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Surgebinding


LevenThumps

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I'm about three-quarters of the way through the Way of Kings and I'm a little confused about surgebinding. I don't really know what a Surgebinder can do. I may figure it out later on the book, but if it's something I've already missed, could someone refresh me?

Edited by LevenThumps
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A Surgebinder can use Stormlight to manipulate the ten Surges, fundamental forces of nature. Each type of Surgebinder controls two Surges. For example, Szeth can alter the force of gravity to make something fall differently or have a stronger gravity, and he can alter the force of pressure to stick two things together as if with suction cups.

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This is a tiny spoiler from pg. 830 of TWoK. Kaldin is having conversation with someone who knows about his powers.

Here's a bit more on Radiant powers by Teft, who knows it because he's formerely an Evisager.

[Kaladin] "According to stories that contradict one another. You've told me that the Radiants could fly and walk on walls."

Teft nodded, "They sure could. And make stone melt by looking at it. And move great distances in a single heartbeat. And command the sunlight. And-"

The reason stories contradict each other is because, as Reader says, Radiants belonged to different Orders, and had different abilities. They would control two different Surges and then also have access to another power (presumably a combination of the two) that was unique to their Order. If you didn't read the spoiler, I'll just say that mythology says that Radiants had control over Heat, Light (basically confirmed by Brandon to be similar to Lightweaving), and they also could manipulate some surge that allowed them to fly. This might be a more advanced Kaladin power but I doubt it.

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I can't find a quote where he says specifically that Travel is teleportation. It's more that he's mentioned the word Travel and we know that Radiants can teleport so I think we just put two and two together, because they made sense together. There may be a quote but I can't find it.

Here you go Chaos, it's the only place I can find him mention it.

So what do I mean by twenty or thirty magic systems in Kings? Hard to say, as I don't want to give spoilers. I have groupings of abilities that have to deal with a certain theme. Transformation, Travel, Pressure and Gravity, that sort of thing. By one way of counting, there are thirty of these—though by another way of grouping them together, there are closer to ten.

Source

Edited by Windrunner
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That's why we have our own personal Windrunner.

Haha, indeed ;)

LevenThumps, it's also been presumed that Shallan's Memories are derived from another Surge. As well as... that other thing Jasnah does, which I won't say, because I don't know if you've seen it yet.

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That's why we have our own personal Windrunner.

It's nice to be useful, considering TWoK introduced me to the comsere, I should know a lot about it. My brain is jammed full of crazy random cosmere knowledge, and sometimes I feel like the Brandonothology is imprinted inside my skull. And being a Windrunner rocks! I'll have to show off my Stormsurfing abilities sometime. Let me know when the next highstorm is. :P

I just finished the Way of Kings, and it was AMAZING. I noticed though that most of the information known about the shards isn't in the WoK. Is most of that information leaked spoilers from Brandon Sanderson?

I was actually thinking about this the other day. I find it hilarious that most of the cosmere stuff we know comes from interviews and the like. I mean Shard is mentioned once, Andonalsium and cosmere twice. Other then that there isn't a whole lot that makes the books obviously connected.

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*cough* Hoid *cough* but yeah I remember when I first saw Hoid in 2 books and then I went online to see if it was intentional and spent the next 3 days glued to the screen reading pages of the forums and interviews, I don't know that I'll even remember to eat when we finally get a guide to the cosmere :P

Also I have recently determined that windrunners are my second favourite in magical abilities after TLR so go the Windrunners!

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*cough* Hoid *cough* but yeah I remember when I first saw Hoid in 2 books and then I went online to see if it was intentional and spent the next 3 days glued to the screen reading pages of the forums and interviews, I don't know that I'll even remember to eat when we finally get a guide to the cosmere :P

Also I have recently determined that windrunners are my second favourite in magical abilities after TLR so go the Windrunners!

Windrunners were really what caught my imagination, straight away in TWoK from the minute we saw Szeth. And I cannot believe I forgot Hoid. Fail...

Also we don't now if Brandon intends on making the cosmere connection more overt. He's mentioned making some books where worlds collide, but he isn't sure if he would publish them, because he doesn't want other new readers to have to read 36+ other books to understand whats going on. He says if these conflux books do happen he might just post them on his site. I personally hope they would be published as real books, everyday more people discover that Brandon's books are connected, so maybe by the time he's ready to write conflux books, it won't be such a big deal.

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Yeah, one of the things I've always loved reading is the action sequences of Szeth and to a slightly lesser extent mistborn. So much better than 'they shot flames at each other, one was better. The other one died.' makes for much better basis for theorising as well XD

Yeah I doubt there will be much more mention of Shards until we get to the third mistborn trilogy or dragonsteel I think.

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