Let's talk Organic Fabrials

[Zelly]

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Beside each lantern sat an ardent with a drum, softly banging a specific rhythm. This was the secret. People would have noticed if gemstone light made plants grow—but the mixture of the light and the music changed something. Lifespren—little green motes that bobbed in the air—spun around the drummers. The spren glowed brighter than usual, as if the Light of the gemstones was infusing them. And they’d move off to the plants, spinning around them.

This drained the Light, like using a fabrial did. Indeed, the gemstones would periodically crack, as also happened to fabrials. Somehow, the mixture of spren, music, and Light created a kind of organic machine that sustained plants via Stormlight.

So this is cool and I have lots of questions.

There's got to be more applications, with different combinations of spren, gems, and rhythms.   

And can it be applied to known fabrials to sort of reverse engineer their effects, but without imprisoning the spren? (Stick a infused ruby in a hearth, hum a few bars = heatrial ?)

Music seems to be replacing the wire "cage" of a fabrial? 

Are their special rhythms for special spren?

Speaking of special spren, does this relate to weird uberspren Cusicesh, who leaves people feeling drained? Is there some sort of giant fabrial in its city?

Music seems to be replacing the wire "cage" of a fabrial?

 

Crazy foil hat theory: Roshar, the planet as a whole, is an enormous organic fabrial. 

[ecohansen]

Good to see humans using Listener-derived investiture, alongside listeners like Venli using human investiture.  This development makes Rlain a pretty darn pivotal  hingepoint.

As for your tinfoil, has anyone asked Brandon about Roshar's carbon-oxygen ratio?  Could it be a diamond planet like 55 cancri?

[Karger he/him]

26 minutes ago, ecohansen said:

As for your tinfoil, has anyone asked Brandon about Roshar's carbon-oxygen ratio?  Could it be a diamond planet like 55 cancri?

Roshar does not have tectonic or volcanic activity.  We don't know what its core is made of.

[ecohansen]

2 hours ago, Karger said:

Roshar does not have tectonic or volcanic activity.  We don't know what its core is made of.

Cool!  Diamond planets necessarily don't have tectonic activity.

I'm not sure if that would have been widely known when Sanderson was initially creating Roshar, though.

Edited October 14, 2020 by ecohansen
initial link didn't have timestamp

[Gilphon]

So, really, I suspect that the organic fabrials are the 'true' fabrials- it's what the things that evolved on Roshar use. The metal-based versions developed by the humans are a weird hack designed to get around the way they can't hear the rhythms. Most visibly, this has got to be what the Singer forms are- they transform by going out into the Highstorm, attuning the right Rhythms, and trapping the right kind of spren in their gemhearts.

From a more Realmatic point of view: In the Metallic Arts, the molecular structure of the metal acts as a 'key' that tells the Investiture what to do. We have seen other keys that have similar functions elsewhere in the Cosmere; most notably the language-based magic systems on Sel. And if a language can act as a key in this context, it makes perfect sense that a Rhythm can as well- the Rhythms do seem to be something fundamental about Roshar, after all. Then we get that the humans have replaced one type of key with another.

But the real holy grail here, I think, lies in combining the organic and metallic fabrials. The Rhythms are probably gonna produce some effects you can't get with metals, and vice-versa. Using both in a single fabrial could lead to all kind of crazy things.

Priority one, though, should be finding a way to make an organic fabrial that's more efficient than 'have a guy sitting there, constantly beating a drum'. Perhaps that why the Heralds and Fused have been so impressed by the things accomplished by the metallic fabrials; metals are a lot easier to mass-produce and scale up. 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Gilphon

[StormFather!]

I don’t think that the metals can replicate the Rhythms directly. I think it is like trying to replicate the Rhythm of Growth with the Rhythm of Pewter and Zinc. I think that you can’t make a mechanical fabrial exactly replicate a organic one.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

In theory, each metal could be "attuned" to a different Rhythm, like a tuning fork. Like, down at the atomic scale, the actual physical nuclei/electron orbitals might be what decides which Rhythms can resonate with which metal, like the length of a guitar string determining what frequency it vibrates at.

Of course, with this being the Cosmere, there is almost assuredly a Cognitive and Spiritual component to this, but I'm talking like, BASIC basic concept.

[Truthwatcher Artifabrian he/him]

I think inorganic fabrials have a wider range of things you can do than organic fabrials. Just like technology can do many things that living creatures have never evolved to do. While inorganic fabrials can use every combination of gemstone, metal, and spren, I think every gemstone only has one rhythm and one spren that it organically works with.

[spaidapig he/him]

I hate the term "organic fabrial". It just seems off to me.

What they are doing in this chapter is not really a Fabrial in my understanding. 

It's like plowing a field with a horse or something similar. You wouldn't consider a horse a machine or something like that, which is what fabrials are essentially. They are machines that use investiture as fuel. Drumming to the beat of a rythm is no machine. 

You could create a machine doing the drumming and then I could call it a fabrial, but organic fabrial just doesn't sound right to me.

 

What we see here is more like a symbiosis. The spren is attracted by something it likes. And in exchange for Stormlight it stimulates the growth in the plants.

This is what we see in native rosharan species as well and you wouldn't call an animal a fabrial or machine?

[Gilphon]

I mean, I feel like we're using the term 'organic fabrial' because 'fabrial' is the only word we have to refer to the magic system under discussion here. Technically you're probably right; I believe there's a WoB saying that fabrial is gonna end up being a general term for magitech, and therefore it should only refer to the metallic ones, but we don't have any better terms. 

