Voidbinding and the Unmade

[dvoraen]

This is kind of a compilation of my thoughts about it.  I'm sorry if it's hard to read but I couldn't get it to come together as a research paper so much as writing out outlined sections.

(I made some edits for clarity.)

I. The Case for Consumption

Here, I talk about what I think Voidbinding actually is.  Let's begin with the following WoB:

Quote

dvoraen

"[Seeing the future] originates with the Unmade..." "Voidbinding is a dark and evil thing, and the soul of it was to try to divine the future." Is it therefore safe to say that Voidbinding, by extension, also originates with the Unmade?

Brandon Sanderson

Not always. But usually.

My intent behind this question was to establish that the Unmade are using Voidbinding on some level.  This has been a suspicion of mine ever since I came up with the model I will describe in a later section.  The powers of the Unmade have not been mimicking established magic (Surgebinding or the Old Magic), so it seemed clear to me that they were doing something else entirely.  As Splinters of Odium, it seemed the most likely that they were using Odium's magic to accomplish some of what they do.  More on this is also in a later section, as I will be going into more detail on the powers of the Unmade there.

I call this section "The Case for Consumption" simply because the term is heavily affiliated with the Unmade.  Five of the nine (Yelig-nar, Dai-Gonarthis, Re-Shephir, Nergaoul, Ashertmarn) have all had the word directly used in some manner about them.  Over half does not strike me as a coincidence.  The Unmade are also believed to be "personifications of kinds of destruction" (The Way of Kings Ch. 45 epigraph), and consumption would be one way in which they achieve that.  Note that I speak of Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual destruction, as we have seen examples of some of those in how the Unmade afflict people.

The other point I raise about consumption being the primary core of Voidbinding has to do with the nature of the Shard of Odium itself.  "This was something so terrible that it consumed light itself." (Oathbringer Ch. 57)  Presumably, this is Dalinar being given a glimpse of the Shard as it exists in the Spiritual Realm, but he nevertheless describes it as this all-consuming force of hatred.  Voidbinding, therefore, sources from that key nature.  Between the Unmade being likened to "kinds of destruction" and the Shard itself being likened to an all-consuming flame, putting two and two together shows that Voidbinding is a destructive art.  Given the name, and how Odium is referred to as "the empty pit that sucks in emotion", it seems plausible to me to assert that "consuming" would be the basis behind an Odium-based magic.

II. The Model / Known Levels
Let's just dive right into it, shall we?  Note that I am intentionally leaving out the mindless Unmade here.

Level 1 -- Consumption
This level draws power from an external source, depleting it, similar to how one draws power stored in a metalmind.  In this level, Voidlight is the result.  One synthesizes the depleted attribute into Voidlight, and this does cause damage to the afflicted, which would justify Voidbinding as a "dark and evil thing".  This is the level I believe to be most commonly used by the Unmade (all nine, in fact).  They Invest themselves by way of consuming a target attribute and use that power directly for one or more purposes.  I also note that performing this act would make it akin to the Old Magic, which (if we assume it's what the Nightwatcher does) also causes a depletion in exchange for something else.  Here, we have depletion in exchange for power.

(n.b. I suspect they have a name for this that's somewhat euphemistic, similar to how corrupted spren are "Enlightened".)

Unknown Level - Midnight Essence
Re-Shephir is the primary source of this.  I have more to say about Re-Shephir later on.

Unknown Level - Surge Binding
Yelig-nar performs this "service" for his hosts, at the cost of consuming their soul.  I note that the aspects involved seem to be Spiritual.

Unknown Level - Enlightening
Here we have Sja-anat's touch.  While this does not seem very consumptive, because we haven't seen the effect performed on screen, I note that it is possible to change an organism through consumption, and I refer everyone to virology for more information on the subject.  A hostile takeover of the host's internal workings is one of the ways viruses propagate throughout the body, and white cells consume affected cells as part of its means of fighting off the infection.  Now picture that in reverse: Sja-anat's Investiture is playing the roll of the white cell trying to "consume" the "infected" (not of Odium) aspects of Investiture of a spren.  She thus replaces Investitures not of Odium with Investiture that is of Odium, resulting in a being that is comprised of multiple.  It's like a transplant, in other words, except her ability suppresses the immuno response to it.

 

III. The Powers of the Unmade

It is my belief that the Unmade are doing more than merely Voidbinding, and that their massive areas of influence are not Voidbinding at all, but supported by it.  Nergaoul, at the minimum, was heavily Invested with Voidlight (note the gem shining with it after his capture by Dalinar), and this was just after consuming a 10,000 strong army of soldiers while in the Physical Realm.  Nergaoul was also very large in the Physical Realm, covering a good portion of Thaylen City, according to Navani's annotated map in Oathbringer, and was a "mountain of power" in the Cognitive Realm according to Shallan's observation.  Additionally, we have Pattern commenting on another being below Kholinar's Oathgate that "is likely one of the Unmade.  It must be very large on this side."  I note the size of the Unmade for further discussion in a moment.

