A Theory on the Unknown Magic System

[alphagold3]

My first theory on here was pretty much instantly shot down. This was disappointing to me because if I had done just a little bit more research, I would have disproved my own theory rather than posting something that is clearly disproven. This time I spent a lot more time on research and I think I have a lot more of a valid position here.

I've come up with a theory about the Way of Kings endsheet, the one that looks similar to the surge/radiant chart but has storms and lightning and a giant red gem. I think I've heard people refer to it as the voidbinding chart as that's the seemingly obvious comparison. It's similar to the surgebinding chart and although we know almost nothing about voidbinding, it's the only other magic system that we "know" of that's similar to surgebinding. Research turned up other theories about this chart that say it is of Cultivation. I don't think it's specifically "of Cultivation" but is of the unknown third magic system.

Anyways, my theory is about that chart and the unknown magic system. Word of Brandon says that there are 4ish magic systems on Roshar: surgebinding, voidbinding, fabrials and the old magic (or at least that is the interpretation I am taking of the statements he has made). I'm talking about the fabrial related system.

I am making several assumptions in this theory and so I want to get those out of the way first.
Assumption the First: Surgebinding and the fabrial system are both the work of both Honor and Cultivation.
Assumption the Second: The Old Magic predates Honor, Cultivation, and Odium and is mostly unrelated to the other three systems.
Assumption the Third: Once we remove the Old Magic from the equation, we have three systems and I am acting under the assumption that these three are end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative similar to allomancy, feruchemy, and hemalurgy.
Assumption the Fourth: The surgebinding chart and the unknown chart both start with position one being the top right one (representing the Windrunners on the surgebinding chart). I define the "top" direction as being the side that has the yellow colord glyph above the green one in the center.
Assumption the Fifth: None of the 3 magic systems are inherently good or bad much like hemalurgy is not bad, it just is. How the magic is used, however, can be good or evil.

With those out of the way, let me briefly mention the theory and then I'll expand on it and explain my justification.

My theory is that the aforementioned chart represents the fabrial magic system which I will be calling polebinding for the sake of this discussion. I think that the larger circles represent the 10 gem types or Polestones as the Ars Arcanum seems to call them. I think that the smaller circles represent the "natures" of each gem. I think they are not the surges but that they represent ways that the gems can interact with the world around them through the magic system.

That's the basic theory. I'll break my explanation down into 2 parts: the chart itself and the proposed magic system of my theory. At the end I will also mention some side conclusions that I came to while thinking through and researching all of this.

Before that though, a quote to back me up by calling them Polestones and calling the magic system Polebinding:

"I have seen fabrials of this type crafted using many different kinds of gemstone;  I am guessing that any one of the ten Polestones will work."

 

The Chart

I was reading a bunch of stuff around the internet and I vaguely remember reading something about the voidbinding not being a 1 to 1 match with surgebinding. Initially, I thought this meant that there were more than 10 kinds of voidbinding. I've done more research since then and realized my initial thought was a misunderstanding on my part. However it led me to wonder about the polebinding chart. "If there are more or less than 10 kinds of voidbinding, then that chart has to mean something else" was my thought. The most likely candidate is the fabrial system because it seems to fit the closest into the pattern of 10s and the Old Magic has been described as being different.

Once I started thinking that, I did some research and some thinking and came to a couple of conclusions.
I think the colors/glyphs in the larger circles are:
1  - Sapphire
2  - Smokestone
3  - Ruby
4  - Diamond
5  - Emerald
6  - Garnet
7  - Zircon
8  - Amethyst
9  - Topaz
10 - Heliodor
I base this upon the color and the order primarily. The Ars Arcanum has a chart of the "Ten Essences and their Historical Associations". It lists these 10 gems in this order. In the Allomantic metals chart, each of the icons for the metals has a metallic sheen to it and matches the color of that actual metal. The glyphs in these larger circles are not a solid color either but rather seem, to me, to be shimmery like a gem reflecting light. Plus the glyph colors do seem to match the colors of these actual gems. Smokestone is almost an exception but if that is grey quartz or smoky quartz renamed then it does match the color (depending on the particular gem and it's flaws/purity/etc).

