Discovering the magic

[Oversleep]

A thing that bothered my mind for a long, long time.

How did people of Shardworlds discover the magic in the first place? You see, some are far easier to discover than others. Here's a list.

Sel

• AonDor: Medium before Elantris was built and easy after that. It only requires to wave your hand in the air. At some point someone definitely tried to draw the shape of the country and it went from there.
• ChayShan: specifical movement. Easy.
• DakHor: no idea how they discovered it in the first place.

Scadrial

things get a little complicated when you start to consider the alloys, but there always is some pure base metal around.

• Feruchemy: easiest of the three - Feruchemist feel a natural draw when they touch the metal, nothing complicated, really.
• Allomancy: the most unintuitive of all the Shardworlds. How on the tenth name of Damnation would somebody get the idea to swallow metals????
  Sure, after Rashek Ascended he easily kicked it off, but we have WoBs on Allomancers being born before. How did they discover their powers? We have a WoB on Alendi being a Seeker.
• Hemalurgy: even more unintuitive than Allomancy. Not only would somebody had to have the idea to stab somebody and after that get the idea to stab himself with it, but also bindpoints come in play. No idea how it was discovered in the pre-Rashek times (there is a WoB that it was used).

Nalthis

Breath is noticeable and when somebody said the right words things happened to it. And after that it's just research.

Roshar

Spren bond people naturally and Stormlight can be inhaled reflexively (as seen many times before Kaladin knew what he was doing) and Surges can be used intuitively. On the easy end of the scope.

Discuss.

Edited April 15, 2016 by Oversleep

[Svordish Scientist he/him]

elantrins can't acently draw aons there orgen is largely a mystery.  The Wyrn (the profit of fjordel) has some precognitive abilities  and has acsess to the skate which might have helped him discover the DakHor

Edited April 13, 2016 by Svordish Scientist

[jasenerd]

Trace metals can fuel allomancy. Perhaps not super intuitive to eat more metal, but all it takes is one guy to notice that using metal drinking cups allows them to access more of their abilities.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Honestly, this is the kind of thing that bothers me about, well, everything!

 

The process of learning something that is already discovered is relatively easy compared to the process of learning something that no one even knows about. How did early farmers figure out that by planting a specific bit of a plant and then pouring water on that spot / putting animal crap around it (sometimes for months!) you could grow that plant? Or that by crushing up grain and adding water/heat/oil you can make delicious, delicious bread? Or milking cows... hahaha, imagine being the first person to suggest milking an animal and then consuming what you squeezed out of an udder/tit!

 

Basically, somebody had to be weird enough to try it and other people had to be weird enough to accept that first person's claim. So, I assume, in Scadrial somebody was weird enough to try ingesting metals and he happened to be an Allomancer.

 

Either that or, you know, the shards taught people stuff after creating them. Sazed dropped a library in the middle of a field so I assume Preservation and Ruin could have provided their first humans with some sort of starting point.

[Arrae]

Trace metals can fuel allomancy. Perhaps not super intuitive to eat more metal, but all it takes is one guy to notice that using metal drinking cups allows them to access more of their abilities.

 

Before Vin knew she was a Mistborn, she was already burning trace metals and using emotional allomancy on people. I'd imagine that Rashek told the first generation of lerasium Mistborns how allomancy worked, and the knowledge spread from there.

[CaptainRyan he/him]

Before Vin knew she was a Mistborn, she was already burning trace metals and using emotional allomancy on people. I'd imagine that Rashek told the first generation of lerasium Mistborns how allomancy worked, and the knowledge spread from there.

 

As the OP noted, there are confirmed reports of Allomancy before Rashek Ascended. So, the question is how did those pre-Ascension Allomancers ever stumble upon the idea of ingresting little bits of metal.

Edited April 14, 2016 by CaptainRyan

[EddyRed]

I'd imagine you would have shards and splinters nudging potential users in the right direction, like with the seons and spren.

[natc]

As the OP noted, there are confirmed reports of Allomancy before Rashek Ascended. So, the question is how did those pre-Ascension Allomancers ever stumble upon the idea of ingresting little bits of metal.

Trace metals ingested with food/drink.

Nobody said they knew how to properly burn large amounts thst I recall. Alendi was one and he didn't even seem to know his powers existed.

