Sythrin Posted July 6, 2024 Posted July 6, 2024 I wanted to just start a threat for theories about Stonewarden abilities. Mostly interesting is Tension. Tension is for me double sided sword. It was mentioned they can turn clothes into weapons and armor. Bit that seems unnecessery if you get blade and plate. So the question. What else can they do? Can they solidify liquids, like turning water into ice and thereby have some ice powers? Or can they solidify air to make invisible platforms and walls. Or create wind scythes? Can they solidify intangible things like lightning or fire?
alder24 Posted July 6, 2024 Posted July 6, 2024 25 minutes ago, Sythrin said: I wanted to just start a threat for theories about Stonewarden abilities. Mostly interesting is Tension. Tension is for me double sided sword. It was mentioned they can turn clothes into weapons and armor. Bit that seems unnecessery if you get blade and plate. So the question. What else can they do? Can they solidify liquids, like turning water into ice and thereby have some ice powers? Or can they solidify air to make invisible platforms and walls. Or create wind scythes? Can they solidify intangible things like lightning or fire? Tension doesn't solidify things, it makes them rigid by manipulating forces between atoms. Brandon said it can restructure atoms and for example, create a crystalline structure - therefore it would make ice out of water, because ice is just water in a crystalline structure. He said he's calling it surface tension, but it's not really a surface tension. But if Tension can manipulate surface tension as well, you can increase water's surface tension and just walk on it, like some insects and lizards do, without making it ice. In other applications, you can probably take some coal and restructure it into graphite or even diamond. I wonder if you can take imperfect gemstones and make them perfect with a little bit of Tension - seems reasonable, but gemstones are special in some way and they can't be made by Soulcasting for example, so it's likely other surges can't affect them as well. Making clothes rigid isn't useful just for weapons - tie a rope between a chasm and with Tension you can walk on it like on a rock solid surface. Turning other people's clothes rigid mid-fight would most definitely immobilize them - even if just for a moment, that's enough to make them defenseless and kill them before they break free. And if you can make things rigid, you can probably make them flexible as well - how about turning your opponent's sword or armor into a rubber? Seems fun. Air would most likely be very hard to affect by this because it's not dense at all and it would resist similarly as in Soulcasting. It's too free, vast and unbounded for Tension. I think normal applications of Tension can't change the air. Lighting and fire can’t be affected because they aren't atoms - fire is a chemical reaction, while lightning is an electric charge. Tension also seems to be strongly restricted by investiture just like Cohesion is - even the smallest amount of Stormlight in an object would prevent Stonewards from using their Surges on it. Spoiler Questioner Can you tell me anything about Tension or Cohesion? Brandon Sanderson I haven't truly written these magics in yet, so they might change as I actually write the scenes. But they are... Tension is the ability to take something flexible and make it rigid. Which you think sounds simple, but there are so many cool things you could do with that. Words of Radiance Omaha signing (March 13, 2014) Spoiler Hoser (Speaking of the division surge) Is that a re-framing of, at one point in time you were talking about weak/strong forces? Brandon Sanderson Um, weak/strong forces, yes, that's the one that sent me there partially. Like, I'm not actually... the idea of the fundamental forces is a cool thing to me so it's not like I'm actually trying to use the weak and strong forces, the idea of there being fundamental forces. I wanted to go off on it in a fancy way. Like this one right here I told them was surface tension. But it's not really surface tension. It's more like um, the people with this could take a piece of cloth and snap it out and it would become hard as if the cloth became steel. I'm trying to explain this scientifically, but it doesn't work scientifically. Imagine as if they could restructure the atoms so that they became a latticework like a crystal rather than being soft like...cloth. I'm calling it surface tension, but it's not really surface tension. Hoser Tensile strength? Brandon Sanderson It's kind of like tensile strength. I have to go through Peter and say "Alright Peter, come up with what we should really call this." He does the hard science a lot better than I do. I do the armchair theories and then he goes, "Ok, now this is the math if someone were to actually fall off of this and 0.7 gravity and the weight of the bridge...". (looking back at the chart) So what can I give you that I didn't give her? Um, one of the orders is called Bondsmiths. Steelheart Seattle signing (Oct. 14, 2013) Spoiler Questioner So far there hasn't been a lot of the Stonewards in the books. Are they going to come forward in the next few? Brandon Sanderson ...Yes. One of the reasons I built the structure of The Stormlight Archive the way that I did is because I knew it would be easy to overwhelm with the number of magical abilities, and to let myself get distracted by some of them and not do them justice. So I've been very careful, perhaps more careful than I need to be, and when I show like a Fused using a power, I focus more on the ones you know about and things like this, intentionally to keep the reader's attention on what they know as I expand. Questioner Can they shape stone? In one of the flashbacks they kind of melt it and it becomes sand. Brandon Sanderson Basically, my original pitch to myself on Stonewards, one of their main powers--I mean, everybody has two--but this power you're talking about was the ability to grab matter and just kind of-- like what if the whole world were clay to you. Not just stone, not just rock, but if you could just pick something up and stretch it, whatever it was, that was my original pitch for that order. Questioner So architects or combat engineers fill that order? Brandon Sanderson Yeah, stuff like that, but also, just kind of like you need to get out of a room? Well, let's mash ourselves a doorway here and step through, or just all kinds of stuff. Questioner 2 Can they do that to living flesh? Brandon Sanderson No. That's the general, the more Invested something is the more it resists, and Stoneward powers are highly resisted by things... Even a small amount of extra Investiture is gonna prevent them. Like if you stuck Stormlight in [an object], say a Windrunner did, a Stoneward wouldn't be able to change that. Orem signing (March 10, 2018)
TheSurvivorofDeath Posted July 6, 2024 Posted July 6, 2024 Tension seems very useful, but only if you know what you’re doing. You can turn anything completely rigid or entirely rubbery. I do believe that liquids would be hard to use the surge on, especially flowing liquids. You could manipulate surface tension of standing water probably, and turn any liquid solid if you know what you’re doing. Air would be even harder to swing and you probably wouldn’t be able to do floating solid platforms at all, if you could do anything with air. Lightning and fire are basically energy, so no dice on tension there. We haven’t seen tension be used to any real extent, so we can’t tell what we might see from it in the future. It is a very interesting surge that has the possibility to be very exciting.
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