Only one surge

[frozndevl]

So don't know how to search for this, but what's the deal with someone only having access to surge. Is it possible? Radiants have two surges each, but what about someone that isn't going to be a radiant, can they have just one? 

[Spoolofwhool]

15 minutes ago, frozndevl said:

So don't know how to search for this, but what's the deal with someone only having access to surge. Is it possible? Radiants have two surges each, but what about someone that isn't going to be a radiant, can they have just one? 

It's possible for someone to be able to have only one surgebinding power, but I don't think it would naturally occur. I think to have that happen, it would have to be as a result of another manifestation of investiture to artificially transfer the power. Also, the surges are naturally paired, so having a single surgebinding power would probably be violating the natural underlying laws of Roshar, therefore making it harder. 

Mistborn

Spoiler

Most likely ways I can think of are either hemalurgy to directly steal the power or nicrosil feruchemy to create an unkeyed metalmind which would give a surgebinding ability.

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

5 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

It's possible for someone to be able to have only one surgebinding power, but I don't think it would naturally occur. I think to have that happen, it would have to be as a result of another manifestation of investiture to artificially transfer the power. Also, the surges are naturally paired, so having a single surgebinding power would probably be violating the natural underlying laws of Roshar, therefore making it harder. 

Mistborn

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Most likely ways I can think of are either hemalurgy to directly steal the power or nicrosil feruchemy to create an unkeyed metalmind which would give a surgebinding ability.

 

That's the best way that come to mind, additionally:

Spoiler

You might be able to spike a surge away from a surgebinder...However, I believe Sanderson stated somewhere that a single hemalurgic spike could (probably) be used to take away someone's entire Nahel Bond, ie: remove their spren and both surges.  This loosely implies, in my opinion, that, since the Radiants access the surges through their spren, you might not be able to spike just one of them away at a time.  This is a matter of both opinion and speculation involving a cross-over between two magic systems that may or may not ever occur though, so you know, grain-of-salt and all that. 

@frozndevl It might be possible for someone on Roshar to access only a single surge if they could somehow bond a spren (or spren-like being ) that was somehow only aligned to a single surge.  Thus far, we know that all of the bondspren (radiantspren?) are aligned to two surges, however, there have been hints and winks over the years that beings outside of the orders of bondspren can be bonded by humans on Roshar to grant access to..."something."  What that something is, or could theoretically be, has been the subject of fierce debate, ie: would bonding a seon give someone access to stormlight, or access to stormlight as well as one or more surges?  Once Szeth bonds Nightblood, will he have any additional powers and what will they be?  Wouldn't it make sense that bonding a gravity spren would grant only the surge of Gravitation (ignoring the fact that bonding a gravity spren would be impossibly difficult...)?

I feel like it ought to be at least technically possible to get one surge, even if the process would be unintuitive, convoluted, or so difficult that it would be effectively impossible.  Making it an absolute requirement that surges always have to come in pairs seems like a needless restriction on the magic system.  In terms of storytelling, it would be better to have it be super weird and unnatural for a person to only be able to access one surge than for it to literally be impossible in my opinion (granted, I'm not a best-selling author, so again, grain-of-salt ).