Brandon's Unifying Theory of Magic

[Squallor he/him]

So, first time poster, but I've been lurking around for awhile.

Basically I want to start a thread to gather opinions about the unifying theory of magic. What do people think/know about it? I started a reread of all of his books last week, and I'm planning on taking notes about each world, their shards, traits of their magic systems, etc. I've figured out that magic always needs a fuel source, and there needs to be a certain method to unlock said power. Also their are the interactions with Physical/Spiritual/Cognitive Realms with what can be done. I plan on writing large post in each book section summarizing what I can find after the rereads, but wanted to start a general discussion first.

Brandon said it was similar to how scientists are trying to find a unifying theory of physics. That to me implies that are very strict rules, and that we should be able to derive more information once we have a good understanding.

Also, I'm going to his signing in Boston on the fifth, and wanted to ask him some questions about this system, but don't know exactly what I should ask to get the most I can out of it, ideas?

Mike

[Emeralis00 she/her]

Some more information for you.

Only people with the correct physical spiritual and cognitive genetics can use retain types of magic.  e.x. Only people from Scadrial can use Allomancy.

[Squallor he/him]

I'm aware. I've heard Brandon talk about "spiritual DNA" so to speak when talking about how Larasium (I believe that was the metal) grants allomantic powers to people. Since allomancy is hereditary and not common, it could be assumed to be a recessive genetic. Larasium would then impose forced genetic mutation.

People from the planet Warbreaker is on (I don't remember off the top of my head) all have the genetic ability to give/receive breaths, so I assume something like that has naturally evolved in their DNA and can't be avoided (like being born with a heart and lungs, etc). It could be reasonably assumed that any planet hopper might be able to collect breaths as well without having a genetic mutation.

On Sel however, it seems a bit harder to identify and the theory breaks down. Elantrian magic seems to be entirely random, and we don't know enough about Drahkor magic to be able to tell how they learn it. Is there a spiritual genetic mutation forced by some unknown source? We know that Elantians are more likely to transform the closer they are to the city. Maybe Elantris itself has some sort of spiritual radiation that forces genetic mutation over time much like nuclear radiation can do.

For the moment, we don't know enough about the magic on Roshar to pass judgment on that, but I will try to identify trends on my next read through.

This leads me to believe that certain magics can be collected, while others cannot. One reason I like to think Brandon claims Hoid is so powerful is that he has been around long enough to have collected many different forms of magic, but that is just wishful thinking on my part, since we have only seen him do his story telling magic (light weaving?)

Anyway, thats the end of my rambling

[Kykeon]

Hoid, gods and 'true' soull-casters re-weave reality itself by way of shadesmar whereas most other magic works on a less fundamental level, tranferring power or enhancing physical traits.

[Munin he/him]

Hm.

Well, so far, all magic has come from Adonalsium. And with the possible exception of Shardblades/Shardplate/Dawnshards (about which we know very little), all magic has at least initially resided inside of people (Nightblood had 1000 breaths, so he still follows this rule).

So... I dunno. Objects can't gather power naturally, it has to be infused into them somehow?

[Squallor he/him]

Hoid, gods and 'true' soull-casters re-weave reality itself by way of shadesmar whereas most other magic works on a less fundamental level, tranferring power or enhancing physical traits.

we do we find out Hoid re-weaves reality through shademar? I know he uses that for planet hopping, but I thought that was his only known relationship with it?

[Andrew the Great he/him]

No. That's a pretty large generalization. All we know is that Hoid can use it (though we assume he uses it for planet hopping) and the Soulcasters (the people, not the fabrials) can go there and may possibly use it to Soulcast.

And we know pretty much nothing about how the Shards do things yet. In fact, from what we've seen so far, the Shards themselves are the source of most magic. Or at least are the means of providing access to it.

Almost nothing is known of the actual Unifying Theory of Magic. I'm assuming that the best way to find out information about it would be to compare magic systems until we can find general trends. Since Brandon mentioned that they all do follow said trends.