[Bowiespoon he/him]

Small child ate a boxing........ and the rest is history

[Alfa he/him]

Forging would be even more difficult to discover than most of the other systems. It could be that at some point somebody thought "It would be nice to create a stamp to rewrite history", but unless you're Brandon Sanderson this thought is pretty strange. And even if somebody had it, nine hundred and ninety nine of thousand randomly created soulstamps wouldn't be usable on anything in the world (and with world I mean the Cosmere and not Sel), and good luck seeking the object which the thousandst could rewrite. Probably it's a stick on the southern coast of the Frostlands.

Bloodsealing, in a way, is much more intuitive - to write with blood on doors (or bones) is strange, but not THAT strange if the tradition is right.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Alfa

[Yata he/him]

Remember also that more you are invested and more easy you will find to "know how to use your Investiture" because the Investuture wants to be used.

 

One example: On Nalthis everybody borns with a Breath but nobody discovered the Awekening until High Invested being began to born (Returned) with their more intuitive understanding of the Breath.

 

We don't even know if before Vo, people knowed how to give away Breath or the basic Commands

[Eki]

Remember also that more you are invested and more easy you will find to "know how to use your Investiture" because the Investuture wants to be used.

One example: On Nalthis everybody borns with a Breath but nobody discovered the Awekening until High Invested being began to born (Returned) with their more intuitive understanding of the Breath.

We don't even know if before Vo, people knowed how to give away Breath or the basic Commands

Do we even know if people had Breath at all before Vo? The way I understand it, being born with one isn't genetic, but rather about actually being born on Nalthis. So maybe Endowment started giving out Breath around the same time she started Returning people.

Also, remember that Intent is important in many systems. It's likely that Ruin provided the intent for the first spikings, until people realised they received powers or heard God (ie Ruin) by having a spike, and tried to replicate it. But without Ruin, no one would 'accidentally' make a spike, since they would have to know about hemalurgy to begin with.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Eki

[Yata he/him]

Do we even know if people had Breath at all before Vo? The way I understand it, being born with one isn't genetic, but rather about actually being born on Nalthis. So maybe Endowment started giving out Breath around the same time she started Returning people.

Vo's Returning is recent history... I suppose someone have mention that before the people has no breath.

 

I suppose the people on Nalthis borned "always" with a single Breath but before the discovery of Commands nobody know it. because actually they can't see any kind of difference. They borned and lived all their life with their Breath, it's was their normaly, no Drab at all.

 

Unless Endowment changed the whole Humanity quite recently and I suppose someone have to mention it (it a Global Souls' change)

[Eki]

Possibly. But maybe Endowment didn't change humanity as such. Maybe she's just messing with every soul at conception. Just like she's messing with it at death when she's Returning people.

As long as it took more than one generation between people getting Breath and them starting to use it, no one would notice when it appeared, right? They may have just assumed everyone always had it.

I dunno though. Could be either way.

[Voidus]

Bit confused that you think AonDor is easy. Aons need very, very accurate lines and need to be drawn with intent. Who just starts waving their arms around for hours to find out which ones glow and also happens to be sincerely trying to make magic by doing so?

Scadrial on the other hand is way easier, trace metals provide a detectable source of power, someone realizes that some foods provide better power people experiment and eventually figure out the metals, from there they basically have the whole magic system figured out.

Even if you drew Aon Aon somehow, what next? That doesn't do anything by itself, to figure out all the other Aons would take centuries at the least. Let alone all the modifiers.

[Yata he/him]

Possibly. But maybe Endowment didn't change humanity as such. Maybe she's just messing with every soul at conception. Just like she's messing with it at death when she's Returning people.

As long as it took more than one generation between people getting Breath and them starting to use it, no one would notice when it appeared, right? They may have just assumed everyone always had it.

I dunno though. Could be either way.

The newborns with a Breath will find pretty fast that something is different with their parent... Their Life Sense will function worse with the previous generation.

[Rasarr she/her]

Re: Elantrians and how Aons could be discovered: seeing how Harmony is not really taking the hands-off approach with Scadrial, could it be that Devotion also took her time and clued Elantrians in? Dreams, this sort of stuff (it's been a while since I've read Elantris, but didn't Raoden have Significant Dreams?). Assuming this happened before Odium's field trip, of course. Dakhor could be Dominions' counter to this.

 

I know it's probably in tinfoil hat territory, but there's really no other way I can see people figuring this stuff out on their own.

[Oversleep]

Bit confused that you think AonDor is easy. Aons need very, very accurate lines and need to be drawn with intent. Who just starts waving their arms around for hours to find out which ones glow and also happens to be sincerely trying to make magic by doing so?