Part of what leads me to this conclusion is actually the clouds and the central gem. That central gem is obviously a gem and can't really be anything else. It seems to me as though it represents the gems used in the system and that the clouds and lightning represent the highstorms and stormlight. Highstorms are invested and fill gems with stormlight. Makes sense to me. I also don't see anything inherently "void" related in the imagery used. Clouds aren't inherently "void" related, lightning isn't specifically void-ish. Also with how much voidbinding is considered "evil" in the Vorin world and the seemingly Vorin woman around the edges, I can't imagine someone would have this as a stained glass window if it was voidbinding. I think that the lightning powers of stormform have gotten people focused too much on the lightning but stormform would be a single larger glyph and wouldn't explain why lightning covers such a large part of the image.

A also have a vague theory that the larger glyphs are also similar to the Knight's Radiant order glyphs except twisted or rotated or (my personal favorite theory) viewed from above as a different 2D slice of the same 3D objects that form the Knights Radiant glyphs.

I see three possibilities for the woman on the outer edge: Cultivation, a blond female herald, or a generic blonde haired vorin woman. It's not likely to be a generic Vorin woman if this stained glass window was located in Alethkar because Alethi normally have black hair. In Jah Keved or someplace else to the west it would be possible to be Vorin and blonde though. I also don't think it's Cultivation because of the safehand covering. That seems too modern and Vorin to me. So the most likely options are a blonde herald or a blonde Vorin woman. Since the safehand thing is more recent to Roshar, I suspect that it's not a herald but I have no proof. It's also possible that the woman who wrote the book about masculine and femenine arts was a blonde haired woman though at this point we don't know enough to say one way or the other.

Also, I think the shading of colors on the borders of both this chart and the surgebinding chart is because of Shadesmar. The Shadesmar map is drawn in shades of blue and purple. The surges on the bottom are also closer to Shadesmar and cognitive powers/abilities and the ones on the top are more physical. I think that's what the color change signifies. Lightweavers, Elsecallers, and Truthwatchers all seem to have abilities that are closely related to cognitive stuff and/or cultivation. Of course in the book the shadesmar map and the polebinding chart are next to each other so it may just be a decorative coincidence.

I have no concrete theories about the fireball comet things in the corners. My only question: has anybody looked to see if they could be glyphs? They are too symmetrical to really be fire but I could see it as a partially hidden glyph. I haven't studied the glyphs enough to know if that is really possible or not.

The Proposed Magic System

Word of Brandon says that we have seen this third magic system in action. From what I've read online, I think a lot of people seem to think that the third system is composed of trapping spren in gems to create fabrials. However I think that the third system is gem related but not directly to the fabrials in that way. I think that the third system is the means by which the ancient fabrials were made and used and that the third magic system is also how soulcasting is done as of Words of Radiance.

I don't know much about the ancient fabrials but it has been speculated by others that they didn't require trapping a spren to do it. I think this is true and that they didn't/don't need a trapped spren to use however I cannot say more as the books don't say more.

We know very little about how soulcasting is done but based on the fact that the soulcasting ardents had effectively been mutated because of soulcasting and that Jasnah does it with no side effects, I believe it can safely be inferred that soulcasters are not a category of Radiant that has survived for the last 4000 years like the Skybreakers did. In addition, normal fabrial use with a trapped spren seems to have no side effects on the person using it as far as we've seen. We have also been told that this system can basically do anything the actual radiants could do even if not quite in the same way. So my conclusion is that soulcasters are ancient fabrials made using the third system and that they work without needing a trapped spren.

We've been told by the Ars Arcanum that fabrials are commonly made by trapping a spren. I think that "modern" fabrials are not the product of the third system alone but that they are the product of compounding similar to compounding between allomancy and feruchemy. A properly made gem could/should have magical abilities all on it's own. When a spren is trapped in it, I theorize that this then mixes the polebinding system with the surgebinding system, essentially binding a surge to a gem. Then the nature of the gem itself determines how that surge is expressed from the gem.

