surges 6 Rosharan magic systems. Or 60. Or 33. [Discuss]

[PanLin they/he]

tl;dr: there are multiple magic systems on Roshar, and the Shardic ownership of them is a bit fuzzy. Honor and Odium both used warped versions of the original Surges for theirs.

Surgebinding: Honor originally, with his versions of the Surges that he gave to the Heralds, with Cultivation's help later to introduce Armorspren and Knights Radiant

Old Magic: Cultivation, off doing its own esoteric thing away from the Surges

Lifebinding: Honor and Cultivation, their actual combined Art: Fabrials

Voidbinding: Odium, with his own, more destructive/unstable versions of the Surges

Ashyn's diseases: Odium and Cultivation, having developed unintentionally from their essences after the death of Tanavast

Warbinding: Odium and Honor. No idea. This might be the true name of Voidlight-powered Surgebinding, or something entirely new

Bonus: The Sibling isn't just 'the only Towerspren'; they were actually the first and strongest Advancementspren

 

Evidence

So we know there are a few magic systems that have appeared in the Stormlight Archive, which straight up I'm going to point out is not the same as saying these are the only magic systems in the Rosharan system.

Spoiler

Questioner

How many magic systems are in The Stormlight Archive, and how many of them haven't been seen?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say the only major one you haven’t seen is Voidbinding, it depends on how you count them. I count fabrials as one, Surgebinding as one, and Voidbinding as one. And then the Old Magic is kind of its own weird thing.

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

Spoiler

Quantumplation (paraphrased)

I haven't read Way of Kings yet, but I've read Warbreaker and Mistborn, and the thing I like most about them is the Magic systems.  Will Way of Kings have multiple magic systems?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Depending on how you count it, Stormlight Archive will have 3 or 30 different magic systems.

Footnote: Part of me wants to say he said "3, 10, or 30 different magic systems", but I can't remember for sure.
Towers of Midnight Cambridge signing (Nov. 7, 2010)

Surgebinding, Voidbinding, Fabrials, and Old Magic off doing its own thing as potentially a softer magic system than we're used to in the Cosmere. As of 2010, Sanderson planned for there to be either 3 or 30 systems. Taking these two together, the 3 magic systems for Stormlight Archive are Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and Fabrials, with Old Magic off doing its own thing.

That WoB also states that we hadn't (as of 2016) seen true Voidbinding, adding to this one:

Spoiler

Argent

Let's talk about Renarin, and Voidbinding. So, with that page we talked about, Renarin Voidbinds. I asked about visions, you pointed to Voidbinding chart, he Voidbinds. Is that using Stormlight to power abilities different from the Surgebindings we've seen?  

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. 

Argent

Is that what voidbinding is? 

Brandon Sanderson

No, but close. You're on the right track. We are gonna get into that, I'm not gonna tell you what the chart means, and things like that. But yeah, something really weird is happening there. 

Footnote: The chart referenced is the back endsheet in The Way of Kings.
Oathbringer Chicago signing (Nov. 21, 2017)

We also know that true Voidbinding usually comes from the Unmade.

Side note: The name 'Unmade' is interesting, implying Odium didn't create them from scratch, and the Sibling described what was happening to them in Rhythm of War as 'unmaking'. Pure coincidence, I'm sure.

We also know that each Shard will inspire magic systems, but specific ownership can get fuzzy over which Shard causes which Art, and how mortals choose to define a system versus a power within that system (eg: is Allomancy 1 Art or 16?):

Spoiler

Crspu

Is there going to be a magic system for every Shard? 

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, yes, whether there'll be books? We get into a problem here... is... what is a magic system, right? 

So for instance like, would you count all of Surgebinding as one magic system, or is it ten magic systems, right? Is Windrunning a separate magic system from Skybreaking. Right, and is it the Surges? Is it that? What do you call a magic system? Is the system of fabrials a magic system, or is it a subset of what's happening on Roshar? And in that case, it's like I delineated it pretty strongly in Mistborn, but in Stormlight, it's like... kind of Surgebinding is kind of Honor and Cultivation, right? And so is there a magic system for each of them or not?

So the answer is yes and no, in that every one of the Shards will inspire really interesting magic systems. But is there a one to one? What do you call a magic system? And beyond that, will I have time to write books about all of these, I don't know. You could even look at Sel. Sel has how many magic systems, is it one? Is it lots? Is Forging a different magic system from AonDor, or is it two aspects of the same magic system and so... It's tricky. 

