Are Lashings relative?

[Tarion]

Just curious as to whether we have more information on how the Lashings would work off Roshar.

If they're relative, then a single Basic Lashing upwards will render you weightless on any planet in the Cosmere. If they're constant, then a single Lashing would negate ~80% of the standard Cosmere gravity. 

I had been working under the assumption that they were relative, until I remembered that a Windrunner could theoretically travel between planets. And the moment you're in 0g, presumably a new relative lashing wouldn't do anything at all (Adding 1G when G=0 is 0). Now, you could in theory do all your Lashing while on a planet and hope that your aim is really, really good (Because if you miss, you're going to be travelling for a long while), but that doesn't give you much time at all to slow down from some serious speeds. 

[Yata he/him]

It's a bit tricky question, because I think the Gravitation Lash is relative but it has yet to fight the Spiritual bond to the Planet, so for example on Scadrial a single Basic Lashing would render you weightless but expend more Stormlight...So the Relative or not relative become strictly semantic

[Tarion]

30 minutes ago, Yata said:

It's a bit tricky question, because I think the Gravitation Lash is relative but it has yet to fight the Spiritual bond to the Planet, so for example on Scadrial a single Basic Lashing would render you weightless but expend more Stormlight...So the Relative or not relative become strictly semantic

That's what I would consider relative. And does that mean you think that you wouldn't be able to use Lashings in 0g?

[Yata he/him]

For how the Basic Lash is described in the Ars Arcanum, I think you may do this, after all the Basic Lash works in two steps:

1) Removes (all or part of) your Spiritual gravitation connection to the planet

2) Links with a similar Spiritual Gravitation Connection the subject to a specific direction

I think in the case of 0g you may performe both this actions, and also the 1) is quite "free"

Of course my answer comes from the AA's Author interpretation of the Lash...therefore It may be not 100% sure

EDIT: fix some grammar issues

Edited January 2, 2017 by Yata

[Jondesu he/him]

2 hours ago, Yata said:

For how the Basic Lash is described in the Ars Arcanum, I think you may do this, after all the Basic Lash works in two step:

1) Remove all or part of your Spiritual gravitation connection to the planet

2) Link with a similar Spiritual Gravitation Connection the subject to a specific direction

I think in the case of 0g you may performe both this actions, and also the 1) is quite "free"

Of course my answer comes from the AA's Author interpretation of the Lash...therefore It may be not 100% sure

That's my understanding as well.  That also explains the half-lashing, as opposed to really needing to be a full upwards lashing or some weird fraction: it removes half of the pull of gravity from the planet, and adds the same amount of pull in the opposite direction, so therefore the forces cancel out and you hover.

[Eki]

My theory on this is that a "Lashing" isn't necessarily a built-in unit within the magic system, but rather a very natural unit for both the Surgebinder and Reader to think in. I'm not sure if that holds up completely, because as Yata mentioned, what you're doing is changing your Connection to the planet. I still like that way of thinking though, so I dunno.

[Oversleep]

The question is: what happens when you Lash yourself sideways given infinite Stormlight? Would you continue to travel in that direction leaving the planet behind or is Lashing relative to the center of the planet?

For example, consider a Lashing forwards. Would your path be a line or a section of a circle? Because if forwards is "at right angle to 'down' " it means you'll orbit the planet.

[Landis963 he/him]

On 1/6/2017 at 11:41 AM, Oversleep said:

The question is: what happens when you Lash yourself sideways given infinite Stormlight? Would you continue to travel in that direction leaving the planet behind or is Lashing relative to the center of the planet?

For example, consider a Lashing forwards. Would your path be a line or a section of a circle? Because if forwards is "at right angle to 'down' " it means you'll orbit the planet.

I suspect that the answer to that question depends greatly on the Surgebinder's point of view.  If they think their Lashing is "at right angle to 'down'" (disregarding, of course, that they would never think that in so many words) then they'd circle the planet.  If they divorce their understanding of the Lashing from their understanding of the gravity of the planet, then it is feasible that they would exit orbit.  Which brings up enough logistical problems that it's probably a good thing no one's figured out how to do that yet in-story.  

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On 1/7/2017 at 5:47 PM, Landis963 said:

If they divorce their understanding of the Lashing from their understanding of the gravity of the planet, then it is feasible that they would exit orbit.  Which brings up enough logistical problems that it's probably a good thing no one's figured out how to do that yet in-story.  

I may be playing devils advocate on a small scale, but I don't think it would be that difficult to lash something so that it exits orbit. Largely because needing enough understanding to exit orbit requires enough understanding of "orbit" to begin with.

Currently, there is no easy way that they could be holding enough Stormlight to lash something out of orbit, but if they did have enough? All that they would need is for them to envision lashing an object "towards the sky" or any visualization that is "not downwards."

[Landis963 he/him]

43 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

I may be playing devils advocate on a small scale, but I don't think it would be that difficult to lash something so that it exits orbit. Largely because needing enough understanding to exit orbit requires enough understanding of "orbit" to begin with.

Currently, there is no easy way that they could be holding enough Stormlight to lash something out of orbit, but if they did have enough? All that they would need is for them to envision lashing an object "towards the sky" or any visualization that is "not downwards."

This is true, given enough Stormlight.  However, I was mainly referring to logistical problems such as "How do you breathe?" and "What happens when tissue damage caused by the vacuum of space outpaces the Stormlight healing factor?"