My reasoning for this is that Khriss postulates in the Ars Arcanum that any of the 10 Polestones could be used in Augmenter fabrials. If any of the ten polestones can be used to make an augmenter fabrial, then it seems as though each gem has more than just one possible ability. Heliodors are mentioned in the alerter section of the Ars Arcanum as being able to alert to a wide variety of things but if Khriss is right, then they can also augment things. Added up, that's theoretically more "powers" than would fit on a chart with 20 total positions. However that difference is what led me to think that trapping a spren is different from polebinding. If you have 10 surges and 10 "poles" and compounding in the Cosmere does "weird stuff", that could easily account for the wide variety of abilities of fabrials while also explaining how a Heliodor can do so many things.

My theory is that each gem has 2 "poles" that determine what it can do. We don't really have enough information to say for sure what they are but my theory is that the poles are tied to the "Soulcasting Properties" of the Ten Essences table. I read another post on here, http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5693-surges-gemstones-and-fabrials/and although I don't think he's right about everything, I think he may be right about the concept of pushing and pulling. If each polestone can push on one property and pull on another, then things start to fit together. Sapphire can "push" on Air and that allows a soulcaster to transform things into air or an augmenter to create a burst of wind.

Garnet is tied to non-oil liquid so to absorb water as Navani's fabrial does at the end of Words of Radiance, they need the appropriate gem to "pull" on water. The gem she would use could then be Garnet, Emerald, or Zircon depending on how the table correlates to the pushing and pulling. If the material on the table is the pushing property then Garnet would push on non-oil liquids and pull on something else. In that case, the fabrial "pulling" on water would most likely be Zircon or Emerald because they are next to Garnet on the chart. If the property on the table is the pulling property then Garnet itself probably pulls on water and Zircon or Emerald would push on it. Soulcasters use emeralds to soulcast into food. Is that pushing something else into the state of being food? Or is that pulling it into the state of being food?

From the same table of essences, I make another conclusion. None of the surges really have anything to do with the 10 properties of soulbinding as far as we know so far. Jasnah can use her surge to make anything into any one of the properties and based on what Shallan does to the ship, it doesn't necessarily need to be a specific kind of gem for her to do it. Windrunners don't actually have any powers that have anything to do with the wind at all. These properties are clearly not related to surgebinding but thanks to soulcasting, they do seem to have strong ties to our gem-related magic system.

I propose that the 10 soulcasting properties are the 10 "poles" that each Polestone can push on. However, by trapping a spren in the gem and binding a surge to a polestone, I think it compounds to give the wider range of abilities that we see.

The Ars Arcanum section on fabrials was a major contributor to this whole theory. The polebinding magic system should have 10 "powers" like surgebinding has 10 and voidbinding has 10. These powers are not the same as the others and they can interact with each other in different ways, but generally speaking there should be 10 of them. The surges we know of do not seem to tie directly to the 10 soulcasting properties at all. Neither do the known voidforms of the Listeners (Decayform? Stormform?). But the fabrial section of the ars arcanum and other events throughout the books mention a LOT of different things you can do with fabrials. Not only that but the effects of the fabrials can be changed with the touch of a dial. That provides way way too many possible "powers" for the 10 that it should have. Add to that the conjecture that ancient fabrials didn't require trapping spren it it leads me to wonder if ancient fabrials are examples of the third magic system in use and modern fabrials are compounding polebinding with surgebinding.

It's possible that it's not a compounding thing but if it isn't, then most likely (to me at least), I'm partially wrong and  the soulcasting properties are not the poles but rather are just a side effect of the actual poles and their uses as a part of a specific gem. If this is the case then it is still possible that most of this theory could be valid but it becomes significantly harder to theorize about the system as we just don't have enough information. This is something I seriously considered and it does  seem likely, whether any compounding is going on or not, that the properties are side effects of the poles and not the poles themselves. I just don't have enough information to speculate on it very much.

