Why did he make Surgebinders?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

OK, this may be a stupid question, but why did Odium make Surgebinders? Him being Odium I'd assume that the default would be Voidbinders. Why did he go to the extra effort of making the Fused Surgebinders?

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

OK, this may be a stupid question, but why did Odium make Surgebinders? Him being Odium I'd assume that the default would be Voidbinders. Why did he go to the extra effort of making the Fused Surgebinders?

1. We do not know why "Voidbinding" is named such, it may not have anything to do with Odium (directly)
2. While Odium may have crafted the Fused, generally speaking Shards do not "make" or "give" manifectations of investiture that way directly
   • The obvious exceptions being things powered by Splinters, like Returned or Honorblades

WoBs:

Spoiler

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Odium's_Shard

Does the Spiritual power used in any given magic system come from the supporting Shard itself, or through it from the remains of Adonalsium and the Power of Creation?

Brandon Sanderson

From the Shard in most cases. But it's also often built into the world innately, and so the Shard (if someone is holding it) doesn't always have control over who can or cannot use the magic.

17th Shard Forum Q&A (Sept. 26, 2012)

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Argent (paraphrased)

Feruchemy is the "balance" between Ruin and Preservation. Would any combination of Shards create a "balance" magic, so to speak, or are only certain Shards compatible?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Feruchemy ended up being a balance system, because of how polar Ruin and Preservation were. Any world with at least two Shards will result in a similar phenomenon. 

Argent (paraphrased)

Like Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Like Roshar. There is something like that going on there.

Steelheart Chicago signing (Oct. 5, 2013)

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Questioner

From what I understand, Ruin and Preservation create the world together, and they created humanity as copies of the original humankind. So how did they give Allomancy to Scadrial?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. So the magic systems are kind of built into the setting and the world. And there are certain natural pathways that exist, in the same way there are certain natural pathways for them to create life. Which is my explanation for why life is so similar on all the different planets, is that they're following natural pathways, and these magics are kind of the same way. For instance, Lightweaving predates the Shattering of Adonalsium. A lot of these other things are suggestive of magics that existed before that were built around Adonalsium. They weren't 100% created by the Shards, but they also do have the Shards' influence on them.

Skyward San Diego signing (Nov. 7, 2018)

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asmodeus

You've said before that a lot of the magics we see across the cosmere come from an interaction of Shards and their Investiture with the planets they Invest in. What does this mean practically? If Scadrial explodes tomorrow, will Hemalurgy stop working across the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Hemalurgy wouldn't stop working, most likely, but it could. There are ways that you could make it stop working. I kind of mean that the Shards are an innate part of physics in the cosmere, and the magics that arise are an innate part of physics because of that. Like atium seeped out into the Pits of Hathsin, in the same way, these magics are just gonna leak out, and different places are going to affect them. You'll see Lightweaving happening in different places, and the way the Shard is interacting with the local... The way the Shard is is going to affect how Lightweaving is administrated in the various magics, but it's still gonna be there. Hemalurgy is kind of a similar thing to that. You will see Midnight Essence, you will see some of these recurring ideas popping up, and these are like natural parts of the physics, but they're influenced by the Shards on the local planets.

I don't know if that answer, that's gonna be a really fun one for them to transcribe into the Q&A thing, because I go around in circles on that question a ton. Put this part in when you do it.

Footnote: It was a really fun one.
YouTube Spoiler Stream 4 (June 16, 2022)

 

Hope that helps

[+Oltux72 he/him]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

1. We do not know why "Voidbinding" is named such, it may not have anything to do with Odium (directly)
2. While Odium may have crafted the Fused, generally speaking Shards do not "make" or "give" manifectations of investiture that way directly
   • The obvious exceptions being things powered by Splinters, like Returned or Honorblades

1. Enlightened spren do something different in terms of powers granted and they are partly of Odium, are they not?
2. The Stormfather told us that the Fused originally were not Surgebinders. How else, if not directly through Odium's actions did they become Surgebinders?

[Treamayne]

27 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

1. Enlightened spren do something different in terms of powers granted and they are partly of Odium, are they not?
2. The Stormfather told us that the Fused originally were not Surgebinders. How else, if not directly through Odium's actions did they become Surgebinders?

1. That's implied, but not certain*. 
2. Did you read the WoBs I posted? Often a Manifestation of Investiture is the result of Shard+Being+Planet. My point was that, while Odium's influence is likely part of the cause, it is unlikely that he made a conscious decision like "I'll make Fused and give them one Surge each."
   • In other words, he made Fused and the natural result of that action is what you see now - based on the interactions of all those factors. 

*Voidbinding and WoBs:

Spoiler

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TheFoxQR (paraphrased)

Is there temporal symmetry in between the Surge-binding and void-binding charts, from the front and back covers of The Way of Kings? As in, Surgebinding is a re-emerging system of the past, vs Voidbinding being a newly emerging system that will fully exist in the future?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You can assume that Voidbinding has not been fully explored, but that parts of it have been looked into in the past. So I wouldn't say that temporal symmetry fully holds.

