surge Transportation

[Dofurion]

Based on the comments Shallan made in the last few chapters, I think we can already make some educated guesses about the mechanical workings of this Surge.

The basic guess is this: What if the Transport works like the TP in MMOs? The TP in this case being the Spren.

Shallan mentions that in some way her bond with her 2 Sprens is pulling her towards the Cognitive Realm. At this point I realized something, if this is the case, then it would explain why it is easier for an Elsecaller (and presumably a Willshaper as well) to go to the Cognitive Realm than back. Because it would be the Radiant that is drawn to its Spren, and its Spren is drawn to the Cognitive Realm.

So, if this is the case, it may be that for the Radiants to transport to another place in the same realm, their Sprens would have to be a considerable distance away from them. Making an analogy, it would be something similar to how the Ender Pearl's work in Minecraft. Where the player is transported to the position where the pearl hits.

[Njvodin]

I think the only problem I see with same Realm travel is that a True Spren loses cognitive function the further away they get from their bonded partner, so I think it might also weaken the Nahel bond. 

The Radiant and spren would have to be very strongly Connected for this to even have a chance of happening, and even then I think it will still need proper circumstances, like a high amount of Investiture, a proper Intent, and the right Surge. I don't think any Radiant can just EP stasis chamber from one side of Roshar to the other, but maybe a Transportation Radiant could.

Again, that Radiant has to have the right Intent, Investiture, and Connection, so they'd presumably have to be 4th or 5th Ideal, to even consider trying something like this.

I don't think I like the idea of that being a commonplace ability, so if it even is something that can be done, then narratively Brandon would have to make very sparing use of it, like as a hail mary deus ex machina type thing.

 

What I think this is more hinting at is Shallan being able to slip into Shadesmar due to her high Investiture level from the double bond, and anything else weird that might come from double bonding.

Lightweavers do not have access to Transportation, so it'd just have to be related to how Lightweavers can see into Shadesmar for Soulcasting, but perhaps any other double bonded Radiant might have an easier time getting into Shadesmar?

[Dofurion]

16 hours ago, Njvodin said:

I think the only problem I see with same Realm travel is that a True Spren loses cognitive function the further away they get from their bonded partner, so I think it might also weaken the Nahel bond. 

The Radiant and spren would have to be very strongly Connected for this to even have a chance of happening, and even then I think it will still need proper circumstances, like a high amount of Investiture, a proper Intent, and the right Surge. I don't think any Radiant can just EP stasis chamber from one side of Roshar to the other, but maybe a Transportation Radiant could.

Of course, for long distance use I don't think it would be feasible. Unless of course we're talking about an Oathgate or, speculating a bit, a 5th Ideal Radiant.
But where it could be seen is at short distances, let's imagine for a second Jasnah using the Shardblade shooting technique that Adolin uses, and suddenly appearing unexpectedly next to him on the battlefield. That would be a substantial increase in her mobility.

16 hours ago, Njvodin said:

What I think this is more hinting at is Shallan being able to slip into Shadesmar due to her high Investiture level from the double bond, and anything else weird that might come from double bonding.

Lightweavers do not have access to Transportation, so it'd just have to be related to how Lightweavers can see into Shadesmar for Soulcasting, but perhaps any other double bonded Radiant might have an easier time getting into Shadesmar?

I'm not really a fan of giving Shallan that ability, she would be becoming so powerful that we'd expect a nerf to her for the benefit of the plot, and I wouldn't want that to happen.

[Wanguu He/Him]

I hope that it's that Shallan can slip into shadesmar, but not come back without a perpendicularity. I do think that Transportation seems to be one of the weakest surges, by a wide margin. It must have a use beyond getting stranded in Shadesmar until you can find a point where the two realms overlap.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

On 11/12/2024 at 7:26 PM, Dofurion said:

Based on the comments Shallan made in the last few chapters, I think we can already make some educated guesses about the mechanical workings of this Surge.

The basic guess is this: What if the Transport works like the TP in MMOs? The TP in this case being the Spren.

Shallan mentions that in some way her bond with her 2 Sprens is pulling her towards the Cognitive Realm. At this point I realized something, if this is the case, then it would explain why it is easier for an Elsecaller (and presumably a Willshaper as well) to go to the Cognitive Realm than back. Because it would be the Radiant that is drawn to its Spren, and its Spren is drawn to the Cognitive Realm.

So, if this is the case, it may be that for the Radiants to transport to another place in the same realm, their Sprens would have to be a considerable distance away from them. Making an analogy, it would be something similar to how the Ender Pearl's work in Minecraft. Where the player is transported to the position where the pearl hits.

I suspect that what we're going to find is that the surge of transportation is absurdly powerful, but requires extreme amounts of preparation and precision to use for multiple people over long distances. Blinking a half-dozen people straight into Shadesmar? Easypeasy, no thought or planning required, just a little raw Investiture needed. Teleporting one person 300 feet to a place where the transporter has unbroken line-of-sight? Again, trivially easy. Teleporting to a point over the horizon or across the globe or on the other side of a wall? This might be so super hard and essentially require so much math or raw focusing of Intent (big "I") that we just never see it happen on screen except via fabrials like the oathgates that are hyper-engineered for that specific purpose.

For example (minor elantris spoiler)

Spoiler

Elantrians require rigorous diagraming to travel long distances precisely; it's a powerful ability but it is not easy to use.

I could maybe imagine masters of the surge of transportation to eventually learn to blink to a small number of distant locations reliably more-or-less on demand, (especially if they have a bondsmith helping them with real-time mapping), but blinking 5 people 36 miles to the west from an arbitrary starting position on a whim will, I suspect, just be too prohibitively difficult for even the best of the best to ever achieve (though, by my understanding, cosmere physics do technically allow this to be "possible").