The Stormlight Weapons and Fabrials thread

[TequilaJack]

I live weapons. Was always curious about the weaponry involved in this. 

The types of weapons I recall are:

- Normal weapons used by common soldiers.

- Normal shardblades used by likes of Adolin and such. 

- Honor blades (x10). 

- Radiant Shardweapons (which I assume can transform into different slice, stab and throw) weapons i.e. spear, knife, sword, axe, halbred etc

- Fabrials weapons like Shardbow and half-ahard shields which are just normal weapons dialed up in power using Fabrials. 

They have bows and but don't recall mention the fact ballista or catapult types. 

Quote

Q&A with Brandon: 

Q. You have told us there are more than 30 magical systems on Roshar. I am assuming there are 10 surgebindings and 10 voidbindings. Do the next 10 belong to another such classification? If yes, can you give us the name for it.

A. Fabrials are part of it.

As to Fabrials looks like there is a steampunk angle to it. They can really create and used Fabrials for vareity of purposes but only Navani seems to pioneer in this.

If this is available to non surgebinders, wonder why there are not more contraptions than lights and spanreeds. 

A Fabrial oriented magic system of its own...how would it look like? 

 

Also what voidbinding techniques have been disclosed till now? 

[+Invocation]

There are catapults and siege towers and the like. If you've read Oathbringer:

Spoiler

Dalinar is smashing catapults on the walls of Rathalas (the first time), and Sadeas tosses him a hammer to make it go quicker.

 

13 minutes ago, TequilaJack said:

As to Fabrials looks like there is a steampunk angle to it. They can really create and used Fabrials for vareity of purposes but only Navani seems to pioneer in this.

 

Navani is not the only artifabrian around, she just has a lot of funds and resources to experiment. You'll notice that it is even mentioned that Navani likes to draw concepts, then passes them along to her team to work the logistics of those designs into being, much like with the floating archery tower.

15 minutes ago, TequilaJack said:

If this is available to non surgebinders, wonder why there are not more contraptions than lights and spanreeds.

There are more than just the spanreeds, they just don't get much airtime. See the water-gatherer, the floating archer tower, and the flying ship design Navani is working on. 

21 minutes ago, TequilaJack said:

A Fabrial oriented magic system of its own...how would it look like? 

It wouldn't so much be a fabrial oriented system so much as the fabrials are the system, combining spren and human design in new ways, without a direct Nahel bond, (see WOB) and the 10 different types probably relate to the spren used and effects.

Quote

Questioner

How many magic systems are in The Stormlight Archive, and how many of them haven't been seen?

Brandon Sanderson

I would say the only major one you haven’t seen is Voidbinding, it depends on how you count them.  I count fabrials as one, Surgebinding as one, and Voidbinding as one.  And then the Old Magic is kind of its own weird thing.

source

19 minutes ago, TequilaJack said:

Also what voidbinding techniques have been disclosed till now? 

Voidbinding is very secretive right now. Here are the WOBs we have:

https://wob.coppermind.net/adv_search/?query=voidbinding

It is not much, and mostly RAFOs/inconclusive stuff, but the chart in the back of Way of Kings was confirmed to be a Voidbinding chart that we should be getting explanations on soon enough, on a Sanderson book timescale. Probably around Renarin's POV book.

[Dalakaar he/him]

You think it's possible to dual-wield a single spren? Seems like they are limited to a single option.

It's either the sword or the board.

[OB]

Spoiler

I had guessed we'd see someone dual-wielding two shardblades when I first heard of shardblades and how the owner could let it stay if given a mental command. So Amaram's use of two was expected, but it didn't solve the question of if a particularly ambidextrous KR would have the option of a longsword/shortsword combo. Or a sword'n'board for that matter. Not without spren-cheating or spren-polygamy at least.

 

[TequilaJack]

@InvocationGreat post. I forgot about the Rathalas segment. Though I'd have assume those would be standard in all wars. Strangely not. 

Again the concentration on Navani is a bit odd. There should be capable people in other kingdoms who have made progress. 

I get a feeling Sanderson is giving way too much concentration to make focus on his primary characters at expense of everybody else. 

 

As to fabrials being the system, it is very derived as most wartime fabrials can only be used by shardbearers, 

I need to think of this more. 

[+Ark1002]

55 minutes ago, TequilaJack said:

@InvocationGreat post. I forgot about the Rathalas segment. Though I'd have assume those would be standard in all wars. Strangely not. 

Again the concentration on Navani is a bit odd. There should be capable people in other kingdoms who have made progress. 

I get a feeling Sanderson is giving way too much concentration to make focus on his primary characters at expense of everybody else. 

 

As to fabrials being the system, it is very derived as most wartime fabrials can only be used by shardbearers, 

I need to think of this more. 

I disagree. We just tend to only see Navani's accomplishments, and there is a realistic explanation, she gets access to Urithru, which has better fabrials. Half-Shards were made by someone else during the time of SA, that's a big accomplishment that Navani didn't do.

[+Invocation]

On 12/30/2018 at 9:01 PM, TequilaJack said:

@InvocationGreat post. I forgot about the Rathalas segment. Though I'd have assume those would be standard in all wars. Strangely not. 

Again the concentration on Navani is a bit odd. There should be capable people in other kingdoms who have made progress. 

I get a feeling Sanderson is giving way too much concentration to make focus on his primary characters at expense of everybody else. 

 

As to fabrials being the system, it is very derived as most wartime fabrials can only be used by shardbearers, 

I need to think of this more. 

Yeah, we just happen to really only see Navani because we've been centered in Alethkar for most of the time so far, though half-Shards were made in Kharbranth, so that's a big one from someone else. The flame-studying ardents were researching for a new kind of fabrial and new applications/refinement of the heat/light fabrials that already exist.

The most likely reasons catapults aren't really around in other cities is there's not much man-made defenses, since most the large cities that would be under siege are more natural stormbreaks, such as mountains and valleys, plus having to move giant things like that wouldn't be very easy to do every time a highstorm blows up, but with Rathalas, there were lifting platforms and ramps they could have moved them with.

We will also eventually see more fabrials from elsewhere as we begin to move into other areas of Roshar, following more characters, plus we've also seen a few ancient fabrials as well that definitely weren't made by Navani.

[Gasper he/him]

Given the time gap between OB and SA 4, it is likely we will see many new fabrial weapons in the next book.

[Vissy]

There should be only 9 voidbindings, shouldn't there? So there ought to be 11 "other" magic systems.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

12 hours ago, Vissy said:

There should be only 9 voidbindings, shouldn't there? So there ought to be 11 "other" magic systems.

Nope, voidbinding, along with surgebinding and whatever the third system is (presumably something related to fabrials), has 10 “orders,” so to speak. The chart at the back of WoK is the voidbinding chart, and that has ten symbols, just like the surgebinding chart does.