.

Axindweth is seemingly using "Connection to Homeland" (as seen in the BoM Medallions) to use the Listener language, but may also be using some Connection to help Venli open up. I would guess that this type of temporary Connection is more of a spectrum (like how some people might "feel a bond" to a stranger and share personal stories) than an on/off switch. And I agree that trying to make this type of Connection permanent would likely be very difficult and use a lot of Investiture

1 hour ago, Duxredux said:

Same quote, different highlight, isn't this a known or suspected constraint of medallion tech, that either they can be filled or tapped but not necessarily both, or is that just my own internal interpretation?

My understanding of what we saw in BoM was that the person making the Medallion stores "Blank Connection" which seems to function as "Connection to Homeland" (unless Allik is simply wrong and it is storing "Connection to <attribute>").  So the person using the medallion taps that Connection, tricking their spiritweb into thinking the area they are in is their "Homeland" - which is what allows them to speak the local language - and is also why Allik says that the visitor has to be the one who Taps the Medallion (Ch 22).

Spoiler

“We’ve been foolish,” she said. “I could have been wearing this all along, and speaking your language. Then you could have been warm the entire time.”

Allik grinned at her, then said something completely unintelligible.

“What’s going on?” Waxillium said from behind her.

“Nothing,” Marasi said, blushing again. It wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working?

Allik gestured to her, and she switched back to her previous medallion—working very carefully this time to avoid causing a jolt, but mostly failing. How did he transition between them so smoothly?

He made a gesture, like a hand drawn across his face, that she thought indicated a smile. “Clever, but it won’t work on you.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re in your lands,” he said. “The visitor always has to wear the medallion. It’s filled with Connection, yah? Blank Connection, to no place. But Connection can’t just be connected to nothing, so when you tap it, it reaches out and connects you to the place where you are. Makes your soul think you were raised in this place instead, so your language changes.”

Marasi frowned, though Waxillium perked up, pulling up between their two seats. “Curious,” he said. “Very curious.”

“It is the way of the world,” Allik said with a shrug.

“Then why do you have an accent still?” Marasi asked. “If your brain thinks it was raised here?”

“Ah,” Allik said, raising his finger. “My soul thinks I was raised here, in your lands, but it knows that I am Malwish by descent, and that parents are from Wiestlow, so I cannot help but have an accent, yah? I got it from them. It is how the medallions always work.”

“Strange,” Marasi repeated.

“Yah,” Allik agreed. But Waxillium was nodding, as if it made perfect sense to him.