YouTube Spoiler Stream 2 (June 3, 2021)

 

Theories

So, from here on out, I'm going to be referring to the three Rosharan Shards plus Retribution, and the other hypothetical combos:

Advancement: Honor and Cultivation, using Sciencelight

Catalysis: Cultivation and Odium, using Blightlight

 

Odium originally gave humans access to Surges, Honor adapted those Surges to create the Surgebinding we know and love, and Cultivation has been doing her own thing throughout, completely separate to the Surges. This sequence of events is what shaped every magic system in the Rosharan system.

I propose that Surgebinding was originally of Honor alone. He created the Oathpact and gave powers and Honorblades to the Heralds that were limited and controlled versions of the original Surges that led to the destruction of Ashyn. Later on, Cultivation added her power to this Art to allow for new Nahel bonds to give rise to Knights Radiant, with oaths that encouraged personal growth and spren to act as Shardblades and Shardplate.

We know that Voidbinding is super weird and esoteric. We also know that the Surges of Surgebinding were filtered through and limited by Honor. The existence of the Voidbinding chart implies that Voidbinding also has 10 Surges that are related to Surgebinding, therefore we can infer that Voidbinding is Odium's way of giving access to the Surges, filtered through his own power and Intent to create dangerous, unstable versions of the same Surges as Surgebinding, often related to the future and the spiritual realm. Thanks to Sja-Anat, some humans are starting to access a form of Voidbinding via enlightened spren, potentially orchestrated by Cultivation in the same way she adapted Honor's Surges to allow for Knights Radiant.

Old Magic is more or less confirmed to be Cultivation's Invested Art. We know very little about it, other than it being esoteric and having some hints to it in what's going on with Lift. I suspect it has to do with manipulating someone's Spiritweb as if it were a garden, pruning some parts and encouraging other parts, in order to achieve some sort of growth.

Lifebinding is the name I'm giving to the only other magic system in the Stormlight Archives, which includes but isn't necessarily limited to Fabrials. This is the true combined Invested Art of Advancement, not Surgebinding, and is defined by the literal binding of life and natural forces to create repeatable effects. One of these fabrials, based on the surge of Transformation, allowed for the creation of other invested cities inspired by Urithiru, each with their own weaker Advancementspren. Any Invested device that does not contain a bound spren is not technically a Fabrial, despite what people colloquially call them.

This also leaves a potential Invested Art each for Catalysis and Retribution that likely won't be featured in the Stormlight Archives. I don't know about Retribution, but I think the one for Catalysis could easily be the disease-based system that may or may not be happening on Ashyn.

 

Relatedly (and I'm less convinced on this part), I think Honor and Cultivation used their combined Sciencelight to create the Sibling from the ancient spren of Stone. They then created another 10 weaker Advancementspren to similarly inhabit and protect the 10 cities on the other sides of the Oathgates, each based on one of the Surges. Odium, in return, corrupted each of these spren to create his Unmade. The reason there are 9 Unmade (and the reason Odium can't use Adhesion) is that the original surge of Adhesion (Pressure/Void) filtered through Odium's power creates a spiritual black hole that immediately collapses its host into nothingness; Odium successfully unmade all 10, but the Adhesion one immediately died after being corrupted.

 

In conclusion, I have another spreadsheet. This is all fully speculative; while I'm fairly confident on the distinctions of the magic systems, I'm not confident on the mapping of each individual Surge.

Surge	Yolish Surge	Surgebinding	Lifebinding (fabrials)	Sciencelight Spren	Voidbinding
		Honor	Advancement	(Sibling)	Odium
Adhesion	Pressure / Void	Create bonds	Pairing	Stormseat / Narak	Spiritual black hole?
Gravitation	Gravity	Increase gravity		Kholinar	Single-minded competitiveness (Nergaoul)
Division	Entropy	Increase entropy	Suppressor	Panatham?	Overclock Spiritweb (Yelig-Nar)
Abrasion	Surface interaction	Manipulate friction		Rall Elorim	Remove inhibitions (Ashertmarn)
Progression	Energy conversion	Repair living matter	Surge (soulcasters, oathgates, etc)	Rira	Reconfigure Spiritweb (Sja-Anat)
Illumination	Illumination	Create illusions	Warning	Azimir	Futuresight (Moelach)
Transformation	Internal state change	Soulcast	City (eg: Sibling's gem column)?	Vedenar (Akinah?)	Midnight Essence (Re-Shephir)
Transportation	Relational state change	Manipulate position	Stormclocks? (logicspren)	Akinah	Warp spacetime (Dai-Gonarthis)
Cohesion	Strong axial interconnection	Shape matter		Thaylen City	Manipulate spiritual interconnection (Ba-Ado-Mishram)
Tension	Soft axial interconnection	Soften / tensify matter	Altering	Shinovar (Bondsmith monastery?)	??? (Chemoarish)