More details on Darkside magic!

[Honorless he/him]

Just thought I'd bring y'all's attention to this fresh WoB on Taldain's Darkside

Quote

Questioner

Can you tell us anything about the Darkside of White Sand?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. We are hoping to do a story set there once the omnibus is out. It might graphic novel, it might be print. There is some very cool stuff about the way that the other sun works, and the magic involves tattoos. It's very nifty. We will get to it eventually. So, there you go. 

Questioner

If you do a graphic novel, will you release the prose like you did for the first one?

Brandon Sanderson

There might not be a prose if we do a graphic novel. I haven't written-- One of my goals is actually, now the graphic novel's done, is to do a straight up revision of the prose and actually make it match the graphic novel and match current Cosmere continuity, and then actually release a print edition of it. I think it's more likely that we do a prose edition of the second book than a graphic novel, but I'm not sure which one it would be.

FanX 2021 (Sept. 16, 2021)

Tattoos apparently, so we were all wrong on what the Skycolors manifested: not glow-in-the-dark people, eye colours or a literal limelight shining from the sky or aurora but tattoos.

Edit: Brandon might not exactly be talking about the Skycolors (like Breath vs Awakening)

And the Skycolors do involve bioluminescence and something like the aurora:

Prose stuff

Spoiler

"What does he look like?" Khriss asked.
"An Iiarian, like myself," Baon explained. "Tall, with very dark skin  He is a powerful man, duchess. Very powerful—and not just because of what he controls. He bears himself like a warrior, with a firm stance and commanding presence. And, of course, his Skycolor is violet—the color of nobility."
 

Eventually, she chose a hairstyle that looked more difficult to produce than it actually was, with half of her hair braided around the top of her head, the other half spilling out like a dark waterfall over her left shoulder.
Too bad I can't use my Skycolor here, she thought absently, choosing a few pieces of jewelry.
 

In all, it was surprisingly like a court ball back in Elis. Replace the sunlight with Skycolors, the sand with marble floors, and the robes with suits and dresses, and the two would be indistinguishable.
 

Khriss couldnt speak for a long time. She simply stood, staring into his bright daysider eyes. They were so colorful—she'd never noticed that before. They had no Skycolor, but they seemed to shine anyway.

and it could be a mix of UV interactions, bioluminescence and magic. The Skycolors varying between people definitely points to weirdness. ~ extracts & points from Mori on Discord

Edited September 23, 2021 by Honorless

[NameIess]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

Tattoos apparently, so we were all wrong on what the Skycolors manifested: not glow-in-the-dark people, eye colours or a literal limelight shining from the sky but tattoos

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

[HSuperLee he/him]

1 hour ago, Nameless said:

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

Not a biologist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But to my understanding there are two reasons why it would be difficult if not impossible to do that.

First: As best I know, your immune system does actually see tattoo ink as an invader and would like to get rid of it, except that the ink molecules are actually too big for the cells that make up your immune system to break them down and process them out of your body. Laser removing a tattoo is, to my knowledge, using a laser to break down those molecules so they can naturally be removed. The thing about blood cells is that they are small enough that an immune system should be able to process them, meaning ink made out of blood would fade fairly quickly. Assuming it took, that is, which leads us into...

Second: A person's body is very likely to have an allergic reaction to someone else's blood being put into your skin, and that would be very bad.

[Zoey she/her]

Oooh, this is interesting, more on Darkside magic. I wonder how this is going to work, but it makes sense. We know with a bunch of Selish Magics that Shapes and Patterns can have Magical effects. So this fits in with the other systems. 

[Frustration he/him]

5 hours ago, Nameless said:

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

Theoretically, yes.

[Honorless he/him]

6 hours ago, Nameless said:

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

You could but it wouldn't be permanent. What are you thinking, Llstml?

[+Invocation]

6 hours ago, Nameless said:

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

I see someone is thinking of Hemalurgic tattoos. 

At least I hope so, I'd hate to think that I was the only one whose mind went there.

[Quantus he/him]

 

14 hours ago, Nameless said:

Hm. That's interesting. Out of curiosity, can you make tattoo ink out of human blood?