Side Thoughts

As I was reading up on this and preparing this post, I had to look at a bunch of stuff. I spent way too much time at work reading about this when I'm supposed to be working. However in my reading I came to several other conclusions that may or may not be related to this. I'm just putting them here to think out loud, so to speak.

First off, the Listeners have a lot more than 10 forms. They may only have 10 voidforms but the fact that they can have more than 10 total forms is part of what led to my conclusion that the polebinding chart was not related to the Listeners as it only has 10 of the larger circles. Plus, I view the surgebinding system as being end-positive (ala allomancy), polebinding as being end-neutral (thus half of the surge glyphs are inverted to form a halfway/neutral glyph for the poles) and voidbinding is end-negative (decay, smoke, storms (and their actual glyphs are probably fully inverted or otherwise completely different). I think that the Listeners have 1 form for each kind of spren. If they bonded with a highspren, the highspren would not gain physical realm intelligence from their bond (unlike with humans) but the Listener would gain a surgeform related to the surges gained. I think that's part of why the listeners can't get with the highspren. The epigraphs make it sound to me like the highspren get something symbiotic from the bond to a human but not from the listeners and why would a highspren want to bond with something that does nothing for them. A voidspren on the other hand... they just need slaves of a sort.

Second, I think that all of the animals on Roshar can bond with spren as well. I think that any animal with a shell is like the listeners in that the spren doesn't really get anything out of the deal so a highspren will avoid the bond. However voidspren can use the bond to transform them into the monsters of legend. Without that, you just get the relatively peaceful greatshells of the Reshi Isles. They've bonded to some sort of spren that is the basis of the gemhearts and is how they finish pupating. The sketches in the book show a second pupating stage for chulls. This happens during highstorms like the listener transformations. I think that if the chulls had an appropriate spren come along during that second pupation stage, they would transform into a void creature or a surge creature or just a bigger chull, depending on the spren they are bonded to. When they don't get that spren, they die. As a side note to my side note, I think the Ryshadium are horses that are bonded to a highspren as opposed to a regular spren and that bond gives them the extra size, strength, and intelligence. Not really related to my polebinding theory but an interesting thought I had from extrapolation of the thought about listener forms.

Third, the polebinding endsheet appears in The Way of Kings. We don't really even learn anything about voidbinding until we see a Listener perspective in Words of Radiance and especially the Words of Radiance epigraphs about the forms. However we see fabrials and their gems right at the beginning and that seems too coincidental to be a coincidence to me.

Fourth, according to what I've read from Brandon, the land mass migrates over millenium. I'm not a geologist but that seems to me like it would make for an unusual environment on the planet where mining for gems is difficult or impossible. That leads me to believe that all of the gems on Roshar come from the creatures in the form of gemhearts. If that's true, then even though surgebinding is of Honor and Cultivation, it's slightly more Honor than Cultivation. Then polebinding could be slightly more Cultivation than Honor. These gems are cultivated within the creatures and they help the creatures grow too. That sounds like Cultivation to me...

[11thorderknight]

Very interesting theory - nice work!

 

I'd like to make one point though regarding the gemstones and fabrials. From everything we've seen of fabrials, the gemstone type dictates the essence that is targeted by the effect, rather than the nature of the effect. For instance: the Detector fabrial uses Heliodor because it senses people (i.e. flesh). Navani's water-vacuum uses Garnet because it targets water. The linked-pen fabrials are a little more subtle, but they use Ruby, which is Spark (i.e. energy) - and they target the kinetic energy of the linked pens. The reverser fabrials, that replicate motion in the opposite direction, use Amethyst, which is Foil - could be reflection/mirroring. Augmenters, we're told, could use any of the 10 polestones, which makes sense because each polestone would cause it to augment something different. Now for the really interesting examples - Soulcaster fabrials have interchangeable gems, and the gems determine what the Soulcasting product is. Regrowth fabrials have topaz and heliodor, representing flesh and bone, which are the essences being regrown. 