Even if you drew Aon Aon somehow, what next? That doesn't do anything by itself, to figure out all the other Aons would take centuries at the least. Let alone all the modifiers.

IIRC even a first drawn line glows. From that moment, when they noticed that sometimes when you draw something in the air, it glows, it's all done. Everything else is just AonDor Marches On.

BTW,  Elantrians had it very easy, IIRC first Elantrian had a dream about an Aon or something prior to her Shaod.

People who built Elantris, however... (assuming it was built) Well, even before a huge focus which amplified magic was created, I assume that Aons just glowed less.

This topic is like... Imagine dropping a ton of humans on planet with magic (like Shardworld) and let them be, don't interfere. Then we observe how (and if) they discovered the magic.

Because after people know something is there (and there is nobody to suppress reasearch, as Rashek did) just let them be for few thousand years and see what they did with it. What interests me is the moment of discovery. The first person or moment which knocked over the first domino piece, the first in the chain of discoveries.

@Yata, I believe that Breath is just outgrowth of Endowment being on Nalthis. There is no action on her side to give Breath to the people (obviously Divine Breath is an exception).

Edited April 14, 2016 by Oversleep

[Argel he/him]

Forging would be even more difficult to discover than most of the other systems. It could be that at some point somebody thought "It would be nice to create a stamp to rewrite history", but unless you're Brandon Sanderson this thought is pretty strange. And even if somebody had it, nine hundred and ninety nine of thousand randomly created soulstamps wouldn't be usable on anything in the world (and with world I mean the Cosmere and not Sel), and good luck seeking the object which the thousandst could rewrite. Probably it's a stick on the southern coast of the Frostlands.

Bloodsealing, in a way, is much more intuitive - to write with blood on doors (or bones) is strange, but not THAT strange if the tradition is right.

 

Maybe Bloodsealing was the inspiration for Forgery (e.g. someone trying to find a more civilized way of doing it, or someone with a phobia of seeing blood wanted a way to use magic).

[Svordish Scientist he/him]

Maybe Bloodsealing was the inspiration for Forgery (e.g. someone trying to find a more civilized way of doing it, or someone with a phobia of seeing blood wanted a way to use magic).

I think that I read that the early soul stampers worshiped meteors and carved stamps out of them.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Svordish Scientist

[Voidus]

IIRC even a first drawn line glows. From that moment, when they noticed that sometimes when you draw something in the air, it glows, it's all done. Everything else is just AonDor Marches On.

BTW,  Elantrians had it very easy, IIRC first Elantrian had a dream about an Aon or something prior to her Shaod.

People who built Elantris, however... (assuming it was built) Well, even before a huge focus which amplified magic was created, I assume that Aons just glowed less.

This topic is like... Imagine dropping a ton of humans on planet with magic (like Shardworld) and let them be, don't interfere. Then we observe how (and if) they discovered the magic.

Because after people know something is there (and there is nobody to suppress reasearch, as Rashek did) just let them be for few thousand years and see what they did with it. What interests me is the moment of discovery. The first person or moment which knocked over the first domino piece, the first in the chain of discoveries.

@Yata, I believe that Breath is just outgrowth of Endowment being on Nalthis. There is no action on her side to give Breath to the people (obviously Divine Breath is an exception).

Only if you're trying to draw an Aon. And get the line in the right orientation. And drawing a glowing line can hardly be said to be actually using AonDor.

I don't believe so, at least we don't know that. There was a story that one of the earlier Elantrians saw an Aon but as far as we know it's just a story.

In terms of discovery Allomancy is still way easier, there's always trace metals, and it's instinctive. Nothing is instinctive about AonDor.

[Oversleep]

Changing the AonDor difficulty to middle.

What about other Sel manifestations of Investiture? I won't read Emperor's Soul until June, but feel free to discuss about it (I haven't included them in my list cause I knew nothing about them).

[Voidus]

Changing the AonDor difficulty to middle.

What about other Sel manifestations of Investiture? I won't read Emperor's Soul until June, but feel free to discuss about it (I haven't included them in my list cause I knew nothing about them).

Given that ChayShan may seems to need someone to become a master at some form of Tai-chi like training I'd put that as pretty difficult. Dhakor seems about on par with Hemalurgy in being nigh-impossible to figure out without some sort of Shardic intervention.

Forging would be about the same as Aons, perhaps a bit more difficult to start since you not only need to carve out the base soul stamp but also figure out that you're supposed to put it in something and turn it slightly.