Soft Magics of the Cosmere

[Trusk'our he/him]

A lot of the magics in the Cosmere are pretty hard systems. Allomancy and Feruchemy, most Surgebinding, Sandmastery, and more.

So I feel like it's pretty interesting when we get an example of a case of Investiture that's inherently looser with its borders. I love hard systems a whole lot, but having a looser range occasionally can lead to some fun stuff.

Now, I want to clarify that these systems do still have some hard limits, so they're not truly "soft" systems. Shardic Intent, the level of Investiture available, and the physics of the Cosmere can still limit them. But other than that, it's really up to the user's knowledge, skill, and foresight in what can be done with it.

 

Thus far, I believe we've seen:

Shards/Vessels: the most obvious example, especially given their functionally infinite level of Investiture. They can do basically anything except reverse time, reverse true death, go against their Shard's Intent, or override an equal or greater source of power.

Avatars: I'm assuming it depends on the level of Investiture they're granted, but from what I know it sounds like they're functionally the same as the Shards/Vessels except that they have a lot less raw power and they must abide by the true Vessel's demands.

Dawnshards: don't know a whole lot about them yet, but I'm gonna throw my bet that they count as being relatively "soft" as well.

The Nightwatcher: can grant grafts of Investiture that overwrite people's bodies, minds, and souls. Given the apparent lack of rules associated with this, I imagine a lot more could be done that what we've seen. 

Elantrians: technically they have a harder "soft" magic than most of these others (because they have to code out everything that must be done rather than just willing things to be a new way), but since they can replicate basically any other function of Investiture with a few exceptions I'd say their power counts as being pretty soft.

Bondsmiths: pretty sure they can manipulate Connection in loose enough ways that if they know what they're doing that they could do basically anything they wanted, similar to Elantrians (within the pre-assigned rules for soft magic).

Nightblood: with the sword being able to learn how to replicate the Surges after simply chatting with the Honorblades for a few days, I'm pretty confident that Nightblood can do so, so much more. Probably in a similar scale to the Nightwatcher, probably somewhat less Invested (and requiring as of present external sources of Investiture to fuel their abilities).

 

A couple I think could use soft magic, but I'm hypothesizing on:

Dragons: given that Dragons are known to grant boons and their huge levels of Investiture, I'm imagining that they can do stuff similar to the Nightwatcher (haven't read IotED yet, but if anyone wants to shoot me an example of such abilities in a spoiler box, I would not be too upset).

Awakeners: given that Breaths area  bit looser than most other magic systems in that you can Command them to do a whole bunch of different things, and its even given rise to the creation of Nightblood (albeit with some tampering from Endowment), I think if you were to become a really, really highly Invested Awakener that you could begin doing Avatar-level stuff.

Aethers: We've seen basically nothing from these guys except some elemental growth, but if they're as Invested as the Godspren of Roshar or more, I think they might have some real potential for bending Investiture in all kinds of ways.

 

Edit: oh, and of course Hemalurgy. How could I forget my sweet baby? You can rewrite a Spiritweb to be basically anything, so it's reasonable to conclude that it could change one to do a lot of other things.

Edited January 18 by Trusk'our

[NovaRay He/him]

I think in IoE 

Spoiler

it’s stated that dragon’s boons are just like emotional boosts in confidence

and dawnshards probably only do what their title is like change changing stuff and exist doing something and that doesn’t seem that soft to me. But yeah all of these are considerably softer than other magics.

[therunner he/him]

I think while Elantrians are soft in application (can do anything), they are much harder in practice, in that they have to know what they are doing. 

E.g. Lightweaver draws/images object, and then breathes out Light and the illusion is just there. Elantrian has to program everything about it to get the same effect.
So they can get nearly arbitrary results (limited by available Investiture), but it will take them a lot of time to get to that point.

E.g. by early Era 4, Riina has been alive for millenia, and yet outside of few illusions she doesn't really exhibit any duplication of other Invested Arts, even when it would have been really useful. 

Few centuries earlier party of Elantrians were deathly afraid of Shades, again showing that despite their theoretical ceiling, in practice they are not necessarily that powerful, even when knowing about the danger beforehand.

So i think people see Elantrians as soft (can do anything) magic system, but in actuality they are much harder magic system, being basically the same as Hemalurgy in that what the user knows is the most important part. 

EDIT: I do count Hemalurgy as hard magic system, because to actually utilize it you have to:

1. Know the spiritweb of subject and its relation to bind points on physical body (either by experimentation or study)
2. Once you have 1), you can replicate the effect reliably, same spike in the same bind points will always do the same thing.

It's just that in our theorycrafting on forums, we basically skip over points 1, which is the actually difficult part of Hemalurgy. 
Even by Era 2, Hemalurgy still primarily relies on stuff discovered by TLR when he held the Well, and that is 1300 years later. 

WoB on how rare advanced skill with Aons is, and how difficult it is 
(basically, being that good at Aons is equivalent to being world-class physicist or mathematician)

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Eight

The economy of Arelon is one of the interesting features of this book. Even still, I'm not certain if I made things a little too odd here. The idea of nobility being tied directly to money is described so often by the characters that I worry that readers will think the system too foolish to have arisen. However, I think that by establishing the king as a former merchant—and by pointing out how the system was created quickly, to fill the void after the fall of Elantris—I manage to keep the economic and social situation in Arelon within the realm of possibility.

I think that too often fantasy writers are content with simply throwing in a slightly-original spin on magic—ignoring the fact that their cultures, governments, and religions are derivative. There is this idea of the "general" fantasy world, and writers draw upon it. However, I think an interesting cultural element can be just as fascinating—and as useful to the plot—as an interesting magic system. In the best cases, the two are inter-woven, like what one can find in brilliant genre books like Dune.

Of course, the strange economic/governmental system of the book is only a descendant of another strange economic/governmental system. Sarene and Lukel discuss a few of the problems presented by having a race of people who can create whatever they want through use of magic. I don't get to deal with that aspect of AonDor very much in this particular book, since the novel is set during a time when the magic of Elantris doesn't work. However, there are a lot of interesting ramifications AonDor would present for a book set during Elantris' heyday. What good is gold if someone can create it from nothing? In fact, what good is a monetary system at all when everyone can have as much food as they want? What need is there for invention or ingenuity in the face of a group of people who can re-create any good, no matter how complex, with a mere flick of the magical wrist?

The truth behind the Elantrian magical abilities is far more limited than Sarene or Lukel acknowledge in this chapter. If one were to go back fifteen years, one would find that the Elantrians who had the skill to fabricate complex materials "out of nothing" were actually quite rare.

As we learn later in the book, AonDor is a very complicated, difficult skill to master. As I was writing this book, I imagined the complicated Aons that Raoden eventually learns how to draw being only springboards to massive equations that could take weeks to plan out and write. Fabricating something very complex would require a great deal of detail in the AonDor recipe.

Even still, I think the tension between the Elantrians and the merchants is a natural outgrowth of this situation.

Elantris Annotations (June 27, 2005)

 

Edited January 18 by therunner

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

12 hours ago, NovaRay said:

I think in IoE 

  Reveal hidden contents

it’s stated that dragon’s boons are just like emotional boosts in confidence

and dawnshards probably only do what their title is like change changing stuff and exist doing something and that doesn’t seem that soft to me. But yeah all of these are considerably softer than other magics.

I will say, that Dawnshards can do a lot more than just that, TSM

Spoiler

He was forever changed merely by having held a dawnshard, so we cannot imagine what it would be like with a dawnshard