[spaidapig he/him]

I feel like the symbiosis of the species of Roshar and fabrials use the same underlying magic system, the "sprenmagic".

While one type relies on a natural dependence, maybe cooperation is even better, I like to call it natural sprenmagic, the other one is like a forced cooperation, almost lining in to exploitation.

 

I understand why you are using "organic fabrials", mostly because fabrials were the fist direct spren usage we saw. But to me this sounds like cyborgs and I don't feel this is indended.

Maybe someone can come up with a better term then sprenmagic?

 

Back to the topic:

12 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

In theory, each metal could be "attuned" to a different Rhythm, like a tuning fork. Like, down at the atomic scale, the actual physical nuclei/electron orbitals might be what decides which Rhythms can resonate with which metal, like the length of a guitar string determining what frequency it vibrates at.

Of course, with this being the Cosmere, there is almost assuredly a Cognitive and Spiritual component to this, but I'm talking like, BASIC basic concept.

I like this very much. The metal kind of aks like a replica to the key the Rhythms represent. Maybe thats why the structure of the metal cage is essential to the construction of fabrials, as well as the spren type and the gem type.

The gem type, and with this the corresponding essence as well, seem to play a big part in both types of sprenmagic, which makes sense. The essences probably have their origin in some natural concept. They can't be solely asinged how someone felt or guessed they have to. 10 is an essential number to Roshar, because of this it is in Vorinism, so thinking along this line is a pretty obvious start.

I believe that there must even be a third type of sprenmagic. And this must be what Soulcasters and Healingfabrials are. I think they are one step between the natural symbiosis and the forced captured spren. If someone is Connected enough to a spren they can convince them to become a fabrial, based on the free will of the spren. This could also fit to the Sibling and Urithiru. Somehow this has to be "softer" than capturing a spren in a gemstone as well as more limiting to the spren that the natural symbiosis Rosharan animals use.

I'm wondering what Shallan defective Soulcaster looks like in Shadesmar.

Edited October 15, 2020 by spaidapig

[Realmatic Shadow]

19 hours ago, spaidapig said:

The metal kind of aks like a replica to the key the Rhythms represent.

I find it really interesting that people haven't been mentioning the Allomantic pulses of the metals that a Seeker hears when someone is burning a metal. I found that was the first connection I made when the more natural looking spren magic was shown, with the comparison of the Rhythms to the pulses of the metals. We have WOB that a seeker could hear the Rhythms of Roshar when burning bronze, and that shows that there is something there in the connection between the two.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 14.10.2020 at 8:02 PM, StormFather! said:

I don’t think that the metals can replicate the Rhythms directly. I think it is like trying to replicate the Rhythm of Growth with the Rhythm of Pewter and Zinc. I think that you can’t make a mechanical fabrial exactly replicate a organic one.

That would not work. There are too few metals to translate to the the kinds of Spren.

[+Bzhydack he/him]

Yep, cages metals Types don't translate directly to Rythms, but I think cages PATTERNS have direct corelation with Rythms.

[coppercloud]

How i think how it work

cages act like sheet music.the cage activates the notes  on the gemstone .   

fabrials are like midi synth music .

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And then, briefly, Shallan heard a sound. A low thrumming, like a distant group of voices, humming together a single, pure note.

Jasnah’s hand sank into the rock.

-WOK chapter 5

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However, she’d found a book the day before that had offered what seemed like a useful tip. It claimed that humming, of all things, could make a Soulcasting more effective. It was just a passing reference, but it was more than she’d found anywhere else. She sat down on her bed and forced herself to concentrate. She closed her eyes, holding the stick, imagining it transforming into quartz. Then she began humming.

-WOK chapter 42

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Adolin nodded, and Kadash walked back to the five and gave a few brief commands. He spoke quickly, nervous. It was odd to see that in Kadash, who was normally so placid and unflappable. Soulcasters had that effect on everyone.

The five started softly chanting, a harmony to the singing of the ardents outside. The five stepped forward and raised their hands in a line, and Adolin found his face breaking out in a sweat, blown cold by the wind that managed to sneak past the silken walls.

-WOR chapter 35

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Renarin glanced at them, then held up what he’d found in the small drawer. A ruby, long as Jasnah’s thumb, cut into a strange shape with holes drilled in it. What on Roshar? She took it from him and held it up.

“What is it?” Navani said, shouldering up beside her. “A fabrial? No metal parts. What is that shape?”

Jasnah reluctantly surrendered it to her mother.

“So many imperfections in the cut,” Navani said. “That will cause it to lose Stormlight quickly. It won’t even hold a charge for a day, I bet. And it will vibrate something fierce.”

Curious. Jasnah touched it, infusing the gemstone with Stormlight. It started glowing, but not nearly as brightly as it should have. Navani was, of course, right. It vibrated as Stormlight curled off it. Why would anyone spoil a gem with such a twisted cut, and why hide it? The small drawer was latched with a spring, but she couldn’t see how Renarin had gotten it undone.

“Storms,” Shallan whispered as other scholars crowded around. “That’s a pattern.”

“A pattern?”

“Buzzes in sequence . . .” Shallan said. “My spren says he thinks this is a code. Letters?”

“Music of language,”

-OB chapter 53

we know cut of the gem matters for fabrials and type matters to spren , probably has to do with tone and frequency .

I could sing to the song of growing beating a drum vibrating emerald attracting lifespren that will feed stormlight to rockbuds or i can create a cage that mimics the vibration of the song of growing and trap the spren and feed it stormlight to catalyst the growing .