For example:

-In my mind, Steelpushing and Ironpulling = a specific form of the same type of magic as Windrunning, using metal as an anchor. There are other examples of this, but this was the easiest example I could think of.

-As Munin mentioned, all magic initially resides with people.

-Some sort of control mechanism to determine what you're doing with the magic - In Elantris, it's the Aons, in Mistborn, the metals, in Warbreaker, the Commands. Not really sure how Roshar fits in here.....

-(Currently, though this might change) All Shard-Powered

That's all I've got at the moment. Though I definitely think that there's more there.

[Zas678 he/him]

Roshar- It seems to be stormlight/spren driven. Perhaps it's Stormlight for the Almighty, and Spren for Cultivation.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

Right. But I saw the stormlight more as a power source than a source of control. But now that you mention it, I suppose you could argue that it is the control mechanism. Particularly for Windrunning. Interestingly enough, Soulcasting is more about the gem type than about the Stormlight.

In fact, this makes more sense, assuming that the Stormlight acts like the metals in mistborn. It provides a conduit to the Shard's power for magic use, and also controls the use of that same power.

[Kykeon]

Just trying to bring out more ideas.

@Squallor

It's not *entirely* random.

You need to have the right genetic potential passed on by blood, otherwise you are immune to being turned.

I think the original elantrians created AonDor because they wanted to avoid the minute-long rituals of the Jindo.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Kykeon

[Andrew the Great he/him]

Out of  curiosity, is anyone planning on re-reading any of Brandon's earlier stuff anytime soon? Lists of Rules for magic systems that Brandon mentions (but only ones that don't turn out to be made up by the characters, like the "you can't push metals that pierce someone's skin" rule in mistborn) would be extremely useful here, but I don't have any of Brandon's books with me except Way of Kings.

[Squallor he/him]

Out of  curiosity, is anyone planning on re-reading any of Brandon's earlier stuff anytime soon?

Just started to. I'll be finishing Elantris tonight, and will hopefully write down everything I find soon after reading his commentary for each chapter online. Unfortunately I need to take a break before the next book to read Towers of Midnight, but after I'm going to do a reread of Warbreaker, then I'll hit up Mistborn since that's the biggest beast to tackle.

I don't know if it's worthwhile to do heavy documentation of WoK yet since we get very little info about the magic in the first book. All I wanted to do was figure out the 10 order of radiants by associating the small symbols with each large one, but that's just looking through the glossary, and not much in book knowledge.

I'll make a huge post in the forum for each book as I do them, hopefully I can get enough info from the books and his personal commentary to make decent start in identifying the theory.

As a side note: What do we know about the Skaize and ClayShan? Ive heard these named dropped in Elantris discussions, however, all I know is Skaize are evil seons, possibly from the Dahkor magic.

[Andrew the Great he/him]

We presume the Skaze are related to Skai, one of the Shards on Sel that Odium killed. That's really all we have on them. Not sure on ClayShan. Been at least three years since I read Elantris.

[Zas678 he/him]

Clayshan has been compared to Feruchemy. It is moving your body into the proper positions, and channeling the Dor while in these positions. A long time ago, I made the observation that it might be more like Feruchemy in that it isn't of Aona or Skai, but is rather nuetral.

[Munin he/him]

It's ChayShan, not Clayshan.

(I laughed, though)

[Andrew the Great he/him]

Hey, you knew what we meant. I just copied that guy. ^^^^ (Yes, Squallor, I'm pointing at you)

Way to go me! Blaming other people is fun!

[happyman he/him]

Now that we know that there were two Shards on Sel, three magic systems makes sense, but is hardly the only possibility.

