Enlightened Stonewards?

[Cade Strauss]

For the RPG, I was planning a character with my GM and had a brilliant idea. I have always been a die-hard Stoneward fan. They're awesome. However, I didn't want to be just a normal Stoneward, so I had the idea of bonding a peakspren that is secretly enlightened/corrupted (Depending on your interpretation) and keeping it between the GM and I for as long as possible. It would add character tension (see what I did there?), as the Stonewards' mantra of "I will be there when I'm needed" is brought into question: who will I be there for? My radiant allies, or Sja-Anat's side?

More interestingly, though, this brought forth the question of what tweak to powers would an enlightened bond provide? The only enlightened spren ability information we are provided with, bookwise and in the RPG handbook, is on Truthwatcher Mistspren. Therefore, me and my GM got together and workshopped a fitting tweak or ability. Almost immediately, we both agreed that Cohesion should be the affected surge, as it is the more "Spiritual" of the 2. After running through ideas, we came to this:

Enlightened Stonewards can use their Cohesion, connection to the spren of stone, and enlightened ability to create sentient automations out of stone. The original size and shape of the creations is dependent on the Stoneward, but the automation gains sentience due to the Spren of Stone's interaction. The creation would also have control over its own Cohesion, allowing for movement of limbs while retaining a generally hard form for combat. The amount of stormlight coming into play would be critical. Small creations could be powered for long amounts of time with stormlight, but medium and large creations would eat it up much faster. It's a combination of the temporary/investiture consuming nature of midnight essence and the sentience provided by Type IV Awakened entities. It's essentially the ability to create temporary 4th Tier Invested entities out of stone, without the self-improving nature due the short lifespan inherent from Stormlight's natural evaporation that isn't present in Breaths. However, they don't need to follow initial commands and their personality would be comprised of the Spren of Stone in tandem with the Stoneward. The limitations would be Rosharan stone as a required material and the limits set by the required amount of stormlight. It doesn't seem to overpowered to me, and is fairly easy to explain away or hide from my fellow players. Thoughts, critques, or comments?

[Jult]

1 hour ago, Cade Strauss said:

For the RPG, I was planning a character with my GM and had a brilliant idea. I have always been a die-hard Stoneward fan. They're awesome. However, I didn't want to be just a normal Stoneward, so I had the idea of bonding a peakspren that is secretly enlightened/corrupted (Depending on your interpretation) and keeping it between the GM and I for as long as possible. It would add character tension (see what I did there?), as the Stonewards' mantra of "I will be there when I'm needed" is brought into question: who will I be there for? My radiant allies, or Sja-Anat's side?

More interestingly, though, this brought forth the question of what tweak to powers would an enlightened bond provide? The only enlightened spren ability information we are provided with, bookwise and in the RPG handbook, is on Truthwatcher Mistspren. Therefore, me and my GM got together and workshopped a fitting tweak or ability. Almost immediately, we both agreed that Cohesion should be the affected surge, as it is the more "Spiritual" of the 2. After running through ideas, we came to this:

Enlightened Stonewards can use their Cohesion, connection to the spren of stone, and enlightened ability to create sentient automations out of stone. The original size and shape of the creations is dependent on the Stoneward, but the automation gains sentience due to the Spren of Stone's interaction. The creation would also have control over its own Cohesion, allowing for movement of limbs while retaining a generally hard form for combat. The amount of stormlight coming into play would be critical. Small creations could be powered for long amounts of time with stormlight, but medium and large creations would eat it up much faster. It's a combination of the temporary/investiture consuming nature of midnight essence and the sentience provided by Type IV Awakened entities. It's essentially the ability to create temporary 4th Tier Invested entities out of stone, without the self-improving nature due the short lifespan inherent from Stormlight's natural evaporation that isn't present in Breaths. However, they don't need to follow initial commands and their personality would be comprised of the Spren of Stone in tandem with the Stoneward. The limitations would be Rosharan stone as a required material and the limits set by the required amount of stormlight. It doesn't seem to overpowered to me, and is fairly easy to explain away or hide from my fellow players. Thoughts, critques, or comments?

I had a similar dream of giving a player a corrupted Inkspren. I was a little disappointed (but not surprised) that there weren't suggestions for it in the rules.

I think this power makes sense and reflects other abilities that we've seen in the larger magic system of the Cosmere (Awakening, Midnight Essence etc).

From a balancing perspective, Lightweavers get a similar-ish ability called Physical Illusion after reaching the 4th Ideal. I would suggest scaling the strength of your golems to start pretty weak and eventually work their way up to something of similar strength to a Physical Illusion once you reach the 4th Ideal yourself.

I'm not sure if you're looking for alternative or additional skills, but you could always copy what Fused do with Cohesion. The Deepest Ones use it to phase through solid surfaces. Although they can't go through living things or previously living things like wood.

Or Direform Regals seem to possibly use a form of Cohesion to give themselves extra hard carapaces. Given that Nightform Regals have future vision like enlightened Truthwatchers do, Regals might be the more accurate thing to imitate.

[Cade Strauss]

That's true, they might. Yes, I'm aware of Lightweaving substantiation via Illumination and Transformation. I intend to scale the strength of the ability as the ideals increase. I don't necessarily want another vision ability, so I was looking for something different. Also, I did consider matching the abilities of the Fused by the Masked Ones, the Fused that wield the surge of Illumination, do not have the same ability as Renarin. In fact, it's very on par with Shallan's skills.

Edited July 25, 2025 by Cade Strauss

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

I think that this 'Cohesion Minions' is a very clever idea. 

Question though, would the Enlightened Stoneward be able to sense things through these puppets? Because then that opens up some subtle and interesting possbilities, like making a stone Cremling to scout ahead for you, and if you have a Lightweaver in your party, you might even be able to pull off a decoy ploy by making a copy of yourself or another, then having a Lightweaver apply an illusion to make it look like you or someone else.

And actually, maybe an interesting thing you could do is have creatures that are native to the local area you're in be more effective constructs, due to the Stone 'remembering' them better and knowing how to act like them. Just a little ease of use and having you explore the local fauna for inspiration or something.

[Cade Strauss]

On 7/25/2025 at 7:02 PM, JustQuestin2004 said:

I think that this 'Cohesion Minions' is a very clever idea. 

Question though, would the Enlightened Stoneward be able to sense things through these puppets? Because then that opens up some subtle and interesting possbilities, like making a stone Cremling to scout ahead for you, and if you have a Lightweaver in your party, you might even be able to pull off a decoy ploy by making a copy of yourself or another, then having a Lightweaver apply an illusion to make it look like you or someone else.

And actually, maybe an interesting thing you could do is have creatures that are native to the local area you're in be more effective constructs, due to the Stone 'remembering' them better and knowing how to act like them. Just a little ease of use and having you explore the local fauna for inspiration or something.

I don't know about instantly sensing, seeing as autonomous sentience is the key part of this ability. However, mental communication seems like it would be make sense in this case. 

I also agree 100% that native creatures would work better. The Stone's memory and presence would have a definite effect on the creatures.