Stormlight (and Surgebinding)

[Glaring at the Survivor]

First off, can anyone tell me if all Surgebinding requires Stormlight or just the Surgebindings Szeth and Kaladin use?

Now, one thing struck me as odd in the book. After Teft figured out that Kaladin could Surgebind, why didnt he have Kaladin turn all his spheres into diamond chips? Do certain types of crystal contain more stormlight than others?

[Windrunner]

I would be shocked if the other orders of Radiants didn't use Stormlight. There is no implication that this is the case.

For your second question, the gems all seem to hold about the same amount of Stormlight, so he might as well get as much as he can. He can have more less valuable spheres for Stormlight or fewer more valuable spheres. It's just a logical thing.

[The Count]

I would be shocked if the other orders of Radiants didn't use Stormlight. There is no implication that this is the case.

For your second question, the gems all seem to hold about the same amount of Stormlight, so he might as well get as much as he can. He can have more less valuable spheres for Stormlight or fewer more valuable spheres. It's just a logical thing.

 

(1) Well every Radiant order we have seen so far has required stormlight (Shallan, Jasnah, Kaladin, Spoilery people)... I think this is the implication.

 

(2) Are you sure about this? I was under the imression that higher denomination on spheres had larger gemstones in them...

 

So Chips have the smallest, then Marks, then Broams, then whole gemstones. I would be supprised if a larger gem (and by implication a higher denomination of sphere) cannot hold more stormlight, although to be fair, I cannot remember this being stated anywhere in the book.

 

I always assumed that Teft wanted Kaladin to convert all his spheres to chips so that he could not take in too much Stormlight at once and so glow visibly to everyone else.

Edited November 15, 2013 by MadRand

[Glaring at the Survivor]

I meant like comparatively speaking. As in the size of the gemstone itself. For instance, would one square inch of diamond hold as much stormlight as one square inch of emerald or sapphire?

Edited November 15, 2013 by Stroniax

[name_here]

1. All Surgebinding we've seen from anyone to date has required Stormlight. I expect they all do.

 

2. There has been no particular indication that any type of gem holds more Stormlight than other types. I'm reasonably confident in saying Soulcasting needs to draw Stormlight from the gem corresponding to the Essence that will result, but Windrunning doesn't seem to care. Now, larger gems are better, and apparently to a greater extent than the square-cube law would imply because gems shatter when drained too much, so downgrading denominations probably isn't wise. Kaladin's legitimate income was paid in diamonds as it was, however, and he spent his unoffical income.

[Bloodfalcon]

1. All Surgebinding we've seen from anyone to date has required Stormlight. I expect they all do.

 

2. There has been no particular indication that any type of gem holds more Stormlight than other types. I'm reasonably confident in saying Soulcasting needs to draw Stormlight from the gem corresponding to the Essence that will result, but Windrunning doesn't seem to care. Now, larger gems are better, and apparently to a greater extent than the square-cube law would imply because gems shatter when drained too much, so downgrading denominations probably isn't wise. Kaladin's legitimate income was paid in diamonds as it was, however, and he spent his unoffical income.

As special as we think Windrunning is, I doubt it will be THAT special. I bet you can gather stormlight from any type of gem. My hope is that then there is some special ability that goes with drawing stormlight from your Order's favorite type. We've only seen a couple types of Surgebinding, but if you think about them, they are never picky on where they get the Stormlight from. Being intentionally vague as to not give away things, but in one of the interlude's we've received, there is a comment made to remove spheres that is very general coming from someone who appears to have a lot of knowledge. 

[Kurkistan]

Some info:

 

The size of the gem has little to do with how long the stormlight is held, though I'd imagine that bigger gems hold more.

 

The other types of surgebinding aren't gem-restricted.

 

Source:

STORMATLAS

I finally got to ask a question about the Stormlight Archive that Windrunner17 and Chaos helped me with which was: "Why Can Kaladin Surgebind with any gem type but Jasnah and Shallan need specific types?"

 

BRANDON SANDERSON

A lot of that will be explained as the series comes along. It is really the difference between Soulcasting and the other forms of Surgebinding. It's more a quirk of Soulcasting than it is something that is different about about Kaladin. So you've kind of got it reversed a little bit though; Soulcasting has this additional restriction that the other ones don't.

 

[The Count]

Some info:

 

The size of the gem has little to do with how long the stormlight is held, though I'd imagine that bigger gems hold more.

 

Bigger gms could hold more Stormlight in total and still lose it in the same timeframe.

 

It just means that the rate of decay is directly proportional to gem size (or volume)... or it is magic

[Gloom]

Gems cut a certain way are capable of holding Stormlight longer than uncut gems. The text describes the gemstone in a chip as a sliver, but the quotes from Brandon would suggest that the larger denominations of spheres have cut gems inside them (which I was totally wrong about). So it wouldn't necessarily make sense to exchange all your Broams for Marks and all your Marks for Chips, because we don't know how much more Stormlight a Mark can hold over a Chip, or a Broam over a Mark. It may make sense to exchange all your Emerald Broams for Diamond Broams though, at least until we find that emeralds hold more Stormlight than diamonds, or that emeralds hold Stormlight longer than diamonds. As far as we know, cut and flawlessness(clarity?) are the determining factors on how long the Stormlight stays, and the size determines the amount of Stormlight a gem can hold.

[Arook]

It is good to note that they for the most part were slaves and it would have been suspicious to exchange more valuable spheres into less valuable diamond broams.

 

 

 

Edit note: used wrong word opps

Edited November 15, 2013 by Arook