BTW, doesn't it seem like the powers of these shards (Aona and Skai) are probably related to each other?  They seem to be somewhat symmetric, assuming that Elantrian magic is related to Aona and Dahkor magic to Skai.  Both use alphabets to access the power, both use the Dor in interrelated ways which can be used to effect the other magic system, both provide many of the same benefits, and both have access to Seon-like things (Seons or Skaze).  There are differences, but they seem to break down along lines similar to the differences between Hemalurgy and Allomancy (e.g. Dahkor gets the power from killing people, Elantris gets it straight from the Dor).

[Squallor he/him]

Hey, you knew what we meant. I just copied that guy. ^^^^(Yes, guy in another thread that I don't remember that made me curious about ClayShan, I'm pointing at you)

[Chaos he/him]

From the 17th Shard interview, the unifying theory seemed to imply there were only finite things that magic can do. I don't think we could even come close to surmising what that may be...

So you want explicit rules? Okay, here's one: Focuses. They are really important Realmatically.

The easiest example is metal. In order to use the magic, you need metal as a focus, for all of the magic systems.

Other focuses that we know are Aons for AonDor. The first time I met Brandon, he said that the focus for Awakening was, in fact, the Commands. (Naturally, this begs the question what the focus--or focuses--there are on Roshar, which I couldn't imagine to answer)

Judging from Mistborn, these focuses are related to the Shards themselves, since Ruin and Preservation can't see through metal. I don't know what sort of "blindness" Aons and Commands would give Shards, though.

That help?

[Andrew the Great he/him]

-Some sort of control mechanism to determine what you're doing with the magic - In Elantris, it's the Aons, in Mistborn, the metals, in Warbreaker, the Commands. Not really sure how Roshar fits in here.....

And we later discussed the possibility of Stormlight as a focus on Roshar.

Keep up, man

[Chaos he/him]

Fine. Be that way. At least I called them a focus This is what I get for scanning forum topics.

Maybe Stormlight is the focus, maybe not. I'm not totally convinced yet either way. There's nine books of stuff we don't know...

Time to reassert dominance! There's also a common term that includes "charge" and "infuse". The Seventeenth Shard call this investing. So "charge" is a world specific to Scadrial, as well as infuse for Roshar, but it's all the same concept.

There, how about that?

[Andrew the Great he/him]

I'm not convinced on Stormlight either. It was just the only reasonable possibility I'd seen so far.

Makes sense. I'm assuming you're referring to Feruchemy when you talk about charges. Was there anywhere else it appeared?

And whatever happened to "imbue?" I'm surprised you didn't include that one with Hemalurgy, seeing as you coined it yourself.

Although I do find it interesting that with all the systems on Scadrial, you somehow charge the substance, but on Roshar, the substance is what does the infusing. If that made any sense whatsoever. I get what I'm saying.

[Chaos he/him]

I'm not convinced on Stormlight either. It was just the only reasonable possibility I'd seen so far.

Makes sense. I'm assuming you're referring to Feruchemy when you talk about charges. Was there anywhere else it appeared?

And whatever happened to "imbue?" I'm surprised you didn't include that one with Hemalurgy, seeing as you coined it yourself.

Although I do find it interesting that with all the systems on Scadrial, you somehow charge the substance, but on Roshar, the substance is what does the infusing. If that made any sense whatsoever. I get what I'm saying.

The whole "imbue" thing was why I know about the word invest. I humbly asked Brandon if we could call Hemalurgic metals imbued metals, and boy, did he school me on that. So, charge is canonical.

I kind of get what you are saying there, but that doesn't change the fact that a metal or sphere is invested with some Spiritual/magical power to it. The mechanism of how one invests something is up in the air.

[Kykeon]

AonDor is the only system that can "directly" hurt living things.

I'm not sure if this is significant.

Well, unless you're a hero-level Allomancer, but those are exceptions that prove the rule.

[Emeralis00 she/her]

AonDor is the only system that can "directly" hurt living things.

I'm not sure if this is significant.

Well, unless you're a hero-level Allomancer, but those are exceptions that prove the rule.

I think you got something there, but I don't know either.

Also, is anyone recording all this information?