One oddity that has struck me is that the Unmade have areas of influence that affect people in different ways.  Nergaoul encourages violence, Ashertmarn encourages excess, to name two of them.  I will not be going into specifics on what I think all nine do, but rather I will attempt to explain that some of them, such as Re-Shephir, are using Voidbinding and their own natures as a spren to project these influences over very large areas to achieve new effects, and even larger areas when in the Cognitive Realm.

I will use Re-Shephir as my case study here, because of the following assertion:

Re-Shephir uses Voidbinding to create Midnight Essence (presumably from living creatures).  She then uses her store of Voidlight to project her nature as a spren to shape the Essence into a desired form.  The shaping of Midnight Essence is not something I consider Voidbinding.

My basis for this thinking is in how Shallan sees Re-Shephir as like a creationspren gone wrong.  Re-Shephir has been directly observed to be making copies of "creatures she saw or consumed" (Oathbringer Ch. 110 epigraph), which is indeed similar to creationspren mimicking recently observed Physical Realm objects.  Now suppose we were to trap a creationspren inside a gemstone and hook it up to a fabrial.  While the effect may be unknown, I wonder if perhaps it might be possible to influence mutable substances (water, mud) into desired shapes by capturing creationspren that are mimicking such shapes.  The point I am trying to make, is that spren project their natures when in the presence of stimuli and Investiture (the gem's Invested state).  We've seen this most commonly with flamespren that make heat fabrials.  Flamespren "evoke" the concept of heat to which they are attracted.

Now imagine a spren that doesn't need to be both in a gemstone and subjected to stimuli to do this, but rather is a spren that has access to large quantities of Investiture and was, say, subjected to a certain Vessel of Odium making them be able to evoke this nature.  In Re-Shephir's case, that's mimickry, an influence which can be applied to Midnight Essence.  We know that Midnight Essence can be "extracted and used independently" (WoB), so the shaping of it is not exclusive to Re-Shephir.  This is why I bring up the possibility of creationspren-based fabrials allowing for creating works of art with mutable substances.

This projection of nature is how I see Nergaoul as capable of affecting people with the Thrill over a massive area of influence.  He is so large in the Cognitive Realm, and so Invested, that like a fabrial emitting heat, he "emits" the Thrill on a very large area simply due to sheer size and power.  Similar reasoning would apply to the other Unmade that influence the mind.  Much like a fabrial evoking an effect, they are broadcasting specific states of being on a wide area, and it's for this reason that I think calling them spren is very accurate.  We have seen something like this with Shallan and Re-Shephir, which in her case would be "twisted creativity".  She created multiple drawings she can't recall doing, but were still in her sketchbook, and she also created multiple mimicries of herself without having the need to draw them first.  This influence on Shallan's drawing is why I suspect Re-Shephir is projecting an influence whose effect is what enables her to alter the shape of Midnight Essence.

So, with that established, I think we can say that all nine have similar influences, and that we can potentially name them _____spren for what kind of influence they project, and that because they are all Invested Splinters of Odium, they are actually affecting people much like a fabrial hypothetically could.

So there you have it, a lot of words about my thoughts on Voidbinding and how it relates to the Unmade.  I will be very interested to hear what everyone has to say about this work.

Edited July 29, 2020 by dvoraen

[Going_North_cal]

You are making my head hurt

[Gderu]

I think that your structure is confusing. After reading this, I still don't really understand what your theory is. Maybe try to rewrite this in a more understandable way?

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

3 hours ago, Gderu said:

I think that your structure is confusing. After reading this, I still don't really understand what your theory is. Maybe try to rewrite this in a more understandable way?

I understand it just fine, what's up with you two?

He's just saying that the Unmade are using Voidbinding/Voidlight to "pretend" to be a fabrial that uses their original spren-nature, like how Re-Shephir has been likened to a superpowered, evil Creationspren.

...Right?

[dvoraen]

21 minutes ago, Halyo_Alex said:

I understand it just fine, what's up with you two?

He's just saying that the Unmade are using Voidbinding/Voidlight to "pretend" to be a fabrial that uses their original spren-nature, like how Re-Shephir has been likened to a superpowered, evil Creationspren.

...Right?

Using Voidbinding to generate Voidlight which they use as fuel source for evoking said spren-nature, yes.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

Just now, dvoraen said:

Using Voidbinding to generate Voidlight which they use as fuel source for evoking said spren-nature, yes.

Okay yes that's what I meant/thought. I did understand.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Well, we do have a voidbinding table. That suggests that voidbinding can be done by forming a bond with a voidspren and that there are voids corresponding to the Surges. In fact Renarin ssems to have traded a Surge for a "Void". In a very loose sense they are related in that Illumination and his "Void" are dealing in illusionary pictures. (In fact in terms of utility what he has is an improvement) And he certainly does not carry or consumes spheres of Voidlight.

Furthermore (Scadrial)

Spoiler

what Ashertmarn and Nergaoul are doing is effectively emotional allomancy, not something unknown