General Reddit 2019 (Aug. 3, 2019)

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dvoraen

"To see the future originates with the Unmade..." "Voidbinding is a dark and evil thing, and the soul of it was to try to divine the future." Is it therefore safe to say that Voidbinding, by extension, also originates with the Unmade?

Brandon Sanderson

Not always. But usually.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 22, 2018)

These WoBs  say that Voidbinding has been accessed in the past, and Voidbinding does not only come from Unmade; Enlightened Spren are new - so there must have been some other way to access it as well. Also, the Unmade aren't "of Odium" either - they existed as <something> and Odium changed them - so while they too are influenced by Odium - it seems that he did not create them. 

RoW Ars Arcanum: (Emphasis mine)

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I’m not certain yet how the ten levels of Voidbinding or its cousin the Old Magic fit into this paradigm, if indeed they can. My research suggests that, indeed, there should be another series of abilities that is even more esoteric than the Voidbindings.

So, it's possible that how Surges are the expressed Manifestation of Investiture (MoI) for Honor+Cultivation, Voidbinding is the expressed MoI for Cultivation+Odium. Or maybe something esle is going on. Either way, it seems likely to me that Odium was so new to the Rosharan System that his investiture had not yet permeated the planet (see below) at the time where he made the Fused. Maybe Voidbinding simply hadn't begun (or coalesced, or pick-a-term) yet so it wasn't an option that far back in Roshar's History. 

RoW Ch 83: (Emphasis mine)

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It felt wrong to be using his Light to practice her Surgebinding, but the stones whispered that it was well. Odium and his tone had become part of Roshar, as Cultivation and Honor—who had not been created alongside the planet—had become part of it. His power was natural, and no more wrong or right than any other part of nature.

 

It probably comes down to this: (Emphasis mine)

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Argent

Voidbinding, and what Renarin does, we are still very confused about how much--

Brandon Sanderson

I am happy that you are very confused about that, because I haven't explained it very much.

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

We don't know much about Voidbinding, and we are not yet supposed to know much about it. 

[Quantus he/him]

@Treamayne has outlined what little we know and how much we dont actually know.  

So what fallows is all just theoryland, but I think it comes down to Odium's level of Investment in Roshar.  I think he's been trying to avoid any actual investment for as long as possible, trickling it out in an attempt to Hit&Run the other Shards without being Bound to Roshar any more than necessary (and that did not go well, overall).  So at first he did whatever he could to make tools with the locally availible materials: Instead of his own Spren He turned Singers into Cognitive Shadows, and instead of his own Herald Champions he UnMade things he found.  There's a pretty strong theory that the Fused are functionally closer to Spren-Fabrials than Radiants or whatever "Voidbinders" may prove to be, with the Fused being the spren-spirit driving it and the Singer's Gemheart providing the realmic functions.  He trickled his own light and metal out personally and in small amounts.  And the some Voidspren (the older ones, I think) have the telltale Red of Corrupted Investiture while others have Odium's own Gold. 

I think the tipping point came with the Everstorm and the emergence of Odium's own Pure Tone of Roshar (whichever came first); he said himself that it changed everything. I think he is only recently fully Invested in the planet enough to have his own Tone, Light, and thus Magic System start to emerge.  Anything that came before, including the Fused, the UnMade, the very concept of Enlightened Spren, etc were all just him experimenting in ways to dip his toes into the Investment waters without adding any more Connections which I assume would just add to the strength of his prison.  

[+Oltux72 he/him]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

1. That's implied, but not certain*. 
2. Did you read the WoBs I posted? Often a Manifestation of Investiture is the result of Shard+Being+Planet. My point was that, while Odium's influence is likely part of the cause, it is unlikely that he made a conscious decision like "I'll make Fused and give them one Surge each."
   • In other words, he made Fused and the natural result of that action is what you see now - based on the interactions of all those factors. 

The WoBs seem to mainly touch upon what Surgebinders can do, for example why Lightweavers show up among them. That is a distinct question of how you become a Surgebinder.

And the thing is that Odium definitely intentonally gave them powers. Do you seriously want to propose that he inadvertedly made them Surgebinders?

2 hours ago, The Lost Ookla said:

So what fallows is all just theoryland, but I think it comes down to Odium's level of Investment in Roshar.  I think he's been trying to avoid any actual investment for as long as possible, trickling it out in an attempt to Hit&Run the other Shards without being Bound to Roshar any more than necessary (and that did not go well, overall).  So at first he did whatever he could to make tools with the locally availible materials: Instead of his own Spren He turned Singers into Cognitive Shadows, and instead of his own Herald Champions he UnMade things he found.

Then why would we assume that giving people on a direct supply of power from himself the powers of a Shard native to Roshar would tie him less to Roshar?

[Quantus he/him]

5 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Then why would we assume that giving people on a direct supply of power from himself the powers of a Shard native to Roshar would tie him less to Roshar?

If I understand the question, It's not that his more recent and extreme Investment would tie him Less to Roshar, it's that he'd tried everything else he could think of and just decided to go all-in on Investing in Roshar to Win the War and escape Honor's prison, regardless of the eventual apocalyptic damage to Roshar he'll cause when he rips his power back and leaves the system.