13 hours ago, HSuperLee said:

Not a biologist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. But to my understanding there are two reasons why it would be difficult if not impossible to do that.

First: As best I know, your immune system does actually see tattoo ink as an invader and would like to get rid of it, except that the ink molecules are actually too big for the cells that make up your immune system to break them down and process them out of your body. Laser removing a tattoo is, to my knowledge, using a laser to break down those molecules so they can naturally be removed. The thing about blood cells is that they are small enough that an immune system should be able to process them, meaning ink made out of blood would fade fairly quickly. Assuming it took, that is, which leads us into...

Second: A person's body is very likely to have an allergic reaction to someone else's blood being put into your skin, and that would be very bad.

 

At minimum you can make tattoos from carbon sources (charcoal traditionally) but by the time you've reduced the blood to char I dont know if any useful magical properties or Connection would remain. 

[NameIess]

11 hours ago, Honorless said:

You could but it wouldn't be permanent. What are you thinking, Llstml?

 

11 hours ago, Invocation said:

I see someone is thinking of Hemalurgic tattoos. 

Yeah. Hemalurgic tattoos. Maybe mind control or something? We haven't seen straight-up mind control in the Cosmere yet, (With the exception of hemalurgic creations being mind controllable.) 

[+Invocation]

4 hours ago, Nameless said:

Yeah. Hemalurgic tattoos. Maybe mind control or something? We haven't seen straight-up mind control in the Cosmere yet, (With the exception of hemalurgic creations being mind controllable.) 

It would probably be extremely temporary, not to mention the blood-type matching you'd have to do to make it work without worrying about rejection that may even spill over onto the soul. But it could be neat to see someone make that work.

[NameIess]

11 minutes ago, Invocation said:

It would probably be extremely temporary, not to mention the blood-type matching you'd have to do to make it work without worrying about rejection that may even spill over onto the soul. But it could be neat to see someone make that work.

Of course, this all assumes that the magic system works at all like that. It could work by capturing investiture from somewhere in some kind of tattoo ink and then getting tattoos in certain patterns in order to get certain powers.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

13 hours ago, Nameless said:

 

Yeah. Hemalurgic tattoos. Maybe mind control or something? We haven't seen straight-up mind control in the Cosmere yet, (With the exception of hemalurgic creations being mind controllable.) 

I am afraid you need to explain why Darkside magic works on Darkside only. If the power source were the tatoos that would be mighty odd.

The most obvious analogon to a tatoo would be an Aon, only that Aons would not work as tatoos because they need depth. That would actually fit. The powersource is the white dwarf, it works by bioluminiscence and the commands are inscribed on bodies. Now the only thing we need to explain is why the Darksiders think that they have no Invested Art.

[NameIess]

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

I am afraid you need to explain why Darkside magic works on Darkside only. If the power source were the tatoos that would be mighty odd.

The most obvious analogon to a tatoo would be an Aon, only that Aons would not work as tatoos because they need depth. That would actually fit. The powersource is the white dwarf, it works by bioluminiscence and the commands are inscribed on bodies. Now the only thing we need to explain is why the Darksiders think that they have no Invested Art.

Maybe they don't know the secret to making dye that can capture investiture?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

11 hours ago, Nameless said:

Maybe they don't know the secret to making dye that can capture investiture?

I highly doubt that. They can catch something.

Spoiler

The dialogue between Khrissalla and Baon presupposes that everybody knows what sky colors are.

And Khrissalla's musings on parties imply that the ability to generate and use sky colors is common, maybe even universal. Also the colors have meaning. That very much points to an Arcane Effect.

I would conclude that they already have the Investiture and that it comes from their star. They just don't know how to use it.

[Honorless he/him]

^ What Oltux said.

I know a lot of people theorized that Skathan (Scythe in the prose) was an Avatar of Autonomy, I think it's much more likely that he was the first to discover active usage of Darkside's Investiture system. Skathan figured out how to make the magic actively do something than just the passive effect of being Invested (or having a way to access the power), that being glowing in the dark, apparently.

Basically, compare this to Nalthian Investiture. People may have known of Breaths (did they? Idk) but they did not know Awakening.