 

To summarize, I think the shape/construction of the fabrial somehow determines the surge or surges used, and the effect that's generated, while the polestones provide the Stormlight as well as determine the Essence that is the subject of the effect.

[alphagold3]

I originally thought that Heliodor is used in a detector because it senses flesh too but the Ars Arcanum says:

"An Alerter can warn one of a nearby object, feeling, sensation, or phenomenon. These fabrials use a heliodor stone as their focus. I do not know whether this is the only type of gemstone that will work, or if there is another reason heliodor is used."

That encompasses detecting a lot of things besides just flesh. So heliodor can theoretically be used in a soulcaster to soulcast flesh and can be used in an alerter to detect non-fleshy things as well as fleshy things. So heliodor and Alerters are the biggest hole I've found with my theory. I think everything else you've said has a good chance of being right but I can't quite figure out how heliodors figure into things.

[alphagold3]

I was checking the forums today and saw this post here. It got me thinking about heliodor. When coming up with this theory, heliodor was causing problems for me. I made the assumption that it's connected to the "natures" or "poles" or whatever you want to call them even though there are no lines joining them. However I realized on seeing the linked post that maybe the problem I had with heliodor was my assumption that it properly matched the rules.

 

If heliodor is not connected to the natures/poles/whatever in the way I was thinking, then it makes a lot more sense that Heliodor can do special things as an alerter. It breaks the pattern in a way. If this is true, emerald should also break the pattern in some way but all we really know about emerald so far is that it can be used to soulcast food. That's not really enough information to tell us anything though.

[skaa he/him]

Thanks for referencing my old theory. I wrote that before WoR came out (though at that point the teasers were already being shown), and I've changed my mind about most of it since then. I still believe that the key to understanding fabrials is to understand how each Polestone is related to the Ten Surges, and that these relationships are more complex than just one Surge per Polestone, but other than that I no longer subscribe to most of what I wrote in that thread. I am currently still in the process of organizing my many half-baked thoughts on fabrials (which depend heavily on my highly speculative Essence-Surge theory), but I'll probably wait until after Stormlight 3 before I post a new fabrial theory in the forums.

About heliodor, remember that its Essence is sinew, not flesh. The word sinew has more meanings than just flesh/muscle. Among other things, sinew can also refer to tendons, which are connective tissue that connect muscles and bone. "Connection" is basically the theme of the Adhesion Surge (one of the Surges of Sinew), which I now believe affects many sorts of bonds/connections/relationships in all three Realms (not just the Physical Realm).

Let's apply this to heliodor fabrials. I believe Alerters simply perform the same information-gathering-via-Spiritual-connection that happens in other information-gathering manifestations of Investiture. Each type of alerter fabrial searches for a particular thing (emotion, sensation, presence, phenomena, etc.) by looking in the proper spiritual connections.

Adhesion Surgebinding isn't the only use of heliodor, though. Regrowth fabrials use heliodor for healing-type Progression Surgebinding. Soulcaster fabrials use heliodor for meat-type Transformation Surgebinding. This means that heliodor interacts with, at the very least, three of the ten Surges: Adhesion, Progression, and Transformation.

As I said, Polestone-Surge relationships are complex. I'll try reading your theory more closely later on, but I'm glad Sharders are still interested in this unsolved problem. Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to figure this stuff out completely before Brandon decides to explain it.

Edited April 15, 2016 by skaa

[Ari he/him]

I'm not really sure one way or another on this theory in terms of the supporting evidence, but I would caution that narratively it doesn't sound super interesting, and that Brandon has said before that "end-negative" magic systems are rather uncommon in the Cosmere.

[kenod]

Nice, but there is one problem, the ancient fabrials are the ones that mimic the behaviour of the surges, such as the transportation fabrial or the soulcasters, which use the transportation surge and the transformation surge respectively. According to your theory this would mean that the old fabrials also used spren and according to our current knowledge the new fabrials use spren too, so how does this work?